Pontius Pilate: 5th Roman Governor and the Trial of Jesus

Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from about 26 until about 37. He was, unfortunately for him, the Roman governor of Judea during the public ministry of Jesus. Pontius Pilate is best known for being the official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ultimately ordered his crucifixion. Pilate’s importance in Christianity is underscored by his being mentioned in both the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds. Because the gospels portray Pilate as reluctant to execute Jesus, some Christians venerate him. Do you believe Pontius Pilate converted?

Pontius Pilate Biography

Sources provide no indication of Pontius Pilate’s life before he became governor of Judaea. His first name is unknown, but Pilatus might mean “skilled with the javelin.” If it means “skilled with the javelin”, it is possible that Pilate won the name for himself while serving in the Roman military; it is also possible that his father acquired the name through military skill.

In the Gospels of Mark and John, Pontius Pilate is only called by his first name. The name Pontius suggests that an ancestor of his was from Samnium in central and southern Italy, and he may have belonged to the family of Gavius Pontius and Pontius Telesinus, two leaders of the Samnites in the third and first centuries.

Pilate was of the equestrian order, a middle rank of the Roman nobility. As one of the attested Pontii, Pontius Aquila (an assassin of Julius Caesar) was a tribune of the plebs; the family must have originally been of plebeian origin and later became ennobled as equestrians.

Pontius Pilate was educated, somewhat wealthy, and well-connected politically and socially. He was probably married, but the only extant reference to his wife, in which she tells him not to interact with Jesus after she has had a disturbing dream (Matthew 27:19), is generally dismissed as legendary. It is also likely that Pontius Pilate served in the Roman Military.

We know little about the life of Pontius Pilate. However, the historian Josephus reports that Pilate was dismissed after violently quelling a Samaritan uprising. Modern historians are divided on Pilate’s governance, with some viewing him as brutal and inept, while others point to his relatively long tenure as evidence of moderate competence. A once-prominent theory attributing Pilate’s actions to antisemitism is now largely rejected. He may have retired.

Execution of Jesus

At the Passover of most likely 30 or 33, Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus of Nazareth to death by crucifixion in Jerusalem. Pilate’s role in condemning Jesus to death was also written about by the Roman historian Tacitus, who, when explaining Nero’s persecution of the Christians, explains: “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment…” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44). Josephus also mentioned Jesus’s execution by Pilate at the request of prominent Jews (Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3); the text may have been altered by Christian interpolation, but the reference to the execution is generally considered authentic.

So, we are fairly certain the crucifixion of Jesus happened. Pontius Pilate sent a 500-soldier-strong group to arrest Jesus. Based on the unanimous testimony of the gospels, the crime for which Jesus was brought to Pilate and executed was sedition, founded on his claim to be king of the Jews.

Conclusion

Pilate is assumed to have been reluctant to crucify Jesus. Stating he was pressured to do so by the crowd. At any rate, some believe that he converted to Christianity and became a saint. Whatever he became, the historical record indicates he did have Jesus crucified. It is for this reason he is remembered today.

Besides these texts, dated coins in the name of Emperor Tiberius minted during Pilate’s governorship have survived, as has a fragmentary short inscription that names Pilate, known as the Pilate Stone, the only inscription about a Roman governor of Judaea predating the Jewish–Roman wars to survive.