49 Fun Facts About Pontius Pilate

Pontius Pilate governed Judaea under which Roman emperor?

Tiberius. Recalled to Rome to answer to him for a massacre, Pilate was still on the road when the emperor died, and with that the governor vanishes from reliable history.

Which prisoner did the Jerusalem crowd ask Pilate to release instead of Jesus?

Barabbas. The gospels describe him as a rebel jailed for murder during an uprising, so the crowd's choice set a man of violence free and sent Jesus to the cross.

Pilate is named in which two major statements of Christian faith?

The Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. Both say Jesus suffered or was crucified "under Pontius Pilate", so the governor is the only person besides Jesus and Mary whom worshippers name when they recite them.

Which church venerates Pilate as a saint, believing that he became a Christian?

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo. It honours Pilate together with his wife; the Greek Church, by contrast, made a saint only of her, with a feast on 27 October.

Per Josephus, Pilate was dismissed after violently putting down which people's uprising at Mount Gerizim?

The Samaritans. A man had promised to show them sacred vessels that Moses had buried on the mountain; Pilate's troops cut the armed crowd down, and the survivors' complaint cost him his post.

Pilate condemning Jesus to death is the opening scene of which Catholic devotion?

Stations of the Cross. The devotion grew up as a miniature pilgrimage for people who could never reach Jerusalem, with Franciscans building copies of its holy places across Europe.

Which contemporary Jewish writer's Embassy to Gaius is one of the most important sources on Pilate?

Philo of Alexandria. His is the blackest portrait of all, charging Pilate with bribery, cruelty and executions without trial, though scholars suspect the stock abuse of a polemic.

Which Roman historian's Annals states simply that Pilate put Jesus to death?

Tacitus. He names Pilate only in passing, while explaining why Nero blamed Rome's Christians for the great fire: their founder, he notes, had been executed on Pilate's orders.

Pilate's cognomen Pilatus may mean "armed with" which Roman weapon?

The javelin. Latin pilatus means armed with the pilum, the legionary's throwing spear, though some have linked the name instead to the pileus, the felt cap worn by freed slaves.

The name Pontius suggests Pilate's ancestors came from which region of central-southern Italy?

Samnium. The most famous Pontius before him was a Samnite general who trapped a Roman army at the Caudine Forks in 321 BC and made every soldier walk under a yoke of spears.

Like almost all governors of Judaea, Pilate belonged to which rank of the Roman nobility?

The equestrian order. Judaea was a minor posting in the shadow of Syria, so it went to a knight of this second tier rather than to an ex-consul of senatorial rank.

Barry Dennen sang Pilate on the 1970 album, on Broadway and in the 1973 film of which rock opera?

Jesus Christ Superstar. Its Pilate is a reluctant judge who has Jesus given 39 lashes in the hope that the crowd will settle for a flogging, and only then gives way.

Later writers call Pilate a procurator, but which title does the stone inscription naming him use?

Prefect. The stone calls him praefectus of Judaea; its governors were only restyled procurators under Claudius, which is why writers of the next generations gave him the later title.

In which coastal city did Pilate, like other governors of Judaea, make his primary residence?

Caesarea. Pilate went up to Jerusalem mainly when a great feast packed it with pilgrims and trouble was likely, which is the reason he was in the city at the time of the crucifixion.

Which high priest did Pilate retain for his entire tenure, suggesting a reliable alliance?

Caiaphas. Pilate's predecessor had deposed four high priests one after another, yet Pilate, who held the same power, kept this one in office for all of his ten years.

Josephus says Pilate offended the Jews by moving what into Jerusalem by night?

Imperial standards with Caesar's image. Protesters lay outside his residence for five days, then bared their necks to his soldiers' swords rather than give way, and it was Pilate who backed down.

Josephus records that Pilate paid for a new aqueduct to Jerusalem using what?

The temple treasury. When a crowd protested, Pilate planted soldiers in civilian dress among them; at his signal they set upon the protesters, and many died from the blows or in the crush.

A Jewish writer of the time says Pilate offended Jewish law by placing what in Herod's palace in Jerusalem?

Golden shields. They carried no image at all, only an inscription, yet the outcry reached the emperor himself, who ordered Pilate to take them down.

The Gospel of Luke mentions Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with what?

Their sacrifices. Told of the killings, Jesus answers that the victims were no worse sinners than anyone else, and warns his hearers to repent or perish in the same way.

At which festival did Pilate condemn Jesus to death, most likely in AD 30 or 33?

Passover. The gospels add that Pilate used to free one prisoner at the festival, a custom that no Roman record mentions and that historians still argue over.

The Sanhedrin accused Jesus of blasphemy, but on what charge is he generally thought to have been tried and executed by Pilate?

Sedition. To Rome a self-styled King of the Jews was a rebel against Caesar, and crucifixion was the punishment it kept for slaves, pirates and enemies of the state.

Which is the only gospel to record the crowd's cry "His blood be on us and on our children"?

Matthew. The verse appears nowhere else, and for centuries it was quoted to blame all Jews for the crucifixion, a reading the Catholic Church formally repudiated in 1965.

Which everyday English phrase originates in Pilate's gesture at the trial of Jesus?

To wash one's hands of it. In the gospel story Pilate calls for water and rinses his hands in front of the crowd, declaring himself innocent of the prisoner's blood.

Which famous three-word Latin question does Pilate ask Jesus in John 18:38?

Quid est veritas? Having asked "What is truth?", Pilate walks straight back out to the crowd, which is why Francis Bacon wrote that jesting Pilate "would not stay for an answer".

What do the Latin words 'Ecce homo', spoken by Pilate as he presents the scourged Jesus, mean?

Behold the man. Painters turned the moment, with Jesus in a crown of thorns before the crowd, into a subject of its own: Bosch, Titian and Caravaggio each painted an Ecce Homo.

Pilate's reply 'Quod scripsi, scripsi' in John 19:22 refers to what he had written where?

The titulus on Jesus's cross. The chief priests wanted the notice changed to say he had only claimed to be King of the Jews, and Pilate refused: what I have written, I have written.

Pilate's wife, unnamed in the Bible, later became known in tradition by what name?

Procula. The name first turns up in apocryphal writings centuries after the gospels, by which time the theologian Origen had long since suggested that she became a Christian.

In the gospel story, why does Pilate's wife urge him to have nothing to do with Jesus?

She had a disturbing dream. Her message reaches Pilate as he sits in judgment: have nothing to do with that righteous man, she begs, for she has suffered much that day in a dream because of him.

Which fourth-century church historian records a 'tradition' that Pilate committed suicide?

Eusebius. He presents the suicide as heaven's punishment, yet admits he has it only from unnamed earlier tradition, and no writer of Pilate's own century says a word about it.

The Pilate Stone, an inscription naming him, was found in 1961 reused as a step in which kind of building?

A theatre. Fourth-century builders had trimmed the dedication and laid it in a staircase when they remodelled the Roman theatre at Pilate's old capital, where Italian archaeologists uncovered it.

Which commander of the Praetorian Guard, executed for treason in 31, is often said to have secured Pilate's appointment?

Sejanus. He all but ran Rome while the emperor lived on Capri, and some historians think his sudden fall left Pilate exposed and newly cautious, though others doubt the two were linked at all.

A copper ring inscribed "of Pilate", deciphered in 2018, had been dug up decades earlier at which hilltop fortress near Bethlehem?

Herodium. The ring lay overlooked among hundreds of finds from a 1960s dig until a proper cleaning revealed the name; it is so plain that it more likely belonged to one of Pilate's staff than to him.

According to Luke, to which ruler did Pilate send Jesus on learning that he was a Galilean?

Herod Antipas. He mocked the prisoner, dressed him in a splendid robe and sent him straight back, and Luke adds that the two rulers, enemies until then, became friends that very day.

The apocryphal Acts of Pilate is better known as the Gospel of which follower of Jesus?

Nicodemus. The work poses as a record drawn from the official files of Pilate's headquarters in Jerusalem and names Nicodemus as the author of its Hebrew original, though the title itself is medieval.

Which apocryphal text fully exonerates Pilate, having a Jewish ruler carry out the crucifixion instead?

The Gospel of Peter. Lost for centuries, it resurfaced only in 1886, when a French archaeologist found a copy buried in the grave of an Egyptian monk.

Mount Pilatus, where legend sank Pilate's body in a lonely lake, rises above which Swiss city?

Lucerne. The legend may have grown out of the name rather than the other way round: Pilatus may come from the Latin pileatus, "capped", after the cloud that so often sits on the summit.

Legend says storms forced the Romans to move Pilate's corpse from the Tiber to which French river?

The Rhône. In the legend the body raised such tempests in the Tiber that it was hauled out and sunk here at Vienne, where a Roman monument is still known as Pilate's tomb.

Which staircase in Rome is supposed to have come from Pilate's praetorium in Jerusalem?

The Scala Sancta. Its 28 marble steps, which tradition says St Helena shipped to Rome around 326, may be climbed only on one's knees; in the Middle Ages they were simply called Pilate's Stairs.

Which Russian novel, written in the 1930s and published in 1966, contains a novel-within-a-novel about Pilate?

The Master and Margarita. Bulgakov burned his own first draft in 1930, just as his hero burns the Pilate novel, and the book's line "Manuscripts don't burn" became a Russian proverb.

Anatole France's 1892 story The Procurator of Judaea finds an elderly Pilate farming his estates on which island?

Sicily. Asked by an old friend about a wonder-worker he once had crucified, the retired governor frowns, searches his memory and murmurs that he cannot recall any Jesus of Nazareth.

Which musician played a gaunt, British-accented Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)?

David Bowie. In a brief appearance he sends Willem Dafoe's Jesus to his death without a flicker of doubt, while fellow rock star Peter Gabriel wrote the film's score.

Which Monty Python member played the lisping Pilate who mispronounces his Rs in Life of Brian?

Michael Palin. His Pilate cannot pronounce the letter r, so when he offers the crowd a pardon they call for prisoners with r in their names, and he ends by agreeing to "welease Bwian".

Hristo Shopov played a troubled, sympathetic Pilate in which 2004 film?

The Passion of the Christ. Shopov's Pilate fears an uprising if he frees Jesus and even offers him a drink of water; two years later he played the governor again in The Inquiry.

Australian actor Frank Thring played a bored, sneering Pilate in which 1959 Hollywood epic?

Ben-Hur. His Pilate presides over the chariot race and afterwards offers its winner Roman citizenship, which Judah throws back at him along with his adopted Roman name.

Which legate of Syria, father of a future emperor, ordered Pilate to Rome to answer for a massacre?

Lucius Vitellius. He put a friend, Marcellus, in charge of Judaea and packed Pilate off to face the emperor; his own son Aulus would briefly rule the empire himself in 69.

A local legend at the village of Fortingall claims Pilate was born in which country?

Scotland. The Perthshire village, better known for a yew tree thousands of years old, claims him as a native, though he was born long before any Roman army marched that far north.

In the York mystery plays, Pilate cheats a squire out of the plot of land that becomes known as what?

The Field of Blood. The squire offers his land only as security for a loan, but Pilate tricks him out of the title: the play's governor is a grasping bully, not the gospels' reluctant judge.

In Roger Caillois's 1961 novel Pontius Pilate, what does Pilate decide to do with Jesus?

Acquit him and set him free. In Caillois's what-if the governor spares his prisoner, so the crucifixion never happens and the history of the world takes a different course from that day on.

In the 1927 silent The King of Kings, Pilate is introduced seated beneath a giant statue of what?

A Roman eagle. The set gave Pilate a 37-foot bronze eagle looming behind his throne, an image one scholar reads as power that possesses the governor, not power he holds.