by Paul L Maier
CHAPTER 14 (PAGES 177–187)
POMPONIUS FLACCUS: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 27.
A. AVILLIUS FLACCUS: Dio Cassius, lviii, 19, 6; Philo, In Flaccum, i, 1 ff.
CESSATLON OP LITUUS COINS: No crosier coins of Pilate dated after 31 A.D. have been discovered. On Pilate’s coinage, see “Historical Note” above and Ethelbert Stauffer, “Zur Münzprägung and Judenpolitik des Pontius Pilatus,” La Nouvelle Clio, I and II (1949–1950), 495–514, although Stauffer is unduly severe with Pilate. Such conclusions of his as “Dieser Mann [Pilatus] war unter den vielen schlimmen Prokuratoren Judaeas mit Abstand der schlimmste” (p. 511) simply contradict the facts, especially when Pilate is compared with such later procurators as Cumanus or Floris, See also P. L. Hedley, “Pilate’s Arrival in Judea,” The Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1934), 56–57; E. Mary Smallwood, “Some Notes on the Jews under Tiberius,” Latomus, XV (Juillet–Septembre, 1956), 314–29; A. Kindler, “More Dates on the Coins of the Procurators,” Israel Exploration Journal 6 (1956), 54–57; and B. Oestreicher, “A New Interpretation of Dates on the Coins of the Procurators,” Israel Exploration Journal 9 (1959), 193–95.
TIBERIUS’S LETTER TO PILATE: This is a paraphrase of Tiberius’s sentiments at this time regarding the Jews, according to Philo, De Legatione ad Gaium, xxiv, 160 ff. The exact date is presumed, though the year 32. would be accurate.
ZADOK: Gitten 56a (Babylonian Talmud).
NUMA AND THE SHEILDS: Plutarch, Numa, xiii; Horace, Carmina, i, 37, 2; Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria, i, 6, 40; Ovid, Fasti, iii, 259 ff.
JEWISH SHEILDS IN ALEXANDRIA: Philo, De Legatione ad Gaium, xx, 133.
THE INCIDENT OF THE GOLDEN SHEILDS: Philo, op. cit., xxxviii, 299–30. Some authorities have suggested that this is merely Philo’s version of the standards episode reported by Josephus, as F. H. Colson in Loeb Classical Library, Philo, X, 151. But the incidents are too different in too many details to give this suggestion credence. What is questionable is Philo’s extreme bias against Pilate in reporting this event. In fairness to Pilate, it should be stated that Josephus, our most competent and complete source on Pilate apart from the New Testament, omits this episode entirely.
Philo’s reference to Pilate’s dedicating the shields “in Herod’s palace in the holy city” (De Legatione, xxxviii, 299), which he further identifies as “the house of the governors” (op. cit., xxxix, 306) should end the long—and unnecessary—debate over whether Pilate and Procula stayed at the Tower Antonia or the Herodian palace during their visits to Jerusalem. It is further unlikely that Procula would have been subjected to quarters in a military barracks.
CHAPTER 15 (PAGES 188–201)
FEEDING THE 5,000: Matthew 14:13 ff.; Mark 6:31 ff.; Luke 9:11 ff.; John 6:1 ff.
EVENTS AT ROME IN 32 A.D.: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 1 ff. GALLIO: History would remember not him, but his son Gallio, before whose tribunal St. Paul would later stand in Greece and be acquitted (Acts 18:2 ff.). For the father, see Annals, vi, 3.
TIBERIUS’S LETTER: Philo, loc. cit. Philo mentions, but does not quote, the very threatening letter Tiberius sent to Pilate.
ANIMAL IMAGES ON ANTIPAS’S PALACE: Josephus, Vita, xii.
SIMON MAGUS: Acts 8:9 ff.
BAR-ABBAS: Some ancient NT manuscripts at Matthew 27:16–17 include the full name “Jesus Bar-Abbas,” while others cite only “Bar-Abbas.”
JESUS AT THE TEMPLE: John 10:22–39.
LAZARUS: John 11:17 ff.
CAIAPHAS AND THE SANHEDRIN: John 11:47–53.
THE SANHEDRAL PROCLAMATION: But for the caption and the last sentence, this proclamation is verbatim from the rabbinical tradition on “Yeshu Hannosri” in Sanhedrin 43a, The Babylonian Talmud, trans. by Jacob Shachter (London: Soncino Press, 1935), Nezikin V, p. 281. The last sentence of the notice is derived from what is undoubtedly the NT version of this proclamation in John 11:57.
CHAPTER 16 (PAGES 202–215)
EVENTS AT ROME IN 32–33 A.D.: Dio Cassius, lviii, 18–21 ff.; Tacitus, Annals, vi, 15–19.
PALM SUNDAY: Matthew 21:1 ff.; Mark 11:1 ff.; Luke 19:28 ff.; John 12:12 ff.
THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHAEUS: Luke 19:2 ff.
JESUS CLEANSING THE TEMPLE: Matthew 21:12 ff.; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 19:45–48; John 2:13. The Fourth Gospel, however, places this incident earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while the Synoptics assign it to Holy Week.
JESUS’ DIALOGUES WITH OPPONENTS: Matthew 21:23–23:39; Mark 11:27–12:40; Luke 20:1–47.
WHO WOULD ARREST JESUS?: The Synoptic Gospels credit the Jewish temple guard with the arrest of Jesus and make no reference whatever to any involvement by the Roman military. In John 18:3 and 12, the arrest is made by Jewish police and a “speira” (a “band,” presumably Roman, or the temple “guard”), which is led by a “chiliarchos” (“tribune” or “commander” of the temple guard). With this indefinite language, the Synoptics’ parallel citation of only the Jewish police, the absence of the term “Roman” even in John, and Pilate’s apparent surprise Good Friday morning that the case was coming to his tribunal, it seems unlikely that he committed Roman auxiliaries to make a religious arrest when the temple guard was entirely competent for this purpose. So also Kraeling, op. cit., p. 266: “That Roman soldiers had anything at all to do with the capture of Jesus is extremely doubtful.”
THE LAST SUPPER: Matthew 26:17 ff.; Mark 14:12 ff.; Luke 22:7 ff.; John 13:1 ff.
CHAPTER 17 (PAGES 216–224)
TWO WITNESSES NECESSARY FOR PROSECUTION: Deuteronomy 19:15.
A BROKEN LEG ON THE SABBATH: Shabbath (Mishnah), xxii, 6.
THE ARREST AND RELIGIOUS TRIAL OF JESUS: Matthew 26:47 ff.; Mark 14:43 ff.; Luke 22:47 ff.; John 18:1 ff. For the judicial procedure of the Sanhedrin, see the Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin, iv, 1 to v, 5. A list of further irregularities at the Sanhedral hearing is provided by A. Taylor Innes. The Trial of Jesus Christ (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 55–59. Indeed, because of the various irregularities in this case, scholars still argue over whether there was in fact any formal Jewish trial at all before Caiaphas, or simply an informal hearing, a grand-jury action to prepare for the final and determinative Roman trial.
PROCEDURE FOR STONING: Sanhedrin, vi, 1–4.
CHAPTER 18 (PAGES 225–249)
THE DATE OF THE CRUCIFIXION: This is clearly of decisive importance to any consideration of Pilate’s role at the trial of Jesus. Briefly, the years 29, 30, or 33 A.D. are most commonly proposed in the vast scholarly literature on this question, but the earlier datings seem to raise more problems than they solve. The most precisely given “anchor date” in the Gospels is Luke 3:1–2, where it is stated that John the Baptist began his public ministry “in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar,” i.e., 28–29 A.D. Allowing a half to one full year for John’s independent ministry and three to three and one-half for Jesus’ would seem to require 32–33 A.D. (The usual explanation that Tiberius shared a co-regency with Augustus from 12 A.D. so that the fifteenth year of Tiberius could fall as early as 26 founders on the facts of Roman history: the princeps never dated his reign from a time when the great Augustus was still alive, nor do our sources for this era, Tacitus, Suetonius, or Dio. Moreover, coinage in the Tiberian era dates his reign only from the death of Augustus.)
There is also this evidence from Roman history. The indirect threat of the prosecution at the trial of Jesus to appeal to Caesar against Pilate would not have been likely before the fall of the anti-Semite Sejanus in October of 31, and Tiberius’s pro-Jewish policy which would have entertained such an appeal did not begin until after that time. Therefore the Passover of 32 or 33 would seem the best options for dating the crucifixion. April 3, 33, is the preferable date, because it best answers the requirements for Nisan 14 falling on a Friday in the Jewish calendar. A brilliant discussion in support of 33 A.D., involving also astronomical calculation, is provided by Richard W. Husband, The Prosecution of Jesus (Princeton, 1916), pp. 34–69. A. D. Doyle posits the very probable thesis that the four son
s of Herod complained about the golden shields—after the fall of Sejanus—at the Passover of 32 when they would naturally be together in Jerusalem, with the Crucifixion thus taking place a year later. See his “Pilate’s Career and the Date of the Crucifixion,” The Journal of Theological Studies 42 (1941), 190–93. The 33 A.D. dating is favored also by Cambridge Ancient History, X, 649; J. K. Fotheringham, “The Evidence of Astronomy and Technical Chronology for the Date of the Crucifixion,” The Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1934), 146–62; et al.
Finally, there is the direct patristic evidence of Eusebius. In his Chronicon, ii (ed. Migne, XIX, 535), he stated that Christ suffered “in the 19th year of the reign of Tiberius,” i.e., 33 A.D., and he cites Phlegon’s reference to the abnormal solar eclipse (see below) as taking place in the “fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad,” which extended from July 1, 32, to June 30, 33 A.D. Since Christ was crucified at the time of the Passover, i.e., spring, 33 would be the year.
For further discussion, see my article, “Sejanus, Pilate, and the Date of the Crucifixion,” Church History 37 (March 1968), 3–13.
ROMAN PENALTIES FOR SEDITION: Justinian, Corpus Iuris Civilis, Digestae, xlviii, 8, iii, 4–5.
THE CHARGE OF SORCERY: While the New Testament does not cite sorcery as a particular charge raised against Jesus, this indictment is plausibly mentioned in the Acta Pilati, i, and specifically in the early rabbinical traditions concerning “Yeshu Hannosri” in Sanhedrin 43a (Babylonian Talmud).
ANTIPAS “THAT FOX”: Luke 13:32.
THE HEARING BEFORE HEROD ANTIPAS: Luke 23:6–12. CHUZA: Luke 8:3. MANAEN: Acts 13:1, though the NT does not mention whether or not Chuza and Manaen accompanied Antipas to Jerusalem at this time. But since his wife Joanna was definitely there for this Passover (Luke 24:10), it is more than probable that Chuza was there as well.
THREE OPPORTUNITIES GIVEN THE DEFENSELESS: see A. N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament (Oxford, 1963), p. 25.
THE ROMAN TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS: Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; and John 18:28–19:42. For legal aspects, see also Sherwin-White, op. cit., pp. 22 ff., and A. H. M. Jones, Studies in Roman Government and Law (Oxford, 1960).
CHAPTER 19 (PAGES 250–259)
“THE INNOCENT MAN”: Plato, The Republic, ii, 5. The “innocent” or “just” man (ho dikaios) was the term used by both Plato and Pilate’s wife.
“SANHEDRIN…A SLAUGHTERHOUSE”: or “destructive tribunal,” according to Makkoth 7a (Babylonian Talmud). Other rabbis said “once in seventy years.”
THE GUARD AT THE TOMB: There is some controversy as to whether the Jewish temple police or Pilate’s Roman auxiliaries were used to guard the sepulcher. The Greek of Matthew 27:65 cites Pilate’s statement simply as: “You have a guard,” though grammatically this could also be translated, “You may have a guard.” But the first interpretation seems preferable, since the watch reported the empty tomb directly to the chief priests rather than Pilate (Matthew 28:11), which the temple police would certainly have done. Pilate’s auxiliaries would clearly have reported to him, and only to him. Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxi, 20, also speaks of a Jewish military guard at the tomb.
THE FULL MOON: This was rather a time for lunar, not solar, eclipse. In point of fact, on the evening of Friday, April 3, A.D. 33, a partial eclipse of the moon did take place, which would have been visible in Jerusalem for some minutes after sundown. See Fotheringham, loc. cit.
CHAPTER 20 (PAGES 260–271)
JESUS SPEARED: John 19:34. The phenomenon of separated blood and water flowing from Jesus’ body has led some pathologists to conclude that the lance had most likely penetrated the pericardium, liberating extravasated blood which had separated into its two constituents of red cells and plasma, possibly indicating a heart previously ruptured from intense agony.
THE RESURRECTION ACCOUNTS: Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20–21; 1 Corinthians 15:4 ff. Malchus’s role in this chapter is only assumed. Several Jewish writings acknowledged that the tomb was empty on Sunday morning; see the discussion on the Toledoth Jeshu in Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902), pp. 45, 58 ff.
CHAPTER 21 (PAGES 272–289)
EVENTS AT ROME IN 33 A.D.: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 20 ff.
ACTIVITIES OF THE DISCIPLES: Acts 1–5.
THE DARKNESS AT THE CRUCIFIXION: This phenomenon, evidently, was visible in Rome, Athens, and other Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxi, 20, it was a “cosmic” or “world event.” Phlegon, a Greek author from Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D., reported that in the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e., 33 A.D.) there was “the greatest eclipse of the sun,” and that “it became night in the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that stars even appeared in the heavens. There was a great earthquake in Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea.”—Fragment from the 13th book of Phlegon, Olympiades he Chronika, ed. Otto Keller, Rerum Naturalium Scriptores Graeci Minores, I (Leipzig: Teubner, 1877), p. 101. Trans. mine.
GRANDDAUGHTER OF THRASYLLUS: Ennia Thrasylla married Sertorius Macro, Dio Cassius, lviii, 28.
THE ACTA: Pilate’s official acta have never been found, and these “excerpts” are merely a fractional attempt at reconstruction. The so-called Acta Pilati from the Gospel of Nicodemus is an early apocryphal writing with gross historical inaccuracies and fantasy, and therefore not a reliable source, though a little of its evidence is valuable. Eusebius stated that the “Acts of Pilate” which circulated under the pagan emperor Maximian in his campaign to subvert Christianity were forgeries which foundered on the impossible date assigned the crucifixion: 21 A.D. (Ecclesiastical History, i, 9). They have never been found. Counterforgeries of “Acts of Pilate” by Christians in the fourth century A.D. are of no greater value, and they have not been found. Noteworthy support for possible Acts of Pilate is provided by Justin Martyr, Apology, xxxv and xlviii (“…that these things did happen you can ascertain from the Acts of Pontius Pilate…”) and the early Latin church father Tertullian, who, in two famous passages from his Apology, stated:
It was in the age of Tiberius, then, that the Christian name went out into the world, and he referred to the Senate the news which he had received from Syria Palestine, which had revealed the truth of Christ’s divinity; he did this exercising his prerogative in giving it his endorsement. The Senate had not approved beforehand and so rejected it. Caesar held to his opinion and threatened danger to accusers of the Christians (Apologeticus, v, 2).
This whole story of Christ was reported to Caesar (at the time it was Tiberius) by Pilate, himself in his secret heart already a Christian. (Apologeticus, xxi, 24, both T. R. Glover’s translations in Loeb Classical Library.)
While this may be succulent source material for a historical novelist, it cannot, in honesty, be used in a documented historical novel. Although so early an authority as Tertullian (born ca. 150 A.D.) must be heard with respect, his account of Pilate’s report to Tiberius would seem an inaccurate presumption on his part, or a less than critical use of interpolated documents. The cited passages do not ring true for several reasons. If Pilate did write his emperor about “the truth of Christ’s divinity,” he would also have had to admit to the colossal blunder of crucifying him. In his present probationary position, Pilate could not have afforded such an advertising of error. Even less likely would have been Tiberius’s favorable attitude toward the divinity of Christ, since he detested deification of himself or anyone else. Nor would the Senate have rejected something which the emperor favored.
THE SYRIAN LEGIONS: In Rome’s military, only the Syrian legions had not displayed Sejanus’s image in their standards, according to Suetonius, Tiberius, xlviii.
POMPONIUS FLACCUS: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 27. Although Tacitus cites Flaccus’s death among the events of 33 A.D., he does not follow a strict chronological order in every case, and other evidence indicates that Flaccus did not die until 35 A.D., see Schürer, op
. cit., I, 1, pp. 363 ff.
THE PHOENIX: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 28. AVILLIUS FLACCUS: Philo, In Flaccum, xi, 92.
STEPHEN AND THE PERSECUTION: Acts 6–8.
VITELLIUS: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 32. Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 4, 4–5, is accurate in placing this event in the reign of Tiberius rather than of Caligula, as is erroneously done by Suetonius, Gaius Caligula, xiv, 3, and Dio Cassius, lix, 27, 3.
THE MOSAIC PHOPHECY: Deuteronomy 18:15.
THE TAHEB AND SAMARITAN ESCHATOLOGY: Cp. John MacDonald, The Theology of the Samaritans (London: SCM Press, 1964), pp. 361 ff. James A. Montgomery, The Samaritans (Philadelphia: Winston, 1907) is still of value, cp. pp. 86, 234 ff. The military responsibilities of the Taheb grew in Samaritan beliefs in the early centuries A.D.
THE SAMARITAN INSURRECTION: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 4, 1–2.
CAIAPHAS COMMENDS PILATE: This is merely an assumption, but it is based on a preferable and logical reading of “Samaritans” instead of the variant “Jews” in the text of Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 4, 2, as those who accused Pilate, as well as on the great traditional hostility between Jews and Samaritans.
MARCELLUS AND PILATE’S DISMISSAL: Josephus, loc. cit.
VITELLIUS’S VISIT TO JERUSALEM: Josephus, Antiq., xv, 11, 4; xviii, 5, 1.
PILATE’S DEPARTURE: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 4, 2–3. A late December, 36, departure for Pilate is plausibly suggested by E. Mary Smallwood. “The Date of the Dismissal of Pontius Pilate from Judaea,” The Journal of Jewish Studies 5 (1954), 12–21.
CHAPTER 22 (PAGES 290–299)
TRAVEL IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE: A. M. Ramsay, “The Speed of the Roman Imperial Post,” Journal of Roman Studies 15 (1925), 60–74. Also W. M. Ramsay, “Roads and Travel (in NT),” in Hastings’ A Dictionary of the Bible, V (1927), 375–402.
THE CONVERSION OF SAUL: Acts 9:1–30. Any conversation between Pilate and Saul is pure conjecture, of course, but there is a strong probability that they were both in Tarsus at the end of 36 or the beginning of 37, Pilate on his overland return trip to Rome, and Saul in his Cilician silent years after his first visit to Jerusalem in 35/36 (Galatians 1:18, 21). For the determination of Pauline chronology in this connection, see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology (Princeton, 1964), p. 321.