Christ and Pilate's downfall

copyright 2008 Stephan Huller

It is stunning enough that the Christian texts of Josephus try to avoid the effects of Caligula’s rise to power on Palestinian life. Not only does the text avoid the obvious “triumph” for Christ – viz. that the “Herod” who was victimizing our hero from the beginning of the text was finally brought to justice – it is utterly amazing that Pilate, the man who shamefully allowed “Jesus” and “Christ” to be tried and punished also avoids divine retribution.

To this end what we have to do to bring to a close the whole issue of whether or not early Christian could have connected Josephus’ report of Pilate’s summoning to Rome with his mistreatment of “Christ” during the passion is to look at the earliest surviving reports from that tradition. The facts are that it was widely acknowledged in late antiquity that Pilate’s summoning to Rome was not only connected with Christianity the details necessarily challenged the existing understanding.

Why else would the anti-Christian Emperor Maximian have taken what must have been Pilate’s original report and sent them “to all the provinces under him, with written commands that they should be posted publicly in every place and that the schoolmasters should give them to their scholars instead of their customary lessons to be studied and learned by heart (Eusebius, op. cit., IX, v)? The anwer here must be that this one document above all other texts, arguments and refutations proved once and for all that the canonical gospels of the Catholic Church were completely unhistorical. How could one document have done this? We get that understanding from the contemporary Catholic forgeries commissioned in this and subsequent ages to counter its influence.

It is utterly incredible to see the manner in which the Catholic responses attempt to get around the simple fact that the Emperor Pilate faced when he arrived at Rome was Caligula. Josephus couldn’t be more specific when he says that Pilate left Palestine while Tiberius was alive and that by the time he arrived in Rome that Emperor was dead. So it is amazingly important that each manufactured “reaction” to Pilate’s report goes out of its way to deny which Caesar appeared next. In that “counter-tradition” we see that:

(a) The so-called Giving Up of Pilate has a strange formula where the Emperor is actually unnamed and entirely sympathetic to Christianity. He wants to punish the Jews for killing Christ (Gaius it might be argued did much the same thing for perhaps different reasons).

(b) The so-called Report of Pilate before Claudius makes Claudius the Emperor (which is ridiculous) while the longer Greek form identifies the Caesar as Tiberius (which is utterly impossible. It also introduces Agrippa’s sister Berenice (although unnamed) as a player in the drama and her relation to the city of Paneas (which will figure later in our discussion).

(c) The so-called Death of Pilate also has Tiberius as the Emperor and Berenice as the holder of the sacred sudar.

(d) The so-called Letter of Herod finds Caligula (Gaius) slipped into the accused Herod Agrippa’s letter in a strange way. He writes “Now, my lords, if this is not satisfactory, I would ask my accuser, Caius, to write any of the learned Jews, and learn if my statement is not correct. As to Agrippa's accusing me of having arms for seventy thousand soldiers, it is correct; but they were left me by my father, Herod the Great."

(e) The so-called Letter of Pilate again identifies Tiberius as the Caesar but the fact that the speech is identified as occuring on March 28th is interesting (the date Caligula accepted the crown in Rome).

(f) In the Avenging of the Saviour Tiberius is the Caesar, Berenice is present but so is Titus. Pilate is now a prisoner owing to his mistreatment of “Christ.”

(g) The Acts of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul identify Claudius as the Emperor
The point again is that something has to account for these reactionary treatises to deny the obvious – viz. Pilate made his original report to Gaius. The only answer I can come up with is that Maximian’s reproduction of the original report of Pilate proved that (a) the gospels lied about the locale of the arrest (i.e. Samaria) and (b) that Marcus Agrippa was the “Christ” abused by Pilate and Tiberius and the basis for the accusation against Pilate.

It is interesting that the Christian Church Father Justin refers positively to Pilate's original which once again necessarily must have referenced Christianity. He writes at one point of the manner in which they prove the truth of his gospel saying:
the words, "They pierced my hands and my feet," are a description of the nails that were fixed in His hands and His feet on the cross; and after He was crucified, those who crucified Him cast lots for His garments, and divided them among themselves; and that these things were so, you may learn from the "Acts" which were recorded under Pontius Pilate.

The same idea comes again when he alludes to the fact that Jesus “performed these miracles you may easily be satisfied from the "Acts" of Pontius Pilate."
The fact that Justin should be an early witness to the truthfulness of the very Acts of Pilate likely cited by Maximin centuries later might be puzzling to some. Why should a Christian from one age embrace the very document shunned by others generations later? Then all at once the answer comes – Justin was at once a Samaritan Christian who according to Boismard, building on work by Plooij, Peters, and others, published the identification of Justin’s text with an earlier lost Diatessaron text connected to the Gospel of the Hebrews. Boismard has shown that in addition to the Diatessaron, a text similar to the one used by Justin was used in both Syriac-speaking and Latin-speaking areas. This Gospel of the Hebrews text (notice that it is never described as a Gospel of the Jews or some such term) undoubtedly embraced a Samaritan basis for the original Passion narrative.
I needn’t get into the fact that Justin himself says that “all of Samaria” has embraced Christianity at this time. It is enough to say that this would necessarily have been impossible if the gospel at the basis of this tradition emphasized a Jerusalem-based revelation as our canonical texts now do. The idea that “every Samaritan” would not only have embraced Jesus as their Lord but accepted much of the Judaizing present in our canon would require an even greater miracle than is normally attributed to the eventual conversion of “all the nations.”

Nevertheless despite these corruptions we need only realize that the earliest of the later “Catholic responses” to the open promulgation of the Acts of Pilate by Maximin not only doesn’t completely erase Caligula’s presence as Emperor – it necessarily blends together Josephus’ report of Pilate’s assault on the Samaritans with the arrest of Jesus. When we look to the Giving Up of Pontius Pilate for instance it is almost impossible to see how matters fit perfectly with our reconstruction of events described in Josephus.

While for instance Josephus writes that “when this tumult was appeased, the Samaritan senate sent an embassy to Vitellius” Giving Up notes that “the writings having come to the city of the Romans, and having been read to the Caesar … all were astounded, because through the wickedness of Pilate … and the Caesar, filled with rage, sent soldiers, and ordered them to bring Pilate a prisoner.” Despite some obvious differences it is impossible to see that Pilate ends up in the exact same position – standing before Caligula with the charge of attacking the leader of a messianic movement. Of course the major difference here is that according to the standard model Pilate’s attack against “Christ” occurred at least four years before the governor’s summons to Rome. We have all seen how this difficulty immediately disappears.

Giving Up continues to fill in missing gaps in our information saying that when Pilate “was brought to the city of the Romans, the Caesar, hearing that Pilate had arrived … ordered Pilate to stand forward. And the Caesar says to him: Why hast thou, O most impious, dared to do such things … [b]y daring to do an evil deed, thou hast destroyed the whole world.” Pilate attempts to brush off the accusation accusing Herod and the Jews of forcing him into attacking “Christ” Caesar initially doesn’t accept his argument and “ordered Pilate to be kept in security” while he learned more about Christ. Eventually in a manner conistent with Caligula he issues a decree against the Jewish nation and “seized all the nation of the Jews; and those that were left in Judaea he scattered among the nations, and sold for slaves.” Pilate is beheaded for his crimes.

In the Death of Pilate who Condemned Jesus we see the very same pattern – viz. supporting the notion that Pilate’s attack against the Samaritans was one and the same as the assault mentioned in the gospel narrative. Only here we see the beginning of the integration of this information into the greater tradition of Agrippa’s sister as the holder of the sudar (see below). Now Tiberius is sick and in need of healing and looks to Jesus to act as his physician. When he finds out that Pilate has killed him he is enraged and seeks to recall him as a means of accusing him.

The simple fact of course was that the historical Emperor Tiberius was in fact very sick at the time of Pilate’s assault. As such there is a small grain of truth here. We read further in the Death of Pilate that “Pilate, hearing this, was very much afraid, knowing that through envy he had caused Him to be put to death.” He attempts to justify his actions by accusing Christ of being “a malefactor, and a man who drew to himself all the people; so a council of the wise men of the city was held, and I caused him to be crucified.”

Of course it is Berenice’s testimony to the governor of Syria which manages to sway the Emperor’s decision. We read that “she began to weep, saying: Ah me! my lord, my God and my Lord, whom Pilate for envy delivered, condemned, and ordered to be crucified.” Then we read that governor of Syria “came with Veronica to Rome, and said to Tiberius the emperor: Jesus, whom thou hast been longing for, Pilate and the Jews have delivered to an unjust death, and have through envy affixed to the gibbet of the cross.”

The text continues by saying that in the end “Pontius Pilate by the command of Caesar, is taken and brought through to Rome. Caesar hearing that Pilate had arrived at Rome, was filled with exceeding fury against him, and caused him to be brought to him.” Despite being initially saved by Jesus the emperor eventually is portrayed as “swearing and declaring that [Pilate] was the son of death, and that it was infamous that he should live upon the earth” and “ordered him to be kept in prison, until he should deliberate in a council of the wise men what ought to be done with him. And a few days after, sentence was therefore passed upon Pilate, that he should be condemned to the most disgraceful death. Pilate, hearing this, killed himself with his own knife, and by such a death ended his life.”

The same basic scenario occurs in the Avenging of the Savior save for the fact that Agrippa’s sister Berenice is eventually connected with her lover Titus who destroyed the Jewish religion as revenge for their treatment of “Christ.” Here we are told that as a result of his arrest and punishment of Jesus the Roman officials “seized Pilate, and sent him to prison [in Damascus]… [and t]hen they forthwith sent their messengers to Tiberius, the emperor of the city of Rome.” When the governor of Syria arrives he asks “Thou, Pilate, impious and cruel, why hast thou slain the Son of God?” Eventually we hear that the governor of Syria “seized Pilate to take him to a seaport” along with Berenice and a portrait of the Lord.

In the end my only point here is to emphasize that the “icing on the cake” as it were with my reconstruction of the historical basis to the gospel is that there is a pre-existent Christian tradition regarding Pilate being sent to Rome for crimes against “their Christ.” Suddenly we are right there staring the very idea of Josephus account of a historical assault against a Samaritan messiah and the Passion of Jesus himself identified as a Samaritan as one and the same event. What could have caused this understanding to disappear and darkness and confusion reign in its place? Can you all say – “Imperial conspiracy?”…