Ep. 136: Pilate sentencing Jesus
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JOHN 19:1-16
Bar-Abbas was at once released. Jesus was handed over to the soldiers to be scourged and crucified, although final and formal judgment had not yet been pronounced. Indeed, Pilate seems to have hoped that the horrors of the scourging might still move the people to desist from the ferocious cry for the cross. For the same reason, we may also hope that the scourging was not inflicted with the same ferocity as in the case of Christian martyrs, when, with the object of encouraging them to incriminate others, or else recantation, the scourge of leather thongs was loaded with lead, or armed with spikes and bones, which lacerated the back and the chest and face, until the victim sometimes fell down before the judge a bleeding mass of torn flesh.
But, however modified, and without repeating the harrowing realism of a Cicero, scourging was the terrible introduction to crucifixion - ‘the intermediate death.’ Stripped of his clothes, his hands tied and back bent, the victim would be bound to a column or stake, in front of the Praetorium.
The scourging ended, the soldiers would hastily cast upon him his upper garments and lead him back into the Praetorium. Here they called the whole cohort together and the silent, faint Sufferer became the object of their coarse jesting. They tore the clothes from his bleeding Body and in mockery clothed him in scarlet or purple. For a crown, they wound together thorns and for a sceptre, they placed in his Hand a reed. Then alternately, in mock proclamation, they hailed him King, or worshipped him as God, and smote him or heaped on him other indignities.
Such a spectacle might well have brought some sympathy. And so, Pilate had hoped, when, at his bidding, Jesus came forth from the Praetorium, garbed as a mock-King and the Governor presented him to the populace in words which the Church has ever since treasured, ‘Behold the Man!’
But, so far from appeasing, the sight only incited to fury the ‘Chief Priests’ and their subordinates. This Man before them provided the occasion that on this Passover day a Roman dared in Jerusalem itself to insult their deepest feeling and mock their most cherished Messianic hopes! ‘Crucify!’ ‘Crucify!’ resounded from all sides. Once more Pilate appealed to them, when, unwittingly and unwillingly, it brought this from the people, that Jesus had claimed to be the Son of God. If nothing else, what light it casts on the mode in which Jesus had borne himself amidst those tortures and insults, that this statement of the Jews filled Pilate with fear and led him to talk with Jesus within the Praetorium.
The impression which had been made at the first and been deepened all along had now passed into the terror of superstition. His first question to Jesus was, where did he come from? And when, as was most fitting, Jesus returned no answer, the feelings of the Roman became only the more intense. Would he not speak; did he not know that he had absolute power ‘to release or to crucify’ him?
Pilate was no imposter. No ordinary man. He had the power of life and death over him. He knew what was the right thing to do, but his cynicism and disbelief thwarted him. Yet he was still moved to release Jesus.
But proportionately, the louder and fiercer cry of the Jews was for his blood, until they threatened to implicate Pilate himself in the charge of rebellion against Caesar if he persisted in showing mercy. Such danger a Pilate would never face. He sat down once more in the judgment seat, outside the Praetorium, in the place called ‘Pavement’ (Gabbatha). And at the close Pilate once more in mockery presented to them Jesus: ‘Behold your King!’
Have ever more solemn words been expressed, as Edersheim pronounces judgement:
‘Once more they called for his Crucifixion - and, when again challenged, the chief priests burst into the cry, which preceded Pilate’s final sentence, to be presently executed, ‘We have no king but Caesar!’ With this cry Judaism was, in the person of its representatives, guilty of denial of God, of blasphemy, of apostasy. It committed suicide; and, ever since, has its dead body been carried in show from land to land, and from century to century: to be dead, and to remain dead, until he come a second time, who is the Resurrection and the Life.’
This is an extract from the book, Jesus : Life and Times, available for £12 here (Finalist for Academic Book of the year at 2023 CRT awards)