the trial of Jesus Christ is a defining moment in the making of the modern world it's a confrontation between two men Jesus and Pontius Pilate on the one hand who had the man about whom we know almost everything on the other hand you have Pilate who is a blank pilot reluctantly orders Jesus's crucifixion and washes his hands of responsibility for Jesus's death the Christian story acquits Pilate and blames the Jews in his place people have seen that as the Jewish nation accepting the guilts for Jesus's death and that has had tremendous repercussions not just in the Middle Ages with pogroms but but leading right on to the Holocaust now we will examine the trial of Jesus Christ and the role of Pontius Pilate is he an innocent man and the greatest story ever told or is he the man that killed Christ [Music] Israel 2,000 years after the trial of Jesus remains a divided and uneasy place in many ways Israel today isn't all that much difference to how things would have been in the time of Jesus you still have troops very much in evidence you still have checkpoints you still have extremely high security and a feeling that anything can happen a riot could break out at almost any point Jerusalem has been a city of religious passions for thousands of years today Christian pilgrims visit the places where Jesus spent his last few days on earth before he was arrested tried and crucified one place they visit is a church built in the ancient Garden of Gethsemane this is a place where Jesus spent his last evening this is really where the passion story starts this is where Jesus is arrested and that's the reason why people come here to this garden and to the church over here and it was here too that Judas came bringing the arresting party and kissing his master the ultimate act of betrayal the earliest account we have of the arrest trial and crucifixion of Jesus is in the four Gospels of the New Testament the basic story can almost be narrated geographically Jesus eats the Last Supper I think up on this hill that we're talking in a private residence he crosses behind me the Kidron Valley to the Garden of Gethsemane and that's where he's arrested and in the morning they take him to Pontius Pilate according to the Gospels the Roman governor Pilate is indecisive and weak asked to crucify Jesus he replies Why What evil has he done his wife had a dream have nothing to do with that righteous innocent man the Jewish chief priest tells him if you release this man you are no friend of Caesar [Music] in the Gospel story Pilate offers the people a choice to release Jesus or another prisoner Barabbas the Jewish crowd spurns Jesus and cries out for Barabbas instead the crowd cries out let his blood be upon our heads and the heads of our children so it's sort of chilling I think it's one of the more chilling statements anywhere in the Gospels that leads to 2,000 years of Jewish Christian history so who killed Jesus not the Romans I mean they had a small part in it because they had to carry out the execution but it's the Jews who actually killed Jesus finally Pilate washes his hands of the whole affair symbolizing he is innocent of the blood of Jesus but the Jewish crowd is guilty this offloading of guilt from Pilate to the Jews is the whole reason why we have had the waves of anti-semitism we have had all through history it is that simple scene that has caused so much bloodshed when the blame for the crucifixion was laid on them but what's the truth behind the gospel story of pilots innocence and Jewish guilt according to tradition the Church of the condemnation is built on the place where pilots tried Jesus gospel inscriptions in the church remind pilgrims what was supposed to have happened here 2,000 years ago some inscriptions up here around the top of the church there are in Latin Latin translations of what's in the the New Testament Gospels this is a little piece from Luke's Gospel Yasim out him try did it voluntary a Oram which just means that Pilate handed over Jesus to them so that their wills should be done so basically this is Pilate condemning Jesus and passing him over to the will of the Jewish people and we have Pilate over here washing his hands this is the act that Pilate is probably most associated with it's ironic I suppose that that's only found in one gospel it's only in Matthew's Gospel the four Gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John were written far from Jerusalem elsewhere in the Roman Empire and they all say different things about Pilate and the trial none of the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses they're all written several decades later even the earliest is probably about four decades later so you've got to reckon with at least 40 years if not 50 60 years of changing traditions speculation on the traditions traditions being changed so that they speak more to particular communities so actually when you look at them there's really quite a lot of inconsistencies between them if you just put the Gospels in kind of a chronological order it's actually layered you can just peel off the layers like a sort of forensic investigation at the bottom you've got that core story of mark mark was the earliest gospel and their pilots innocent but there's not this huge point made about it Matthew who writes next has ratcheted it up considerably Pilate washes his hands his wife has a dream Jesus is a righteous man don't bother him and the Jews take on the guilt and then you go to Luke it's the mark story but it's amped up and it's getting louder and louder and the basic idea is Pilate was just an innocent bystander a necessary part of the story and then John he has them almost having a philosophical discussion we're moving completely I think out of the realm of just straight mystery the Gospels are not simple historical truth extraordinarily there is no hard contemporary evidence that any of the events and the gospel stories actually happened there isn't even proof that Jesus existed in fact there's only one person in the whole story whose existence is confirmed by hard evidence are supposedly weak and indecisive Roman governor Pontius Pilate so exactly who was he and what was his part in the killing of Christ there is only one piece of hard evidence that gives us a clue to what really happened when Jesus met Pontius Pilate and it was found here at Caesarea the Roman capital of Judea when Italian archaeologists excavated the ruins of an ancient amphitheater this is the reconstructed staircase but the stone of Pilate with the inscription was found here when they excavated this simply took it rolled it over and so the astonishing inscription that was this is the first time that Pontius Pilate was found in a logical situation the inscription on the underside of the stone had worn away over 2,000 years so the archaeologists who discovered it took some time to decode it this is the replica of the stone that was found in the theater you can see this is a Latin inscription and the V is you read read as you in now in English so it is understood and I can imagine how much the Italian archaeologists were excited when it was found when they start to read letter by letter and put it to a sense when they found the inscription it was a little bit difficult to work out what it was but they could see these letters tears and then next to it was in artists teos pilatus was fairly clear from that that the person it was referring to was Pontius Pilatus our man the prefect of Judea it was a revolutionary discovery the first hard evidence in two thousand years of the existence of anyone involved in the trial of Jesus the Pilate stone is immensely important because this is the first time that we've got a concrete reference to any of the major actors in the trial narrative I mean we have nothing to do with Jesus but then you probably wouldn't expect it but here we have a direct reference to Jesus's judge Pontius Pilate and found here in the center of Roman power in the province the stone wasn't always on the amphitheater staircase originally it was part of the building called the Tiberium we don't really know what the Tiberium was it's possible that it was some kind of a shrine perhaps to the emperor Tiberius but at any rate we do know that this was some kind of building setup in honor of the Emperor so we can see that Pilate is wanting to ingratiate himself to his his Overlord his boss the Emperor but the most important clue the stone yielded was to do with pilots job we now know that pilots title was prefect because it says prefect trust UDI and this is a military title so it shows that he's here representing Roman order he's here to maintain law and order in the province and military posting the pilot stone is a vital clue about Pilate revealing facets of his personality and how he would react when he came face-to-face with Jesus at the trial [Music] the stone is the first of a series of clues about Pilate that reveal more about his background and likely character [Music] pilots family name Pontius tells us Pilate wasn't a true Roman but from an Italian tribe called the Samnites who had a long history and a tough reputation the son Knights are elite peasants and warriors from south of Rome they'd held out longer than anyone against the Romans they epitomize Liberty and indeed pilots own ancestors had fought hardest against the Romans the samnites had slowly integrated into Roman society but not into the top senatorial class that ruled Rome and ran the Empire only into the lower aristocratic rank of equestrian in fact being a Samnite in Rome you're not part of the establishment you're a little bit of an outsider and perhaps you have slight chip on your shoulder about that I think this tradition of difference was still something that Pilate would have felt the forum the heart of the Roman Empire this is where the young pilot at 16 or 17 would have tried to win powerful friends and find an influential patron when Pilate stood here he was at the center of Roman power the center of the greatest empire the world had known - that time one of the greatest at 7 own and this is the place where he had to hang around ingratiate himself with people run errands for the men in the big houses on the hills he would come down and go to the bankers go to the markets make himself generally useful Rome operated on a system of patronage it was not what you knew but who you knew and Pilate must have known someone powerful enough to get him a commission in the army barely out of his teens Pilate would probably have been commissioned as a military Tribune an officer in a legion of six thousand men this is a first-century harm or particular from the first century after Christ the helmet to is first century covered your neck from behind and covered here the cheek and this is even to heat the Roman soldiers they made the Roman Empire great everyday fights everyday violence everyday blood it was not not a good life but 2,000 years ago that was the life bloody job ready Joe Roman soldiers were commissioned for 20 years in that time the order and discipline of legionary life would have become ingrained in Pilate and he would have fought in some of the bloodiest battles in Roman history it's very probable that Pilate serves on the Roman frontier in Germany those battles would be extraordinarily violent and hardened principally because the tribes the genic tribes of Romans float against we're battle-hardened themselves Pilate would have seen battle after battle where he was necessary for the Roman army to kill large large numbers of the Jimena components even in the streets of Rome far for the better you can see death not only in the arena killings everywhere every night and the treat and for sure Pontus experienced that for sure [Music] Rome was a bloody society Pilate would have been very familiar with blood blood will be part of pilots life he was used to it on military service he properly killed people without thinking about it as part of his patriotic duty and I think pilot would have had that vein of brutality in him [Music] while Pilate blunted himself in battle Jesus perhaps 10 years as Junior was growing up around the Sea of Galilee a distant corner of the Roman Empire his early years were spent quietly amongst farmers and fishermen but Galilee had a history of violent opposition to Rome and was a hotbed of anti Roman feeling Jesus could not but have felt the overbearing presence of Rome [Music] returning to Rome from the frontier and hoping to take another step in his career Pilate had one man to impress the emperor Tiberius Tiberius would set Pilate upon a collision course with Christ this is the emperor Tiberius a man of violent mood swings deep suspicions incredibly difficult to get on with a very difficult employer for anyone to have Tiberius is the dark shadow behind Pontius Pilate according to all of the writings they all present Tiberius as a very dark character as neurotic in fact as a person who in no two days in a row is the same personality who cannot be trusted who is paranoid before becoming emperor Tiberius was a great general he was a veteran of the Germanic Wars perhaps like Pilate perhaps Pilate used this connection to advance his career Pontius Pilate was a representative of Roman political society that is not so very different certainly on the higher levels of government today in all countries in all societies currying favor making friends in high places is the process whether it was thanks to Tiberius or to another patron we know from the works of the first century Jewish historian Josephus that around ad 26 Pilate was appointed governor or prefect of Judea Judea was a backwater of the Empire but for a low-ranking heiress to crack like Pilate he was a pretty good start to a political career Judea wasn't the best village he could have had he could have had Syria or Asia but nonetheless it was a great place to make an impression on the Emperor if he could keep the Jews in check if he could work with these difficult people if he could keep the peace there and keep the taxes flowing which was the main point of any governorship then perhaps he could really impress the Emperor and then he could becoming somebody Pilate is a classic Roman he is pragmatic he is tough he has been steeled in skills and character in the Roman army he has succeeded in building a power base here in Rome in the client system Palestine offers him the opportunity as its governor to continue his political rise to power in Galilee Jesus approaching the age of 30 was about to begin his career as a teacher and a prophet he would gather disciples and gain a wide following for his vision of a new kingdom of heaven it was a message that would make him an enemy of Rome I bring him face to face with the Emperor's loyal governor Pontius Pilate the temple of the Roman god of war Mars the Avenger stood next to the Roman Forum it was built in pilots own lifetime this is what remains at the temple of Mars the Avenger pilot would have come here in 26 before setting off to his province because it was from here that all campaigns would set off against the impious foes of Rome to the east or to the west and it was here that he would've offered sacrifice to the god of war to bring him good luck in his province Roman religion was very different from Christianity Pilate would not have that sense of an interior God there was a whole panoply of gods who had to be sacrificed to who you had to make sure were going to be on your side for most Romans and Pilate seems to be in a very ordinary Roman his religion was bound up completely with his devotion to the Emperor because the Emperor was God's representative on earth and the Empire was a divine enterprise it was Rome saving the world little did Pilate know what the gods had in store for him in Judea what happened when Pilate met Jesus transformed him from a minor official in the history of the Roman Empire to a central character in the greatest story ever told Pontius Pilate arrived in Judea in 26 AD as governor of the province he would judge Jesus Christ and earn his place in history but was he the weak and indecisive man portrayed in the Gospels [Music] Judea must have been an incredibly difficult province to govern it's a tiny tiny place but within those small borders you have Jews you have Samaritans you have non-jews and there's always frictions between all of those different groups they don't get on very well Pilate had an army of only 3,000 men to police a population of perhaps 160,000 he relied on the support of Jewish religious leaders to enforce Roman rule in Judea we would expect him to be concerned above all with law and order that was the most important function you keep the peace and you collected taxes you are not interested in philosophical debates within the Jewish community and in any internal conflict and tell until and unless they start endangering the peace Pilate would only come to Jerusalem three or four times a year to police the main Jewish religious festivals the city would be packed with thousands of pilgrims and religious passions often simmered to the boil the largest group of people the Jews had their own particular religious faith which Pilate probably wouldn't have understood all that well and a huge longing a desire for some kind of kingly leader a messiah who is going to shake off these Roman overlords and bring about the kingdom of God God's heavenly rule and I think the possibility for riots or trouble was always there pilots earned a reputation for quickly and brutally suppressing any signs of rebellion Josephus the 1st century Jewish historian described how he dealt with one demonstration in Jerusalem pilots stationed his men amongst the crowd and so at an agreed signal these men suddenly pulled out their their clubs and started to beat the rioters a huge riot ensued and lots and lots of people according to Josephus thousands of people were actually trampled in the stampede Philo of Alexandria a contemporary Jewish historian also described pilot Philo talks about his finality his violence his thefts his assaults his abusive behavior his frequent executions of untried prisoners and his endless savage ferocity as a character reference you don't get much worse than that both Philo and Josephus had an agenda they wanted to emphasize the rottenness of Roman rule in Judea yet a believable Pilate emerges from their reports a tough and ruthless man keen on law and order and quick to crush anyone causing trouble from his viewpoint he's not being particularly cruel he's going to crack down on people that deserve to be cracked down on all these disparate groups and sects and particularly when they have the religious fervor and they're willing to die for their faith you need a good pilot to run things if you're gonna have any kind of stability in Pilate ran a tight ship so I think he would get good rating for that in about 30 ad four years into his term Pilate came to Jerusalem from his capital Caesarea to keep a watch on the city during Passover the biggest Jewish festival of the year at the same time Jesus set out for Jerusalem from Galilee determined to bring his message of a new kingdom of heaven to the thousands of Jews gathered there for Passover when Jesus and Pilate met they would change the world forever archaeologist Shimon Gibson believes he knows where Pilate would have kept an eye on the city at these nervous times so outside the city walls from the time of Jesus this wall itself dates from the time of Pontius Pilate and over here you have one of three large towers this is the largest it's controlled a city so here from this point he could control things to the south was their palace with the barracks and the service buildings and he would have been able to see what was going on there and then to the east you have the the temple of course now it's the during with the walk but he could have looked and seen what was happening now if there were demonstrations or wyatt's or things happening but he was displeased about he would have called his army personnel and sent them straight over to deal with the problem Pilate would have been interested in Jesus because he was coming to the holy city of Jerusalem with a following of people at Passover the most politically volatile time of the year people are waiting for something to happen great nationalistic expectations and so I think anybody who comes where the following is a threat as soon as Jesus came into Jerusalem that Passover I think he was a march man Jesus heads for the temple it's the focus of the Passover festival and a lucrative time for the temple money changes and the high priest Caiaphas there's huge amounts of money to be made particularly the week of Passover it's it's the Christmas of ancient the ancient Jewish calendar you've got hundreds of thousands of Jews coming buying their sacrificial lamb spending their money for the festival it all has to go through the coffers of the priests certain sorts of money changing that have to go on certain sorts of things you have to buy it's big big business according to all the Gospels Jesus hits out at the money-making of the Jewish high priests he goes into the courtyard of the temple and probably with the loud voice he yells out it is written my house shall be a house of prayer for all people but you've made it a den of thieves [Music] it would have been absolutely devastating to see some Galilean peasants this holy man self-proclaimed only man coming into their sacred place knocking over the sacred things everything inside the chief priests made them wants to protect the temple so I think it would have been quite clear to them that Jesus had to be stopped before he did anything else in the temple and perhaps brought Roman troops into the temple itself and who knew what kind of devastation could ensue them the Gospels agree the high priests order Jesus's arrest by the temple guards archaeologist James Tabor is excavating the area where he believes Jesus was taken Caiaphas is house we're standing here on Mount Zion it's the highest point in ancient Jerusalem up behind me at slopes and this in the time of Jesus and Herod and Pontius Pilate was the center of the city you've got to imagine that wall which is from the 1600s at Suleiman that would be removed when you walk down these steps it's like you're going through time from the modern to the ancient period behind me here where the sandbags are there that's covering a first-century of dwelling from the time of Jesus this is the upper City there's a real division economically between these people who are living quite comfortably with the great deal of wealth and the lower city way down behind me where the poor would live where Jesus generally spent most of his time and so these people to some degree are hated I think by the masses these are people in league with the Romans they're friends with Pontius Pilate to a certain degree they certainly get along with them with a sort of economic and social agreement and so this site in a way standing here symbolizes that this is not Jesus territory this is very ends up really heading for his death from this side Caiaphas's house Jesus is taken to Pilate the most famous trial in history is about to begin what really happened there did the brutal and ambitious Pilate really just allow the Jewish crowd to determine Jesus's fate when you look at the trial scene and you ask is that history is it just completely made-up I would argue that the key points of the Gospel story are historical he did go to the house of Caiaphas he was then taken to Pilate he was then led out to be crucified now if you then narrate that what was said in Caiphas house and what was said in the examination of Pilate then that's where you get your fiction and we can clearly identify those elements knowing what history has told us about Pilate we can separate the fiction from the facts and crucially discover who was really responsible for killing Jesus Pilate and Caiaphas collaborate they have a mutual interest in maintaining the economic and political order Caiaphas was even appointed High Priest by pilots predecessor I think we can safely conclude that Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate are all in collusion together they have a very comfortable and cooperative relationship yes pilots Roman and Caiaphas's priests to the Jews but money is oiling the machine to Caiaphas Jesus is a blasphemer but he knows that Pilate isn't interested in Jewish religious controversies so he accuses Jesus of sedition claiming Jesus says he is a king a rival to Caesar [Music] [Applause] in this situation the one thing you don't say you might say lots of religious sounding things but that word King native ruler is just electrifying in this context you think you're a king are you a king and if they could just get him to say yes they've got him in the Gospel story Jesus denies that he's claimed to be a kingdom my kingdom is not of this world he tells Pilate John's Gospel suggests that Pilate and Jesus had a fairly long philosophical discussion about kingship about authority even about truth I'm not really so sure of the historical background to that I think pilots and Jesus would have had very little to say to each other Jesus was a provincial from a backwater place he was a peasant very very different in background and upbringing to Pilate himself Pilate was only interested in whether this man was dangerous according to the Gospels Pilate is convinced Jesus's innocence and tries to save him he offers to release him in keeping with a Passover custom but the crowd save another prisoner Barabbas instead the story of Barabbas is particularly difficult the main problem is that there's absolutely no evidence of any kind of Passover amnesty in the first century besides that it seems completely crazy that a Roman governor would give the people the choice of a prisoner at this most volatile of times the Passover and allow them to choose any prisoner who would then go free that was completely crazy and not the kind of thing that any Roman governor in his right mind would have done there is evidence of prisoners being released at religious festivals but later in Egypt not in Judea it's a tradition the Gospel writers may have known and I think then it becomes a very useful literary device in that it allows pilots to offer the people a choice it allows them to say that Pilate was actually pushing for Jesus but that in the end the people chose Barabbas and so pilots rather reluctantly was forced into this difficult position and so had to send Jesus instead for execution the image of pilots washing his hands from the Gospel of Matthew so long symbolizing pilots innocence is actually a clue that hides the real story [Music] but what Matthew is wanting to show by this ritual is he's evoking a story from Deuteronomy in which if a dead body was found you would go to the nearest town and the elders from that town would symbolically wash their hands to say that they are not guilty of the blood of that person and so no kind of retribution could then come on the heads of those elders or the people in that town the washing of hands is immediately followed by the Jewish crowd who say those devastating lines his blood be on us and on our children and so any Jewish Christian reader reading these lines from Matthew would immediately have been struck by the fact that Pilate is symbolically taking away the blood guilt from the death of Jesus and it's being passed on to the people who within the narrative accept that guilt and that's the Jewish nation contrary to the Gospel story the clear historical evidence is that Pilate intent on law and order and preventing rebellion would not hesitate to execute an agitator accused of sedition at Passover under Tiberius after the first years it became very customary to try and to execute people for words now in a province especially in a turbulent and problematic province like Judea that was really very easy for Pilate it was more natural to convict them to acquit because sedition against the Emperor was such a hot issue at Rome at that time I think we have to just assume that the charge stuck the pilot was convinced the guy's a threat we got to get rid of him and so he crucified Him as the king of the Jews pilot soldiers take Jesus away they flog him mark him place a crown of thorns on his head then crucify him there can be no doubt that Jesus was executed by Rome the whole course of what happened to him the scourging and specifically the crucifixion was very much a Roman method of execution and horribly barbaric [Music] when you think of crucifixion people tend to think of it as this rare event and mainly Jesus I mean that's the whole symbol of the cross the Romans are regularly crucifying people right here in Judea thousands at a time sometimes during the Roman siege Josephus who lived through it says they crucified as many as five hundred a day and they ran out of wood to make the crosses and that's a bit after Jesus but I think the notion that Pilate ordered this Jew from Galilee to be crucified is very very believable [Music] the crucifixion of Jesus which is one of many executions ordered by Pilate passing a death sentence was a common occurrence for him I don't think Pilate would have given the matter of Jesus very much thought as soon as he'd got rid of Jesus there was another insurrection another leader needing to be dealt with if you'd asked him about Jesus of Nazareth I think he might have looked a bit blank for him Jesus was just another day at the office a particularly bad day at the office he would never have thought that this one moment of dealing with a disheveled distributable character which might have taken him as little as five minutes was going to carry his name down through history Pilate was not the innocent handwashing figure of the Gospels the evidence is that he was an ambitious brutal man determined to crush any threat to law and order who would have ordered Jesus's crucifixion without any encouragement from a Jewish crowd so why have the Gospels absolve Pilate and blame the Jews instead [Music] mayor Poole permeable premier Maxima culpa the historical evidence is that Pilate would have crucified Jesus without a moment's hesitation but in the Gospels he thinks Jesus is innocent and instead it is the Jewish crowd that sends Jesus to his death so why would the Gospel writers have created this story when we're reading these Gospels we're not just reading straight history we're reading theology we're reading a certain opinion that the writers began to push in this idea that the Jews killed Christ or Jesus Christ killers to make it really blunt is an idea that comes from these later gospel traditions and it has unbelievable repercussions for the next 2,000 years even today the Gospels all have an anti-jewish agenda and this is really because of the time the context in which they're written they're all written in the late first century this is a time when Jews and Christians are starting to go their own way it took a very long time actually for the two faiths to decide that they weren't compatible but in that late 1st century context the Jews are the dominant one they are the one holding all the cards with all the authority it's this little group of Christians who are now trying to define themselves against that the Jews trying to claim that huge Jewish heritage as their own to say that they are the true Israel and not those people down there in the synagogue the gospel writers writing generations after Jesus and far from Jerusalem and Judea wanted to distance themselves and their new religion from the Jews they were writing their stories with an eye on the Roman audience at that time the Jews were at war with Rome the Jewish revolt was eventually crushed by the Romans who totally destroyed Jerusalem these Gospels were written after the year 70 AD what happened in 70 AD the Romans came and destroyed the city behind me they completely devastated it they put a tax on Jews there it wasn't popular to be Jewish and now this Christian movement has begun to spread into a new era a new generation and the one thing they want to say to the Romans basically is our guy was not the kind of King you should worry about he's a heavenly King and your guy Pontius Pilate was a good guy we actually like him and he recognized the innocence innocence of our leader at the same time the early Christians were persecuted by the Romans if their new religion was to survive the Gospel writers had to convince their Roman audience that they were not enemies of Rome this innocence of Pilate is a kind of a double whammy maybe because on the one hand the Romans are not being blamed there you're our friends and secondly who is to blame the Jews and we want nothing to do with the Jews we're a new movement we're a new religion and if anybody says weren't you Jew it no we're not Jewish we come from Judea but we're not part of that despised race and so pilot actually becomes a very important character in the saying that Jesus is innocent so he's the official Roman mouthpiece to Jesus's innocence which is completely contradictory to what he actually was the Roman who sent Jesus to the cross over the following centuries Pilate becomes an important figure in the Christian story his innocence is emphasized he becomes a believer in some traditions he's venerated in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Pilate even has his own special day and this in a way is the culmination of it all this is what has been coming up gradually through the Gospels and on words that Christians have been wanting to make Pilate believe they can't understand that someone could have been so close and not wanted to repent and not believed Jesus's power must have influenced him somehow history suggests a different version of what happened to Pilate the historian Josephus described how Pilate brutally put down a religious revolt among the Samaritan population of Judea he crucified so many of the rebels to the Samaritans complained to Rome and Pilate was recalled when a governor was recalled this was a serious business and you didn't usually survive in your job you're going to have to go on trial in Rome and probably you were going to go into exile so Pilate went back there and we lose sight of him completely from the Roman point of view he had been disgraced and the way out of disgrace was suicide so pilot would have probably retired to his room and either cut his wrists or stabbed himself with a short sword fairly soon after arriving back in Rome it was not an ignoble thing to do it was actually a good way out because it meant that your family could inherit your property and it was seen as a selfless act that is I think the likeliest end for him and so there is the great irony that after all the tradition of blood on the hands and who should have blood pilots life probably ended in a welter of blood and it's a fitting way for him to go piloting had the blood of Jesus on his hands his real role in the trial and execution was hidden by the Gospel writers to win favor with Rome and to dam the Jews let his blood be upon us and on our children the story has resounded through the ages and shaped jewish-christian relations for 2,000 years [Music] you
