Letters Of Pontious Pilate

In this masterpiece of history the official document where Pontius Pilate reported Christ''s death to Emperor Tiberius; went on to explain that it was recorded by the Roman historian, Valleus Paterculus, and was finally discovered in the early 1850''s in Rome''s Vatican library. 3 It was located by a researcher named H.C. Whydaman that spent five years going through countless volumes, before he finally found that rare letter; Nor cold any scholar ever deny that those priceless papers weren''t worth thousands of times it''s weight in purist gold. 4 Thusly, the following are true excerpts from that document of history - Pilate wrote this about Jesus: 5 "His golden-colored hair and beard gave to His appearance a celestial aspect. He appeared to be about thirty years of age. Never have I seen a sweeter or more serene countenance; This man was neither seditious nor rebellious; Never have I read in the works of the philosophers anything that can compare to the maxims of Jesus." 6 However,"complaints were made daily at the praetorium against the insolence of Jesus." Therefore, "I was informed that some misfortune would befall Him; That it would not be the first time that Jerusalem had stoned those who called themselves prophets." 7 "When the Nazarene made His appearance, I trembled in every limb as does a guilty culprit, though the Nazarene was as calm as innocence itself." 8 "For some time I contemplated with admiration and awe this extraordinary type of man." 9 Then after Pilate regretfully explained the complaints, being laid at the feet of our Author of Salvation, he spoke with great emotion to our All In All, stressing: 10 "Your blood shall not be spilt, You are more precious in my estimation on account of Your wisdom than all the of the proud Pharisees who abuse the freedom granted them by the Romans. I will protect You against them. My praetorium shall be an asylum, sacred both day and night." CHAPTER 2 CHRIST''s REACTION 1 Then Pilate described the response of our Sovereign One, saying, "Jesus carelessly shook His head, and said with a grave and divine smile: "When the day shall have come, there will be no asylums for the Son of Man, neither in the earth, nor under the earth. The asylum of the just is there," pointing to the heavens. "That which is written in the books of the prophets must be accomplished!" 2 The Lord also calmly explained Himself further, saying, "Prince of the earth, your words proceed not from true wisdom; Say to the torrent to stop in the midst of the mountain-gorge: it will uproot the trees of the valley. The torrent will answer you that it obeys the laws of nature and the creator. But God alone knows where the water flow of that torrent will go. Verily I say unto you, before the rose of Sharon finally blossoms, the blood of the Just shall be spilled." 3 Christ additionally added, "I come not to bring war into the world, but peace, love, and charity; For I was born the same day on which Agustus gave peace to the Roman world. 4 Persecutions proceed not from me, but I expect it from others, and will meet it in obedience to the will of my Father, Who has shown me the way. Restrain, therefore, your worldly prudence." 5 Then that distraught governor continued his letter, stating that Jesus then "disappeared like a bright shadow behind the curtain of the basilic." - And that was to his "great relief." For he "felt a heavy burden", which he "could not relive while in His presence." 6 But Pilate added, "the city was overflowing with a tumultuous populace, clamouring for the death of the Nazarene. My emissaries informed me danger was pressing." CHAPTER 3 THE OMEN OF OMENS 1 Then Pontius went on to share something very personal, saying, "I had taken a wife from among the Gauls. Weeping and throwing herself at my feet, she said to me: "Beware, beware, and touch not that man: for He is holy. Last night I saw Him in a vision." (Just as Matthew 27:19 recorded.) Then she quickly added, "He was walking on the waters. 2 He was flying on the wings of the wind. He spoke to the tempest and to the fishes of the lake; all were obedient to Him." 3 So after that Roman official described his wife''s real emotional pleas, he exclaimed that "an air of desolation and sadness enveloped" him immediately. 4 Later on, after Pilate''s hand was finally forced into action by the crazed people, to send Christ to His very worst fate, he continued writing, "For Jesus the elements were no more in His hands than the clay of the potter. He could convert water into wine; He could change death into life, disease into health; He could calm the seas, still the storms, call up fish with a silver coin in it''s mouth." 5 " Now, I say, if He could do all these things, which He did. And many more, as the Jews all testify, and it was doing these things that created this enmity against Him - He was not charged with criminal offenses, nor was He charged with violating any law, nor of wronging any individual person, and all these facts are known to thousands, as well by His foes, as by His enemies - I am almost ready to say, as did Manlius at the cross, "Truly, this was the Son of God!" 6 After finishing that age old text, I suddenly stood very dumbfounded; I was also extremely amazed, perplexed, and really felt like scratching my head. 7 For it was as clear as a tear, that Jesus was hastily arrested without indictment; Accused of heresy without evidence; Adjudged without witnesses; Punished without a verdict; And at the end of that most unjust day, our Living Advocate of Justice was then condemned to die by a trembling judge, that couldn''t even find any fault in Him.

This is rewritten from an old traditional manuscript first found in a monastery at Bruges, where it had lain for centuries. When Madame de Maintenon become consort of Louis XIV of France she had this letter read every Good Friday before the court assembled at Versailles. In some of the older communities of Europe its reading follows the washing of the feet of the poor on Good Friday, in remembrance of Christ's washing the feet of His disciples. A copy of the original letter was also found among the private papers of the late Czarina of Russia, and was given by her in trust to a friend to keep until the Czarina expected to return from the fateful last journey to Tsarskoe Selo.

Roger Caillois, 1913-1978, philosopher, writer, and Académie française laureate, was the author of numerous works of anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, art, and literary criticism, and the cofounder, with Georges Bataille, of France's College of Sociology for the Study of the Sacred. Ivan Strenski is Professor and Holstein Endowed Chairholder in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and the author or editor of several works, including Contesting Sacrifice and Thinking about Religion.

A world-renowned classicist presents a groundbreaking biography of the man who sent Jesus of Nazareth to the Cross. The Roman prefect Pontius Pilate has been cloaked in rumor and myth since the first century, but what do we actually know of the man who condemned Jesus of Nazareth to the Cross? In this breakthrough, revisionist biography of one of the Bible’s most controversial figures, Italian classicist Aldo Schiavone explains what might have happened in that brief meeting between the governor and Jesus, and why the Gospels—and history itself—have made Pilate a figure of immense ambiguity. Pontius Pilate lived during a turning point in both religious and Roman history. Though little is known of the his life before the Passion, two first-century intellectuals—Flavius Josephus and Philo of Alexandria—chronicled significant moments in Pilate’s rule in Judaea, which shaped the principal elements that have come to define him. By carefully dissecting the complex politics of the Roman governor’s Jewish critics, Schiavone suggests concerns and sensitivities among the people that may have informed their widely influential claims, especially as the beginnings of Christianity neared. Against this historical backdrop, Schiavone offers a dramatic reexamination of Pilate and Jesus’s moment of contact, indicating what was likely said between them and identifying lines of dialogue in the Gospels that are arguably fictive. Teasing out subtle but significant contradictions in details, Schiavone shows how certain gestures and utterances have had inestimable consequences over the years. What emerges is a humanizing portrait of Pilate that reveals how he reacted in the face of an almost impossible dilemma: on one hand wishing to spare Jesus’s life and on the other hoping to satisfy the Jewish priests who demanded his execution. Simultaneously exploring Jesus’s own thought process, the author reaches a stunning conclusion—one that has never previously been argued—about Pilate’s intuitions regarding Jesus. While we know almost nothing about what came before or after, for a few hours on the eve of the Passover Pilate deliberated over a fate that would spark an entirely new religion and lift up a weary prisoner forever as the Son of God. Groundbreaking in its analysis and evocative in its narrative exposition, Pontius Pilate is an absorbing portrait of a man who has been relegated to the borders of history and legend for over two thousand years.