It's now Lent going into Easter and the story of the Passion looms over us all.
The Gospels get some stuff very wrong and this is the time of year when I most feel the need to redress the story. And why does any of this stuff matter, particularly to the godless like me? It matters because the political biases enshrined in the Gospels are still playing out and it has been the cause of misery and murder for millennia.
Let's start with Pontius Pilate. Pilate has become the protected species of the bible. The Gospels portray this man as the most craven invertebrate until Hamlet came along. Remember Pilate of the Gospels? He was the Roman Procurator (actually he was the Prefect) who had to sign off on the execution of Jesus. And after the approach by the Jewish leadership, he allegedly vacillated. Luke says that he argued with the Jewish authorities saying ''he could find no fault with the man'' but ultimately gives way. Mark depicts Pilate as extremely reluctant to execute Jesus, the Jewish Priests copping the blame. In Matthew, Pilate washes his hands of Jesus (forever tarnishing that simple act of manual hygiene) and reluctantly sends him to his death.
In short, the Gospels portray Pilate as weak and spineless and subject to bullying by a murderous Jewish leadership. This portrayal is manifestly wrong. The man was a monster and to say otherwise is a lie. What little information we do have outside the gospels comes from the turncoat Jewish historian, Josephus and Philo. Pilate had had a wonderful career. He had acquitted himself well in the German wars and had become first a Centurion and then by a strategic marriage had put himself in line for promotion. Pilate was alleged to have betrayed his old and much loved leader Germanicus to get his preferment. That was but the first public indicator of the vile side of this man.
Jesus was in Jerusalem for the Passover pilgrimage when most Jews within a week's walking distance made their way to Jerusalem. The human river pouring into Jerusalem with its imagined or real opportunity for conflict mandated the Prefect's presence. And so every spring would find Pilate twiddling his thumbs in Jerusalem, away from his palace on the coast at Caesarea about 100 kilometres from Jerusalem.
This was a man who on a quiet day had the power to kill for laughs. It was a power he exercised with great expertise and ruthless efficiency. Indeed his cruelty was so manifest and so rampant that at one stage a delegation of Jewish demonstrators from Jerusalem camped outside his home in Caesarea.
They bared their necks to show that they expected to die and that they would do so to demonstrate their repugnance at his latest outrages. Their courageous demonstration elicited promises of mercy (to be broken subsequently). Later the Samaritans complained of his brutality. Pilate was recalled to Rome after he massacred a group of Samaritans at Mount Gerizim. His career ended when he was ordered by the Legate of Syria to stand aside because of cruelty and oppression. Imagine that, a Roman so cold-blooded that he was sacked for cruelty by a regime that prided itself on its pitilessness. For the Romans, war crimes were a good thing.
However, even the Romans understood that the lives of the conquered needed the protection of process. Occupation is a complicated business. It is only successful if the cruelty aimed at the insurgents is procedurally fair and is matched by the benefits shared by the rest of the population. Some skerrick of justice is required or rebellion is inevitable. But the requirements of due process never inhibited Pilate. He was a man whose indifference to the taking of life was complete. He snuffed out life without hesitation and never troubled himself later with tortured reflection. He caused the deaths of thousands.
This is why the gospel characterisation is laughable. It must be fraudulent. And the significance of this mischaracterisation was to protect the fledging Church from the wrath of the Imperial power of the day.
At the time of the Gospels, the Jews were the most troublesome bunch in the Empire. There was appalling retribution after three rebellions in 66 AD, 112 AD and 132 AD. The Gospels had to do several things. They had to distinguish themselves from the Jews who suffered massive depopulation through death, slavery and forced migration. They had to portray the ruling Romans as at least benign or innocent in the murder of Jesus. And to make the story worth listening to, it had to create black and white villains and heroes. A story without these classic elements is not a story but a bore.
And so we have the Gospel Passion with its elements of conflict, suffering and goodies and baddies. The baddies were anointed to be the Jews. Thus began two millennia of intractable and murderous anti-Semitism. And the beneficiary of all of the deceit was the reputation of Pontius Pilate. His name is now a by word for vacillation. But the truth is otherwise. The man could make a decision faster than a speeding bullet. He could kill with no remorse. The man was a monster and on this issue, the Gospels lied.
Dick Gross has written extensively on belief and unbelief and his novel on secular view of the death of Jesus can be found HERE.
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