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Pilate has almost always been presented as a sympathetic character. He’s often played as a victim of circumstance. I’ve often looked at him with more compassion than contempt.
For some reason, that changed today. For political peace, to schmooze the constituents, Pilate ‘washes his hands’ as if he’s not responsible. Then he just turns Jesus over. What a complete wuss. Make a decision based on fear of response. Someone’s complaining, let’s take the path of least resistance.
How much did he wrestle with it? Was that how he often made decisions? Whatever decision causes the least amount of ripples - that’s the one to take. Upholding the just and innocent obviously wasn’t a core value to Pilate. It’s also obvious that Pilate wasn’t a great leader. He was easily manipulated by the Pharisees but he obviously wasn’t a complete brute, ala Herod.
Pilate’s sin was a sin of passivity, but it was sin. If anything is true of the crucifixion - all were/are guilty. The Jews and the Gentiles.
It is also equally true that all can be covered.
6 responses so far ↓
1 clay // Mar 15, 2006 at 5:20 pm
grant, i have one request for you. watch this video and blog about it. thanks.
(click on bart ehrman)
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml
2 MarkE // Mar 15, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Don’t get too excited, Clay. Check out these discussions before you freak out too much!
http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2006/0200/0206.php
http://www.jesuscreed.org/?p=848
3 Grant // Mar 16, 2006 at 10:13 am
Clay - actually, Bart is right on a lot of what he says - John 8 was NOT in the earliest of manuscripts. Most bibles note this.
We don’t have the originals but we do have 5,000 copies - more than any other ancient text. There are some differences in those texts.
Most of the differences are spelling or punctuation marks.
I’d have to read his book but nothing he said in the interview is particularly ‘earth-shattering’ or new.
4 Mike R // Mar 16, 2006 at 11:22 am
He did an interview on NPR last December. He ignores an awful lot of facts to draw the conclusions he does.
I would encourage everyone to bone up on this stuff because its not going away any time soon. The DaVinci Code will be coming out in May and is going to have many people asking questions. The good news is, there are answers.
I listen to several podcasts that deal with these types of issues, Stand To Reason for example. The broadcast from 1/29 has an interview with Dr. Paul Maier where he addresses many of the things in DaVinci Code and by default some of the things Bart brings up. You can hear the interview here if you like:
Interview
5 Mark // Mar 16, 2006 at 1:08 pm
The more interesting question for evangelicals is why did God chose to provide an inspired and inerrant original (often assumed by evangelicals) but fail to protect it from subsequent scribal errors (minor errors, but errors nonetheless)?
God is not all that predictable, is he?
6 clay // Mar 16, 2006 at 8:53 pm
i was not freaking out, i just thought that the interview was interesting, because i had never heard it before, and i jsut wanted to see what grant had to say.
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