Customer Reviews

Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor (Interfaces series)

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I came upon this book by accident, and I have found it very interesting in setting forth various interprettions of Pontius Pilate as revealed in the various Gospel authors. The author helps readers to see how differently Pilate is portrayed by the four evangelists and so expands our awareness of how each author has a particular agenda shaping his approach.

New Testament Professor Warren Carter's "Pontius Pilate: Portraits of a Roman Governor" (2003) is an interesting and thought provoking study. It should be read with a Bible near at hand. This 161 page paperback's research, for the most part, is well documented (with footnotes on most pages). Carter's biblical references are well sourced, but his many conclusions should be as well documented.

Carter's original suggestion- that Pilate's alliance with the Jerusalem elites is foremost in the governor's dealing with Jesus- is noteworthy (but not Scriptural). Most helpful, Carter considers Pilate from each Gospel's portrayal (which are very different from one another). In summation, he finds Pontius Pilate to be arrogant, ruthless, greedy, unafraid of the Jews, and unwilling to hear Jesus' message (which proclaims Pilate's entire Romanized world will soon be replaced by God).

This book is imaginative and teachable (I've used it to source Bible studies). It speaks to the imagery of "handing over" (page 63), Mrs. Pilate's massage to her husband about Jesus (page 94), Pilate's hand washing (page 96), the governor's antipathy for the Jerusalem Jews (page 119), the ironies in Jesus' trials (pages 140-152), and much more. Carter also imaginatively proposed a pre-trial meeting, with decisions for Jesus' fate, between Pilate and the Jerusalem elites (page 140).

Unfortunately, there are not many sources extant for Pontius Pilate. Carter's is a diligent effort at telling a story that is almost impossible to document. This book is recommended to well-read New Testament students, antiquities specialists, clergy, and Bible teachers. Amazon.com's price is good, order your copy soon.

It is a book that no serious Biblical Scholar should be without. It is written in a lucid, easy style that makes it accessible for anyone either at the undergraduate level or high end popular level but also has implications for all Biblical Scholars. In the first three chapters the author gives the reader an overview of the historical context surrounding the time of Jesus. It is an essential and handy summary of the Roman government and especially the relationship between the Roman government and the Jewish Temple High Priest. The author then devotes one chapter to each Gospel's account of the meeting between Jesus and Pilate. If you thought you knew how to interpret these Gospel accounts, you will be surprised. Carter pays very close attention to each detail and the historical context of Roman occupation which makes his reading of the Gospels faithful and challenging. Thankfully, Carter does not go into much outside speculation. He lets us know what is the historical information we have of Pilate and then examines the literary construct of the Gospel accounts. This book is a most needed reference where you will have a summary of what we have historically in regards to Pontius Pilate as well as a careful examination of the Gospel accounts.

Pontius Pilate, Portraits of a Roman Governor by Warren Brown, in the 'interfaces' series

This is the second book in this series I have reviewed on a minor Biblical figure, the first being the offering on Delilah, Ahab's wife.Both books do very good jobs of presenting their material, but Professor Carter has several advantages over the author for Delilah. The first advantage is that Pontius Pilate, the procurator and prefect (meaning tax collector and chief magistrate) for Roman interests in the backwater province of Judea has been cited in several historical works in addition to the four Christian gospels. On top of that, these four gospels give four different views of Pilate as he presides over the trial of Jesus of Nazareth, accused of blasphemy by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council which ruled over the temple, religious affairs in Jerusalem, and some civic matters such as charity.

The author avoids the mistake of throwing all these reports into one pot and trying to come up with a single portrait of Pilate, hence, the appropriateness of the author's subtitle. And, combining the Gospels, historian Josephus, and historian / philosopher Philo's reports into a single picture would be like mixing oil and water, because as 'kind' as the Gospels are, that is how unflattering the Jewish reporters Josephus and Philo were.The Gospels have a good chance of being closer to the truth about Pilate. But that should be taken with a grain of sand, as the Gospels also had an agenda.

This book would really be a rather nice High School text on the ancient world. As a scholarly text, it is not well enough documented to work for college.

Since we are still a bit thin on source material to fill 162 pages, the author takes a fair amount of space to fill us in on the nature of life in the ancient middle east. It was not pleasant. Tax collection was probably not unlike a protection racket. Tax collecting contractors will take whatever people could afford, and send in the army if they didn't pay up. For these matters, Dr. Carter has a nice bibliography on ancient sources, including Pliny, Plutarch, Tacitus, Seneca, Tertullian, and Virgil. Unfortunately, the good Dr. neglects to provide us with many references to modern sources. In his coverage of Pilate in the Gospel of John, he does footnote good recent books such as Robert Kysar's John, The Maverick Gospel, Sharon Ringe's Wisdom's Friends: Community and Christology in the Fourth Gospel, and Gail O'Day's commentary in The New Interpreter's Bible. But he does not cite the real heavyweights such as Raymond Brown's 2 volume commentary on John, C. K. Barrett's big commentary on John, and Rudolph Bultmann's classic work. Carter does a fine job of identifying the seven stages of Jesus' trial in John; however he does not credit the fact that this analysis goes back as far as Bultmann and Brown (or earlier).

Both this volume and the volume on Delilah served very well as examples of how one should analyze and think about Biblical episodes. I sense, however, that his interpretation of Pilate may be slightly off the mark.His conclusion regarding John's image of Pilate is that the Roman was allied to 'the Jews' who brought Jesus to trial in front of Pilate. I simply do not see that. All the evidence Carter tabulates for that conclusion has different explanations, many of which are provided by Bultmann and Brown. On the other hand, I do accept Carter's conclusion that from what we see in John (alone) Pilate was a shrewd polititian who started out the trial as an honest judge, but who adapted to political pressures. Oddly, the force which brought Pilate around to authorizing the execution was not politics, but piety, provoked by the sense that Jesus spoke for God (even if it was not the Christian God Pilate feared.) As Bultmann said, the Romans may have been pagans, but they were not athiests.

This book would really be a rather nice High School text on the ancient world. As a scholarly text, it is not well enough documented to work for college or as a resouce for research into its subject.

very informative and well written, the interpretation is what is likely to have happened. mel gibson should have read this book before he made the film "the passion of the christ"

I think the book would have been more interesting, and apt, if it had lived up to its title by being an illustrated history of Pilate as portrayed through the ages visually in contrast to Christ. His depictions actually stretch in time and place from fourth Christian century Roman sarcophagi to twentieth century Hollywood movies!