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What is truth?’ Pilate asked. Truth was looking him in the eyes when he asked this.
Mihály Munkácsy, “Pilate’s Court,” 1881, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest (photo: Public Domain)
The birds of Jerusalem welcomed brother sun’s rise with morning songs. The shadow cast by the Second Temple pointed westward toward the governor’s palace. It was westward, toward the palace, that the mob led by chief priests and elders and learned men made their way.
What is it this time? Pontius Pilate wondered.
On most days the governor resided in Caesarea Maritima. The capital was a port city with Roman temples, Roman baths, imposing public structures commissioned by the late Herod, and a theater overlooking the sea. Gladiators fought in the theater. But the likelihood of local uprisings was elevated on this week of the Passover. Pilate was in Jerusalem to see to it that order would be maintained.
His ancestors, commoners from southern Italy, had been ennobled as equestrians, or middle-ranking nobility. He’d diligently served in the army, and made proper acquaintances, in his younger years. The reward for his ambition was to succeed Valerius Gratus as the prefect of a small and seemingly insignificant province on the Empire’s eastern edge: Roman Judaea.
He remained subordinate to the imperial legate of Syria, aristocratic Lucius Aelius Lamia, an old man nowhere to be found within Syria itself. Local protests and insurrections erupted in Judaea far more often than in other provinces. His was an office that those closest to the emperor wouldn’t have cared for.
Pilate had made prior attempts to introduce the Imperial Cult into Jerusalem itself. Such attempts were met with zealous resistance. Though he’d once believed that Rome would bring light unto whatever lands she took for herself, his experiences had taught him otherwise. So be it! he figured. Let those circumcised Jews cling to their backward ways.
Continued below.
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The birds of Jerusalem welcomed brother sun’s rise with morning songs. The shadow cast by the Second Temple pointed westward toward the governor’s palace. It was westward, toward the palace, that the mob led by chief priests and elders and learned men made their way.
What is it this time? Pontius Pilate wondered.
On most days the governor resided in Caesarea Maritima. The capital was a port city with Roman temples, Roman baths, imposing public structures commissioned by the late Herod, and a theater overlooking the sea. Gladiators fought in the theater. But the likelihood of local uprisings was elevated on this week of the Passover. Pilate was in Jerusalem to see to it that order would be maintained.
His ancestors, commoners from southern Italy, had been ennobled as equestrians, or middle-ranking nobility. He’d diligently served in the army, and made proper acquaintances, in his younger years. The reward for his ambition was to succeed Valerius Gratus as the prefect of a small and seemingly insignificant province on the Empire’s eastern edge: Roman Judaea.
He remained subordinate to the imperial legate of Syria, aristocratic Lucius Aelius Lamia, an old man nowhere to be found within Syria itself. Local protests and insurrections erupted in Judaea far more often than in other provinces. His was an office that those closest to the emperor wouldn’t have cared for.
Pilate had made prior attempts to introduce the Imperial Cult into Jerusalem itself. Such attempts were met with zealous resistance. Though he’d once believed that Rome would bring light unto whatever lands she took for herself, his experiences had taught him otherwise. So be it! he figured. Let those circumcised Jews cling to their backward ways.
Continued below.
He Suffered Under Pontius Pilate
‘What is truth?’ Pilate asked. Truth was looking him in the eyes when he asked this.
