[Footnote 6: Jos., Ant., XVIII. iv. 1, 2.]
[Footnote 7: John xviii. 35.]
Pilate, then, would have liked to save Jesus. Perhaps the dignified and calm attitude of the accused made an impression upon him. According to a tradition,[1] Jesus found a supporter in the wife of the procurator himself. She may have seen the gentle Galilean from some window of the palace, overlooking the courts of the temple. Perhaps she had seen him again in her dreams; and the idea that the blood of this beautiful young man was about to be spilt, weighed upon her mind. Certain it is that Jesus found Pilate prepossessed in his favor. The governor questioned him with kindness, and with the desire to find an excuse for sending him away pardoned.
[Footnote 1: Matt. xxvii. 19.]
The title of "King of the Jews," which Jesus had never taken upon himself, but which his enemies represented as the sum and substance of his acts and pretensions, was naturally that by which it was sought to excite the suspicions of the Roman authority. They accused him on this ground of sedition, and of treason against the government. Nothing could be more unjust; for Jesus had always recognized the Roman government as the established power. But conservative religious bodies do not generally shrink from calumny. Notwithstanding his own explanation, they drew certain conclusions from his teaching; they transformed him into a disciple of Judas the Gaulonite; they pretended that he forbade the payment of tribute to Cæsar.[1] Pilate asked him if he was really the king of the Jews.[2] Jesus concealed nothing of what he thought. But the great ambiguity of speech which had been the source of his strength, and which, after his death, was to establish his kingship, injured him on this occasion. An idealist that is to say, not distinguishing the spirit from the substance, Jesus, whose words, to use the image of the Apocalypse, were as a two-edged sword, never completely satisfied the powers of earth. If we may believe John, he avowed his royalty, but uttered at the same time this profound sentence: "My kingdom is not of this world." He explained the nature of his kingdom, declaring that it consisted entirely in the possession and proclamation of truth. Pilate understood nothing of this grand idealism.[3] Jesus doubtless impressed him as being an inoffensive dreamer. The total absence of religious and philosophical proselytism among the Romans of this epoch made them regard devotion to truth as a chimera. Such discussions annoyed them, and appeared to them devoid of meaning. Not perceiving the element of danger to the empire that lay hidden in these new speculations, they had no reason to employ violence against them. All their displeasure fell upon those who asked them to inflict punishment for what appeared to them to be vain subtleties. Twenty years after, Gallio still adopted the same course toward the Jews.[4] Until the fall of Jerusalem, the rule which the Romans adopted in administration, was to remain completely indifferent to these sectarian quarrels.[5]
[Footnote 1: Luke xxiii. 2, 5.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvii. 11; Mark xv. 2; Luke xxiii. 3; John xviii. 33.]
[Footnote 3: John xviii. 38.]
[Footnote 4: Acts xviii. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 5: Tacitus (Ann., xv. 44) describes the death of Jesus as a political execution by Pontius Pilate. But at the epoch in which Tacitus wrote, the Roman policy toward the Christians was changed; they were held guilty of secretly conspiring against the state. It was natural that the Latin historian should believe that Pilate, in putting Jesus to death, had been actuated by a desire for the public safety. Josephus is much more exact (Ant., XVIII. iii. 3.)]