But the chief priests
and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy
Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, Whether of the twain will ye
that I release unto you? They said, Barabbas. Pilate saith unto them, What
shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? They all say unto him, Let
him be crucified. And the governor said, Why, what evil hath he done? But they
cried out the more, saying, Let him be crucified. When Pilate saw that he could
prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed
his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just
person: see ye to it. Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on
us, and on our children. (Matt 27:20-25)
Commenting on this text and its depiction of Pilate, David L. Turner
wrote:
Matthew 27:20-25 is
often cited as a blatantly anti-Semitic text. Some think that Matthew portrays
Pilate positively in order to exonerate the Romans and indict the Jews. In
fact, Pilate does take the initiative for Jesus’ release (27:17), while Mark
15:8 has the crowd ask Pilate to release a prisoner. Pilate also hears his wife’s
testimony that Jesus is righteous (27:19), and “washes his hands” of Jesus’ crucifixion
(27:24). But Matthew’s picture of Pilate
is not all that positive—it is consistent with other ancient sources that
present Pilate as insecure as well as harsh and unjust in administering his
office. (David L. Turner, Israel’s
Last Prophet: Jesus and the Jewish Leaders in Matthew 23 [Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2015], 260, emphasis added)
Here is a listing of such ancient sources depicting Pilate in such a
manner:
Josephus
and, when he had
possessed that dignity no longer than a year, Joseph Caiaphas was made his
successor. When Gratus had done those things, he went back to Rome, after he
had tarried in Judea eleven years, when Pontius Pilate came as his successor .
. . But now Pilate, the procurator of Judea, moved the army from Caesarea to
Jerusalem, to take their winter quarters there, in order to abolish the Jewish
laws. So he introduced Caesar's effigies, which were upon the ensigns, and
brought them into the city; whereas our law forbids us the very making of
images; on which account the former procurators were wont to make their entry
into the city with such ensigns as had not those ornaments. Pilate was the
first who brought those images to Jerusalem, and set them up there; which was
done without the knowledge of the people, because it was done in the night
time; but as soon as they knew it, they came in multitudes to Caesarea, and
interceded with Pilate for many days that he would remove the images; and when
he would not grant their requests, because it would tend to the injury of
Caesar, while yet they persevered in their request, on the sixth day he ordered
his soldiers to have their weapons secretly, while he came and sat upon his
judgment seat, which seat was so prepared in the open place of the city, that
it concealed the army that lay ready to oppress them; and when the Jews
petitioned him again, he gave a signal to the soldiers to surround them, and
threatened that their punishment should be no less than immediate death, unless
they would stop disturbing him, and go their ways home. But they threw
themselves upon the ground, and laid their necks bare, and said they would take
their death very willingly, rather than the wisdom of their laws should be
transgressed; upon which Pilate was deeply affected with their firm resolution
to keep their laws inviolable, and presently commanded the images to be carried
back from Jerusalem to Caesarea. But Pilate undertook to bring an aqueduct
Jerusalem, and did it with the sacred money, and took the water of the stream
from the distance of twenty-five miles. However, the Jews {a} were not pleased
with what had been done about this water; and many ten thousands of the people
got together, and made a clamour against him, and insisted that he should stop
that design. Some of them, also, used reproaches, and abused the man, as crowds
of such people usually do. So he outfitted a great number of his soldiers in
their clothes, who carried daggers under their garments, and sent them to a
place where they might surround them. So he bade the Jews himself go away; but
they boldly casting reproaches upon him, he gave the soldiers that signal which
had been beforehand agreed on; who laid upon them much greater blows than
Pilate had commanded them, and equally punished those who were tumultuous, and
those who were not, nor did they spare them in the least; and since the people
were unarmed, and were caught by men prepared for what they were about to do,
there were a great number of them slain by this means, and others of them ran
away wounded; and thus an end was put to this sedition . . . But the nation of the Samaritans did not
escape without tumults. The man who excited them to it was one who thought
lying a thing of little consequence, and who contrived everything so, that the
multitude might be pleased; so he bade them to get together upon Mount Gerizim,
which is by them looked upon as the most holy of all mountains, and assured
them that when they were come there, he would show them those sacred vessels
which were laid under that place, because Moses put them there. {a} So they
came there armed, and thought the discourse of the man probable; and as they
abode at a certain village, which was called Tirathaba, they got the rest
together to them, and desired to go up the mountain in a great multitude
together. But Pilate prevented their going up, by seizing upon the roads with a
great band of horsemen and footmen, who attacked those who were gotten together
in the village; and when it came to an action, some of them they slew, and
others of them they put to flight, and took a great many alive, the principal
of which, and also the most powerful of those who fled away, Pilate ordered to
be slain. But when this tumult was appeased, the Samaritan senate sent an
embassy to Vitellius, a man that had been consul, and who was now governor of
Syria, and accused Pilate of the murder of those who were killed; for that they
did not go to Tirathaba in order to revolt from the Romans, but to escape the
violence of Pilate. So Vitellius sent Marcellus, a friend of his, to take care
of the affairs of Judea, and ordered Pilate to go to Rome, to answer before the
emperor to the accusations of the Jews. So Pilate, when he had tarried ten
years in Judea, made haste to Rome, and this in obedience to the orders of
Vitellius, which he dared not contradict; but before he could get to Rome,
Tiberius was dead. (Antiquities of the
Jews, 18.35, 55-62, 85-89)
Now Pilate, who was sent as procurator into
Judea by Tiberius, sent by night those images of Caesar that are called
ensigns, into Jerusalem. This caused a very among great tumult among the Jews
when it was day; for those who were near them were astonished at the sight of
them, as indications that their laws were trodden under foot: for those laws do
not permit any sort of image to be brought into the city. Nay, besides the
indignation which the citizens had themselves at this procedure, a vast number
of people came running out of the country. These came zealously to Pilate to
Caesarea, and besought him to carry those ensigns out of Jerusalem, and to
preserve for them their ancient laws inviolable; but upon Pilate's denial of
their request, they fell down prostrate upon the ground, and continued
immovable in that posture for five days and as many nights. On the next day
Pilate sat on his tribunal, in the open market place, and called to him the
multitude, as desirous to give them an answer; and then gave a signal to the
soldiers that they should all by agreement at once surround the Jews with their
weapons; so the band of soldiers stood around the Jews in three ranks. The Jews
were under the utmost consternation at that unexpected sight. Pilate also said
to them, that they should be cut in pieces, unless they would allow Caesar's
images, and gave intimation to the soldiers to draw their naked swords.
Hereupon the Jews, as it were at one signal, fell down in vast numbers
together, and exposed their bare necks, and cried out that they were sooner
ready to be slain, than that their law should be transgressed. Hereupon Pilate
was greatly surprised at their prodigious superstition, and gave orders that
the ensigns should be presently carried out of Jerusalem. After this he raised
another disturbance by expending that sacred treasure which is called Corban
{b} upon aqueducts, whereby he brought water from the distance of fifty miles.
At this the multitude had great indignation; and when Pilate was come to
Jerusalem, they came around his tribunal, and made a clamour at it. Now when he
was apprized aforehand of this disturbance, he mixed his own soldiers in their
armour with the multitude, and ordered them to conceal themselves under the
clothes of private men, and not indeed to use their swords, but with their
staves to beat those who made the clamour. He then gave the signal from his
tribunal [to do as he had bidden them]. Now the Jews were so sadly beaten, that
many of them perished by the stripes they received, and many of them perished
as trodden to death by themselves; by which means the multitude was astonished
at the calamity of those who were slain, and held their peace. (Jewish Wars, 2.169-177)
Philo
XXXVIII. "Moreover, I have it in my
power to relate one act of ambition on his part, though I suffered an infinite
number of evils when he was alive; but nevertheless the truth is considered
dear, and much to be honored by you. Pilate was one of the emperor's
lieutenants, having been appointed governor of Judaea. He, not more with
the object of doing honor to Tiberius than with that of vexing the multitude, dedicated
some gilt shields in the palace of Herod, in the holy city; which had no form
nor any other forbidden thing represented on them except some necessary
inscription, which mentioned these two facts, the name of the person who had
placed them there, and the person in whose honor they were so placed
there. But when the multitude heard what had been done, and when the
circumstance became notorious, then the people, putting forward the four sons
of the king, who were in no respect inferior to the kings themselves, in
fortune or in rank, and his other descendants, and those magistrates who were
among them at the time, entreated him to alter and to rectify the innovation
which he had committed in respect of the shields; and not to make any
alteration in their national customs, which had hitherto been preserved without
any interruption, without being in the least degree changed by any king or
emperor. "But when he steadfastly refused this petition (for he was a man
of a very inflexible disposition, and very merciless as well as very
obstinate), they cried out: 'Do not cause a sedition; do not make war upon us;
do not destroy the peace which exists. The honor of the emperor is not
identical with dishonor to the ancient laws; let it not be to you a pretense
for heaping insult on our nation. Tiberius is not desirous that any of
our laws or customs shall be destroyed. And if you yourself say that he
is, show us either some command from him, or some letter, or something of the
kind, that we, who have been sent to you as ambassadors, may cease to trouble
you, and may address our supplications to your master.' "But this last
sentence exasperated him in the greatest possible degree, as he feared lest
they might in reality go on an embassy to the emperor, and might impeach him
with respect to other particulars of his government, in respect of his
corruption, and his acts of insolence, and his rapine, and his habit of
insulting people, and his cruelty, and his continual murders of people untried
and uncondemned, and his never ending, and gratuitous, and most grievous
inhumanity. Therefore, being exceedingly angry, and being at all times a
man of most ferocious passions, he was in great perplexity, neither venturing
to take down what he had once set up, nor wishing to do any thing which could
be acceptable to his subjects, and at the same time being sufficiently
acquainted with the firmness of Tiberius on these points. And those who
were in power in our nation, seeing this, and perceiving that he was inclined
to change his mind as to what he had done, but that he was not willing to be
thought to do so, wrote a most supplicatory letter to Tiberius. And he,
when he had read it, what did he say of Pilate, and what threats did he utter
against him! But it is beside our purpose at present to relate to you how
very angry he was, although he was not very liable to sudden anger; since the
facts speak for themselves; for immediately, without putting any thing off till
the next day, he wrote a letter, reproaching and reviling him in the most bitter
manner for his act of unprecedented audacity and wickedness, and commanding him
immediately to take down the shields and to convey them away from the
metropolis of Judaea to Caesarea, on the sea which had been named Caesarea
Augusta, after his grandfather, in order that they might be set up in the
temple of Augustus. And accordingly, they were set up in that
edifice. And in this way he provided for two matters: both for the honor
due to the emperor, and for the preservation of the ancient customs of the
city. (Embassy to Gaius, 299-305)
Tacitus
So far, the precautions taken were suggested
by human prudence: now means were sought for appeasing deity, and application
was made to the Sibylline books; at the injunction of which public prayers were
offered to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpine, while Juno was propitiated by the
matrons, first in the Capitol, then at the nearest point of the sea-shore,
where water was drawn for sprinkling the temple and image of the goddess.
Ritual banquets and all-night vigils were celebrated by women in the married
state. But neither human help, nor imperial munificence, nor all the modes of
placating Heaven, could stifle scandal or dispel the belief that the fire had
taken place by order. Therefore, to scotch the rumour, Nero substituted as
culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men,
loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the
founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius,
by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition
was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea,
the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible
or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed
members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast were convicted, not so much on the count of
arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they
were covered with wild beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were
fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by
night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition
in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted
on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary
punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they
were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a
single man (Annals 15.44)
For a good
treatment of Pilate by a Latter-day Saint, see:
John A.
Tvedtnes, Pontius
Pilate: Treachery Behind the Washed Hands