This, IMHO, is not Great Debates material, so I’m putting it here.
Does anyone else think ol’ Pilate got a bad rap? I’m not saying he did anything good, but I think that as bad guys go, his notoriety is a little out of proportion to his actual crimes. Let’s look at two famous figures and see what they did on the first Good Friday:
Peter, the Apostle:
Denies knowing Christ three times, even though he’d been specifically warned that he’d do that. He never seems to show up to the Crucifixion, either. The night before, he had cut off some guy’s ear, only to get a stern reprimand from Jesus, who he was only trying to help. Where is he now?
Peter becomes (in some opinions) the first Pope, and is popularly thought of as having a cool job sitting around the Pearly Gates.
Pilate:
The local Jews come to him for permission to kill some guy. Pilate looks at Jesus, and thinks to himself, “This guy? He’s not hurting anyone.” He tries several times to talk them out of killing this guy, but the locals won’t give up, and in fact would rather he let some notorious murderer go free then Jesus. Pilate eventually gives up arguing with his constituents, and says, “Fine, you want to kill him, go ahead, but it’s your decision, not mine.” Where is he now?
Pilate is memorialized in several famous Creeds, generally along the lines of “…suffered and died under Pilate…” or some such, and is popularly remembered as “that guy who crucified Jesus.”
Does anybody else feel that way? Or am I missing some crucial part of the story?
I was thinking that during the Passion reading today. In the version for Palm Sunday (I think it’s Matthew) he flat out says that Jesus hadn’t done anything and that he washes his hands of it, with the crowd taking his blood on their hands. In the end, he did what the crowd wanted, and maybe that’s the deal.
Anyone know the deal behind the bad press Pilate gets?
I’ve always wondered why ANYBODY would get a bad rap for their part in the affair. Wasn’t it all part of God’s plan? Weren’t they simply carrying out his will? Didn’t they make it possible for people to avoid hell? (As fas as I can see, up until then EVERYBODY went to hell. It was unavoidable.) I would think that a Christian would consider them to be heroes! In any case, it’s not like they did any permanent harm to Jesus.
None of this ever made any sense to me, even when I was a child in Sunday school. Maybe one of you good Christians can explain it to me.
I think the reason he’s remembered so harshly is because his actions make it clear that he knew he was having an innocent man executed, but he did it anyway.
Even if Jesus weren’t the son of God, but just an eccentric country preacher, that’s pretty awful.
George W. Bush, for example, would never do such a terrible thing.
davidm has raised a very good point. At the last supper, Jesus tells Judas that he needs to go do what needs to be done and then Judas is called a traitor.
However, I think that old Pontus got off easy (ignoring the above for a minute). The bible makes him out to be a man that can’t make up his mind or isn’t willing to take the blame. In the first place Pontus Pilate held an office that wasn’t for sissies anywhere in the Roman Empire and especially in Judah, which was known for being rebellious. When he took office, he intentionally offended the Jews by carrying banners into Jerusalem, which honored the Roman ruler. He sent his soldiers to villages and had them behead those that would not cooperate with him. He was a mean mother. Jesus was executed in the Roman manner and his crime was claiming he was the King of the Jews.
So, why is the story told the way it is? Well, Paul and all those that were promoting Christianity were trying to sell it to the Romans, who hated the Jews who had rebelled in the year 66 AD.
If you want to sell someone on such an idea, you don’t include the story of how their representative killed the Son of God. And of course you find a way to blame the Jews.
Also the only record of letting a prisoner loose during Passover is in the bible. Another story that makes Pontus the hero and the Jews the villians.
P.S. I have no bones to pick with the Romans and I am not Jewish.
Agreed, his crime seems to be that he allowed an innocent to be killed simply to appease the crowds when he knew the man was innocent. Saying that he washes his hands of it doesn’t absolve him of the guilt, it was his job to maintain the Roman law and by the Roman law Jesus had done nothing wrong. Granted, he seems a bit demonized to this day, but he certainly wasn’t doing his job properly, caved in under public pressure, and someone was executed wrongly under the law as a result (regardless of whether or not Jesus was divine).
I’ll let someone with more knowledge of Jewish custom correct me if need be, but it’s my understanding that there really isn’t an Old Testament Heaven and Hell per se, but rather everyone went to Sheol when they died, which was sort of the big grey Nothing or eternal sleep. God blessed or cursed people in life by how they lived according to the Law, but the end result was the same.
But I was talking about Christian theology. As far as I know, Christians don’t claim that heaven and hell came into existence with the birth of Christianity. And my understanding is that you must believe in and accept Jesus in order to be saved from hell. If this is the case then if there’s no Jesus there’s no way to be saved. So all of the generations from the original sin up until Jesus were doomed whether they led good lives or not. In fact, for centuries after the crucifixion, it was not possible for most of the world’s population to be saved because they had no knowledge of the event. To me, this always seemed like a major flaw in Christian theology. It’s one of the things that made me start to question it as a child. It just seemded completely unfair that the chance to avoid eternal torture was only available to those fortunate enough to be born at the right time and place. It seems like one big grisly lottery.
I agree; as an agnostic, I’ve always found Pilate rather sympathetic. Poor man, surrounded by fanatics on all sides. And “What is truth?” is one of the best lines in the Bible – you can almost hear the exasperation in his voice when you read that passage. I suppose he’s really been blamed, traditionally, for not knowing the truth when he sees it, but the good guys in the Bible seem to know all the answers through divine revelation, and if you aren’t GIVEN a revelation, what on earth are you supposed to do?
Davidm, I’ll give you my answer real quick, but I doubt this is supposed to be a debate on the Judeo-Christian afterlife so I’ll leave it at that.
Real fast, it’s my assumption as a quasi-Christian that God would have fulfilled his covenant with the Jews up to the spread of Christianity (when Jesus started his teaching) and that the Jews would have gone to Sheol. Anyone after that was bound by the whole Heaven/Hell thing. Just my own thoughts on it, but I’d have trouble believing that if there is a God, he’d throw his Chosen people into Hell over a Messiah they wouldn’t see for another thousand years.
Pilate wasn’t the only one to pass Jesus off. Herod Antipas, the Judean subject king, saw him too, and mocked him. I wonder what he thought in later times. There’s a line from a song in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar” in which Herod, recounting a dream of the future he has had, sings “And I saw thousands of millions, crying for this Man/And then I heard them mentioning my name, and leaving me the blame”
kniz is absolutely right. Jesus was crucified because Pilate ordered him to be. No one else within Jerusalem that Passover could have ordered JC put to death by crucifixion.
Likewise, if Pilate had ordered contrarily no one else there & then could have ordered JC to be crucified.
IMHO Those are the only facts you need to keep in mind when wondering if Pontius was being unfairly blackened or whitewashed by the accounts
I suppose this is a major hijack but…
Even if we ignore for the moment what happened before Jesus, we still have a problem. At the time of Jesus, there was no mass communication and no, or very little, overseas travel. So at that time, and for centuries afterwards, most of the world’s population were bound to the heaven/hell thing but were not even aware of the problem or of its solution. Like I said; it was like one big lottery based on where and when you were born. I can’t see how anyone can consider that to be fair.
At which point, I’d just call it accountability. I’m not God, I don’t claim to know the mind of God and I’m not responsible for anyone’s soul, but (according to Christianity), if you’re told the Gospel you’re bound by it whether you accept or reject it. If you’ve never been exposed to it, it stands to reason that you’re not bound by it. Same reason as why children are considered sinless (at least according to Jesus). they don’t have the materials to make an informed decision about faith so they’re not bound by it. Same deal for Joe Schmoe born and abandoned on a desert isle to be raised by marmosets or whatever. shrug Just my opinion. Again, I’d have a hard time beleiving that a devout Jew 1000 miles from Galilee who dies a month into Jesus’ teachings is going to go to Hell despite being unaware of what’s going on. You, of course, are welcome to believe what you will.
Now, back to Pontius and his bum rap. You know, there’s a bit in the story about how Pontius sends Jesus off to Herod, the high priest, to be questioned and Herod taunts Jesus and dresses him up in a robe in mockery of the whole King of the Jews thing. It then says that Pontius never much liked Harod but after seeing what he had done, Pontius and Herod became good friends from there on out. All in all, Pontius wasn’t exactly a complete class act himself.
A lot depends upon how merciful you consider God to be. If God’s mercy is infinite, then pretty much everybody involved in the Crucifixion is off the hook.
Is it fair that one or two people have to take the fall for essentially doing God’s will?
You could argue forever about that and there won’t be a definitive answer.
Until you’re dead. If there are any dead people posting, please get back to us on this.
