Belated thoughts on Good Friday
I never hear St. John's account of the Passion - as we do every Good Friday - without some new and surprising note hitting my ear. This year it was the detail about how the Jews were unwilling to enter Pilate's precinct - the Praetorium - as this would have defiled them, and they would be unable to eat the Passover. Even though the Jews here are a subject population, there are some things they won't compromise on: Pilate doesn't order them to come before him, defilement or no, but instead goes out to them. Readers of Josephus will know of the remarkable lengths to which the Roman rulers of Judea went in order to accomodate the religious scruples of the conquered populace. They even enforced a death-penalty on trespass in certain areas of the Temple, against their own - Roman - citizens.
Pilate wasn't all touchy-feely, though. The only other mention of him in the Gospels is in Luke 13:1, where he is described as having had a number of Galileans killed, 'mingling their blood with their sacrifices'. Presumably this means he had a number of people set upon and killed in the midst of a religious observance. Obviously, respect for the religion of the conquered had its limits.
His dialogue with Jesus and the Jews has always seemed to me one of the most psychologically vivid forensic dialogues we have from the ancient world. Anyone who considers it a work of fiction has a lot of explaining to, purely on the grounds of literary criticism, let alone theology. Above all, its insights into the relations of power are piercing. Pilate, despite his power, ends up bouncing like a pinball, back and forth between Jesus and His accusers. The High Priests effortlessly blackmail him by 'spinning' how bad the acquittal of a pretender to kingship would look in a supposedly subject province: "If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar". Jesus is even harsher: to Pilate's bluster "Do you not know that I have the power to release you, and the power to condemn you to death?", He coolly replies "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above".
I never hear St. John's account of the Passion - as we do every Good Friday - without some new and surprising note hitting my ear. This year it was the detail about how the Jews were unwilling to enter Pilate's precinct - the Praetorium - as this would have defiled them, and they would be unable to eat the Passover. Even though the Jews here are a subject population, there are some things they won't compromise on: Pilate doesn't order them to come before him, defilement or no, but instead goes out to them. Readers of Josephus will know of the remarkable lengths to which the Roman rulers of Judea went in order to accomodate the religious scruples of the conquered populace. They even enforced a death-penalty on trespass in certain areas of the Temple, against their own - Roman - citizens.
Pilate wasn't all touchy-feely, though. The only other mention of him in the Gospels is in Luke 13:1, where he is described as having had a number of Galileans killed, 'mingling their blood with their sacrifices'. Presumably this means he had a number of people set upon and killed in the midst of a religious observance. Obviously, respect for the religion of the conquered had its limits.
His dialogue with Jesus and the Jews has always seemed to me one of the most psychologically vivid forensic dialogues we have from the ancient world. Anyone who considers it a work of fiction has a lot of explaining to, purely on the grounds of literary criticism, let alone theology. Above all, its insights into the relations of power are piercing. Pilate, despite his power, ends up bouncing like a pinball, back and forth between Jesus and His accusers. The High Priests effortlessly blackmail him by 'spinning' how bad the acquittal of a pretender to kingship would look in a supposedly subject province: "If you release him, you are no friend of Caesar". Jesus is even harsher: to Pilate's bluster "Do you not know that I have the power to release you, and the power to condemn you to death?", He coolly replies "You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above".
posted by cuckoo at
11:11 AM
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