Diary of Pontius Pilate

A fellow resident was very impressed by this latest BBC Lent Talk given by Douglas Hurd, Foreign Secretary in a previous Conservative government so I have found it to reproduce here.

Lent Talks: Douglas Hurd
Radio 4
Wednesday 27th March 2007

Extract from memoirs of Pontius Pilate

When I was told that the Emperor Tiberius had appointed me prefect of the Province of Judea I had mixed feelings. Judea has the reputation even today of being a backward outpost of the empire, but I had been hanging around in Rome for several months wondering where I would be sent next, so it was a relief to have some definite news. My wife Procula was delighted. She had always taken an interest in Eastern traditions and religious cults, and looked forward to living in Jerusalem. When she heard that because of Jewish religious prejudices the seat of Roman government was Caesarea not Jerusalem she was deeply disappointed.

As a soldier I foresaw nothing but trouble. I knew little about Judea except that it was a wretched mass of complications. It was not run as a simple Roman province under the authority of the Emperor. Roman power was exercised indirectly through arrangements which changed all the time but involved dealing with King Herod as well as the High Priest of the Jewish faith. One result was that I had no substantial Roman force under my control. If there was serious trouble I would have to appeal for a legion to be sent from Syria with the consent of the Legate there. For ordinary purposes I only had about 3000 locally recruited soldiers at my disposal.
I had been brought up into a proper respect for civilised Roman values. My grandfather never stopped telling us that he had practised in the law courts in Rome alongside Cicero. At his villa up in the Alban hills he made me learn by heart whole chunks of Cicero's attack on Verro, the corrupt Roman Governor of one of our provinces. According to my grandfather Cicero sought the truth, but those were thuggish times and the thugs got him in the end. But since then the divine Augustus had pulled things together and it was clear to me and my generation that, in a rough and ready way, the Roman Empire was certainly a force for good.

I went to Judea vaguely optimistic that even with the restrictions on my power I would be able to show the Jews that straightforward Roman justice was a much better form of rule than anything they could achieve for themselves. I tried my best but it did not work.

At the beginning I was keen to understand and conciliate the Jews. There was a row early on when some of the soldiers under my command entered Jerusalem with shields carrying the Emperor's insignia. This would have passed as perfectly normal anywhere else in the Empire, but the High Priest made a terrible row about sacrilege. I backed down and the insignia were blanked out. I gained no credit for this concession and gradually my views hardened. That incident taught me that the Jews were the least tolerant of all men. Across the Empire by this time most people worshipped more or less what gods they pleased. Most educated people carried in their heads something of Greek philosophy with perhaps a dash of oriental mysticism, and of course respect for our old Roman gods who did no one any harm and were part of our inheritance. I myself had no difficulty in praying to the Jewish God Jehovah after I had prayed to Jupiter and of course the Divine Emperor Tiberius. But the Jews would have none of such politeness; to them there was only one god, a fierce Jewish chieftain in the heavens. They had a temple for him, but no statue of him could be placed there and they tolerated no image of any other god.

There were plenty of incidents of this kind. I had to manoeuvre with inadequate powers between the different forces in that intolerable country. The one which sticks in my mind concerned the man Jesus. I remember this partly because he struck me as an exceptional person and partly because I thought for a time that I had gained a big political victory. In their superstitious way the Jews were constantly expecting their God to send someone to earth to rescue them from foreign rule and re-establish their old Kingdom in Jerusalem. In my time there must have been at least half a dozen pretenders to this position, each calling themselves the Messiah. Jesus was a carpenter's son from Nazareth in Galilee, which was outside my jurisdiction. I first heard of him when a centurion in my small garrison reported that Jesus had cured his Greek secretary from one of those paralytic diseases which kill so many people in the East. The secretary, a brilliant fellow, was twisting about in misery and apparently near death. Jesus didn't even meet the man. When the centurion asked him to intervene Jesus pronounced some words of healing and at precisely that moment several miles away the Greek recovered from his disease. The centurion and the Greek were both convinced of a miracle and began to chatter about it.

I set up an investigation, but the witnesses contradicted each other. This happened all the time in Judea, so much so that I coined the phrase 'what is truth?' which became a sort of watchword among my staff. In the end I wound up the investigation, summoned the centurion and told him to shut up, or he would never see Rome again. He was a sensible fellow and took the point.
It did not matter to me whether it was a coincidence or whether Jesus had really performed a miracle. My only concern was whether he would turn his growing influence against Rome. I satisfied myself that unlike most of the other pretenders he was unpolitical. His preachings concentrated on meekness and humility, very oriental and un-Roman, but they represented no threat to the Emperor, and I let him be.

But I admit I was worried when he came to Jerusalem before one of the Jews most important festivals, the Passover. He rode into the City on a donkey surrounded by a big enthusiastic crowd. That was alarming, and I wondered if my analysis had been right. His first act was to go to the temple and throw out the merchants and moneychangers who had long been established there. This was a strange episode of which by chance my wife Procula was a witness. Of course she was not allowed in the temple herself, only into the court of Gentiles outside. One of the merchants there sold carpets to a design which she particularly admired. Having inspected a dozen carpets in the way women do she waited while one of her staff bargained over the price. As she waited it became obvious there was a huge row developing inside the temple. Her servant came to tell her that Jesus was overthrowing the tables and generally breaking the place up. Of course Procula should have left at once to avoid trouble but she was vexed at not getting the carpet, and began to argue. At that moment Jesus came out of the temple with a stick in hand. My wife said that their eyes met and she saw in his face a fierce exultation which she would never forget.

It soon became clear that Jesus spelt trouble for me, not because he was aiming to overthrow Roman rule but because he was attacking the Jewish establishment at their most sensitive point. They were determined to destroy him and used their own powers to arrest him. If they had been content to lock him up or send him back to Galilee the whole matter would have died down; but they were determined to kill him, and for that they needed my authority.

They knew, of course, that I was not going to get involved in all their tedious disputes about this or that doctrine or quotation from their holy scriptures. So they fastened on the fact that Jesus was constantly talking about the Kingdom of God and himself as the Son of God. They came to me saying that because Jesus was calling himself a King he must be a danger to the Emperor and Roman rule.

I decided to see Jesus myself. Procula was very much against this; after her chance meeting with Jesus outside the temple she had dreamt about him and was convinced that for me he would be nothing but danger. But I had become curious and had not yet learned that curiosity can lead to serious trouble. I cross-examined him more than once and came away convinced that my original assessment had been right. This man was completely honest and straightforward in what he said. The Kingdom which he preached was not of this world. He represented no threat to Rome. True, some of his arguments were far fetched. He even said that I - the prefect of Judea - only possessed authority because his God had given it to me. But this was harmless nonsense and I did my best to save him.

There was a custom by which a criminal could be released out of mercy at the time of the Passover. I suggested to the Jews that I should release Jesus. But they were having none of it and the situation was getting out of control. The Jewish Priests had mobilised a big crowd who shouted for the release of a thug called Barrabas and for Jesus to be crucified. The Priests came to see me and argued that if I let Jesus go I was no friend to Caesar. I saw an opportunity and I seized it. I told them that I was amazed to hear this charge coming from men who had always disputed Roman authority. They fell into my trap and replied, "we have no King but Caesar". I made them come out onto the balcony and repeat that to the crowd. I made them write it down and sign it. They had allowed their fear and anger against Jesus to compromise their basic political belief. It was a great moment, it was a real coup for the Empire. I sent a special despatch to Rome with an account of all this, bypassing for the sake of speed my superior the legate in Syria. But of course one gets things out of proportion when serving in the provinces. I suppose I imaged Tiberius pleased and excited when the messenger brought the news to him at some banquet on Capri. The Jews had at last given way, the Jews had acknowledged his rule -the rule of a divine emperor. I thought he might leap up at once and promote me to a command somewhere civilised in Italy or Greece. But in reality I never heard of my despatch again. Looking back, I think I exaggerated, put too much of a spin on it, (as the Gauls do with a ball in that game they play on the street in the summer). I overstated my achievement. Certainly there was no promotion, quite the reverse.

I had to pay for this political success, as I saw it then. I had to agree that Jesus should be crucified. But really I had no choice. The mob was out of hand and there was danger of a real uprising. The nearest Roman legion was several days march away in Syria. This was a concession which I would have had to make anyway. It was a pity that Jesus, an innocent man, should be sacrificed in this way but politics is like that. I sent for a jug of water and washed my hands on the balcony to show that the guilt was not mine.

I did my best on some secondary points. When Jesus was dead I allowed a rich man to take away his body and bury him decently. I teased the Jews by drafting the inscription to be written on his cross "The King of the Jews" and refused to alter it when they protested.

A day or two later Procula came to me with a story from the bazaar that Jesus had risen from the dead. I suppose his friends must have spirited his body away from the tomb. I am told this story is still being spread around the cities of Asia and has even reached Rome. People will believe anything nowadays.

Looking back I am much stirred by all this, I remember vividly my own talks with Jesus while he was alive. It is not that I feel any particular guilt about it. He was not the first innocent man, and will not be the last, to die for the greater good, in this case saving the Roman Empire and indeed the Jews from useless trouble. Sometimes an individual gets in the way of finding the solution to a problem and has to be brushed aside. Individuals have no rights to weigh against the purposes of the state. As our old Roman saying has it, "the safety of the people is the supreme law".

Why then do I particularly remember Jesus? He was taller than most Jews and looked older than his years. He spoke to me as an equal, as if the interpreter was not there, and his eyes never left my face. I felt almost embarrassed, because I knew what was going to happen. But then I think he did too. I said I was sorry the soldiers had been playing tricks on him in the courtyard, but he simply said that this was their way. Jesus had a gift of talking about his ideas which was different from other men. He repeated the word "truth" so often that I found myself asking "what is truth?" as a real question, not a throwaway remark. In those days I believed that there was no answer, that there was no truth outside the authority of the Emperor and the rule of Rome. Now that I am old I am not so sure. I can understand better now what that Centurion felt and the handful of men round Jesus. This is a confused and tormented world. Maybe we need more than the old gods and the arguments of political necessity to put it right. I wish I could remember more clearly what Jesus said to me that afternoon in the courtyard of Govenor's House in Jerusalem.
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