Good day Worthy Knights,
In this part 65, Ecce Homo and Pontius Pilate (Wikipedia)
Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe, and Pilate saith unto them, behold the man.
Ecce homo
Ecce Homo (Behold the man) are the Latin words used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John, when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. The scene has been widely depicted in Christian art.
The first depictions of the Ecce Homo scene in the arts appear in the 9th and 10th centuries in the Syrian-Byzantine culture of the Antiochian Greek Christians.
Pontius Pilate
(Latin: Pontius Pīlātus) was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 26/27 to 36/37 CE. He is best known today for being the official who presided over the trial of Jesus and ordered his crucifixion. Pilate’s importance in modern Christianity is underscored by his prominent place in both the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. Due to the Gospels’ portrayal of Pilate as reluctant to execute Jesus, the Coptic and Ethiopian Churches believe that Pilate became a Christian and have venerated him as a martyr and saint.
Although Pilate is the best-attested governor of Judaea, few sources on his rule have survived. He appears to have belonged to the well-attested Pontii family of Samnite origin, but nothing is known for certain about his life before he became governor of Judaea, nor of the circumstances that led to his appointment to the governorship.
Role as governor of Judaea
The post of governor of Judaea was of relatively low prestige. Josephus states that Pilate governed for 10 years (Antiquities of the Jews 18.4.2), making him one of the two longest-serving governors of the province.
Pilate’s title of Prefect implies that his duties were primarily military; however, Pilate’s troops were meant more as a police than a military force, and Pilate’s duties extended beyond military matters. As Roman governor, he was head of the judicial system. He had the power to inflict capital punishment, and was responsible for collecting tributes and taxes, and for disbursing funds, including the minting of coins. Because the Romans allowed a certain degree of local control, Pilate shared a limited amount of civil and religious power with the Jewish Sanhedrin.
It is generally assumed, based on the unanimous testimony of the gospels, that the crime for which Jesus was brought to Pilate and executed was sedition, founded on his claim to be King of the Jews. Pilate may have judged Jesus according to the cognitio extra ordinem, a form of trial for capital punishment used in the Roman provinces and applied to non-Roman citizens that provided the prefect with greater flexibility in handling the case
The Gospels’ portrayal of Pilate is “widely assumed” to diverge greatly from that found in Josephus and Philo, as Pilate is portrayed as reluctant to execute Jesus and pressured to do so by the crowd and Jewish authorities. Some scholars believe that Pilate unhesitatingly executed him as a rebel
Removal and later life
According to Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (18.4.1-2), Pilate’s removal as governor occurred after Pilate slaughtered a group of armed Samaritans at a village called Tirathana near Mount Gerizim, where they hoped to find artefacts that had been buried there by Moses. The Samaritans, claiming not to have been armed, complained to Lucius Vitellius the Elder, the governor of Syria (term 35-39), who had Pilate recalled to Rome to be judged by Tiberius. Tiberius however, had died before his arrival.
The church historian Eusebius (Church History 2.7.1) claims that “tradition relates that” Pilate committed suicide after he was recalled to Rome due to the disgrace he was in. Eusebius dates this to 39 CE. Paul Maier notes that no other surviving records corroborate Pilate’s suicide
Pilate’s supposed suicide is also left unmentioned in Josephus, Philo, or Tacitus. Maier argues that “In all probability, then, the fate of Pontius Pilate lay clearly in the direction of a retired government official, than in anything more disastrous.
Antonio Ciseri’s depiction of Pilate presenting Jesus to the people of Jerusalem