PILATE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN INVENTED MAN
By Ann Wroe
Jonathan Cape. xiii + 381 pages. £17.99 (hardback)
ISBN 0 224 05942 4
Medieval mystery plays, a novel by the Russian Mikhail Bulgakov, a sculpture in Westminster Cathedral, Mount Pilatus in Switzerland, United Beach Missions - these are some of the stops on Ann Wroe's dizzying tour through history's portrayal of one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible. Pilate barely steps from the wings onto the stage in the gospel narratives before he returns to the dressing room once more, this time to be clothed in the varied costumes of so many scholars, theologians, writers, artists and poets.
Ironically, there exists only a relatively minute quantity of evidence concerning the most renowned Roman provincial governor. Wroe presents the reader with the total sum of evidence: apart from the New Testament, a few paragraphs in the narratives of the 1st-century Jewish historians Philo and Josephus, one line from the 2nd-century Roman historian Tacitus, an inscription (discovered in the coastal city of Caesarea) apparently from a public building dedicated by Pilate to Tiberius, and a few tiny coins.
Mother of invention
Faced with this shortage of material useful for biographical purposes, Wroe meets the perennial problem confronting every ancient historian; but the object of her book is precisely to demonstrate how Pilate has been 'invented'. And this is what has happened ever since the first few centuries after Christ: 'Although the real Pilate is frustratingly hard to uncover, the mythological Pilate emerges ten feet tall,' (p.xi). In fact, the different themes in her study have as their focus the trial of Jesus before Pilate, recorded only in the Gospels, for it is that which has thrilled and fascinated so many generations. What happened to Pilate in consequence of the death and resurrection of Jesus may not be known, but that has posed no problem for many: Coptic Christians in the early church believed that he repented after Jesus' resurrection and became a saint - according to Wroe, because of an anti-Semitic tendency to shift the blame for Jesus' death exclusively onto the Jews; others regarded him as the worst of sinners and painted his whole life as one of pure evil. In any case, for many people the greater part of his life became almost mythological.
The main substance of the book covers this mythological Pilate-how people throughout time have regarded him, how myths have sprung up concerning him, how people's perceptions of him have sometimes changed according to their own circumstances. As such, the book is not only an interesting study in historiography, the art and philosophy of history; it is also a fascinating account of various bizarre myths and folklore, ranging from early 'Christian' apocryphal texts through to local superstitions. Ann Wroe has already established herself as an accomplished writer, and here again she provides a very readable work - although the relative shortage of source material does occasionally tempt her to repetition, which may at times be bewildering.
Historical situation
There is a second strand to her book, which is to describe in considerable detail the historical situation of the 1st-century Roman Empire and of course Palestine; this lends a structure to the work, as she follows Pilate's journey from his commission by Tiberius as procurator of Judaea, through to his recall to Rome in the mid-30s following charges of provincial mismanagement. There is so little evidence relating directly to Pilate that Wroe is compelled to dilate upon the general historical background, using a wide range of Greco-Roman source material. Her study spans everything from the role of the Pontii (Pilate's clan) in Roman history to Roman religious and philosophical views, how Romans governed provinces and Roman legal procedure. She covers a good deal of the gospel narratives, taking in John the Baptist, Jesus' teaching to Nicodemus, the conversion of Zacchaeus, Jesus' questioning over the payment of taxes, the final days before the crucifixion and much else.
Pilate's personality
The third strand in Wroe's book concerns how people regard the actual personality of Pilate. The temptation has always been to imagine and guess what sort of man it was who tried Jesus on Good Friday. Many have seen him as 'the great equivocator'. In a newspaper interview with Tony Blair, he describes Pilate as 'the archetypal politician', faced with the timeless 'struggle between what is right and what is politically expedient' (p.208). Wroe herself pictures Pilate as 'a symbol of the state, the secular power, the material world, ignorance and darkness. He is all men facing, considering and ultimately rejecting the Truth . . . (People) love to watch him . . . In some sense, they feel they are watching themselves.' (p.217-218).
Evangelicals will take issue with Ann Wroe over her approach to the gospel narratives; her give-away statement that: 'The gospel accounts . . . are theology rather than history,' (p.216) coincides with her belief that they contain much that is authentic, but are by no means inerrant. She succumbs throughout to the fatal flaw of many historians in seeing bias, per se, in every account - but the truth value of the account is not necessarily undermined by that. This leads her to merely add to the 'invention' of Pilate by stating what she believes to have been probable.
Pilate's question
And yet Wroe also tries to read a little too much into the Gospel accounts. One of her main angles of approach is to focus upon Pilate's status as an agent of God in a predetermined situation; granted that the sovereign God's eternal plan was for Jesus to die, what else could Pilate have done? And in any case, isn't Pilate to be rehabilitated (if necessary) since Jesus' death brought so much good? The book's epilogue ends with this imaginary question put by Pilate: 'Are you free now, jumping, shouting, saved, because I sentenced him? Did I do that for you?' (p.367).
At one level, the New Testament gives no reply to these questions; at another level, it is made quite clear that Pilate was - along with Herod and the Jewish leaders - fully responsible for the death of Jesus, even though through it God accomplished his staggering purpose of providing salvation. While Wroe draws attention to the way in which people have identified with Pilate in his political dilemmas, she omits to point to the sort of identification which we should own:
Twas I that shed the sacred blood;
I nailed him to the tree:
I crucified the Christ of God;
I joined the mockery
Horatius Bonar
That should lead us to repentance, rather than a fascination for interpretations which can never be verified.
