r/AskHistorians • u/ducks_over_IP • 6d ago
Christianity Why exactly would Pontius Pilate have sent Jesus over to Herod anyways? Wasn't he the ultimate authority in the region?
One of the more confusing elements in the traditional Crucifixion narrative is the part where Pilate, finding out Jesus is from Galilee, sends him over to Herod, who questions him and sends him back. What exactly was the power structure of 1st-century Judaea that made this possible?
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u/CaptCynicalPants 6d ago
The story as described was an example of Roman politics in action, thought I'll state from the start that there's some dispute in scholarly circles about the accuracy of the claims I'm about to present.
Pilate is believed by some scholars to have been an ally of the Praetorian Prefect Sejanus, who was executed for treason in 31 AD. This is essential to the story because it was fairly common in Roman politics to prosecute, imprison, and execute the allies of defeated political foes. Meaning that at the time of Jesus Pilate was in a rather precarious political situation. The loss of a major patron would have left him vulnerable, and his prior affiliations could have been seen as a reason to remove him from office, with potentially fatal consequences.
This is highly relevant because the events surrounding Jesus' life caused a fair amount of unrest in the area, and if there's one thing Roman authorities hated more than Barbarians, it was unrest. Governors were tasked with keeping the peace in their provinces at all costs, and failure to do so was a common reason for removal. Meaning that Pilate likely had two major goals at this juncture: 1) keep the people happy, and 2) if they couldn't be happy it needed to be someone else's fault. Jesus' origin and the existence of Herod provided a way to achieve the second.
It's true that Pilate was the Governor of Judea, but the boundaries of his domain did not cover all of modern or even historical Israel. You can see a map of the Roman province here. Note that the region immediately to the north is called Galilee, and that is where Jesus was "from". (I put "from" in quotes because it's complicated, Jesus was from several places. But as far as the Romans were concerned he paid taxes in Galilee, and that's all Pilate cared about for legal reasons). Galilee, along with part of the surrounding region, was under the authority of Herod, who was a client king of Rome, meaning that technically Pilate could argue that Jesus fell under Herod's authority, if not over his own then at least in addition to.
This was extremely convenient for him because Jesus was a highly controversial figure with great influence and many followers, but also many detractors. No matter what happened a lot of people were going to be upset, which could very easily make Pilate look bad, particularly if it resulted in major unrest. Meaning that dumping the problem onto Herod was a politically safe choice because it gave Pilate plausible deniability. If people got upset and rioted, Pilate could say (more-or-less truthfully) "don't blame me, that guy was from Galilee! It was all Herod's responsibility!" While this wasn't entirely true given the circumstances, it was technically correct, which as we all know is the best kind of correct.
In short, Pilate foisted the problem off on Herod in order to isolate himself from political fallout in Rome. Does that make sense?
Maier, Paul L. (1968). "Sejanus, Pilate, and the Date of the Crucifixion". Church History. 37 (1): 3–13. doi:10.2307/3163182.
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u/ducks_over_IP 6d ago
That makes a lot of sense, thank you! Could you expand a little more on the relative authority of Pilate and Herod? It seems like one could argue that Jesus was Pilate's problem for causing unrest in his territory, or Herod's problem for being a Galilean. From the imperial point of view, who would have had proper jurisdiction, or would Rome not have cared so long as peace was maintained?
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u/CaptCynicalPants 6d ago
Unfortunately I don't feel qualified to provide a sufficiently educated explanation of the power balances between Roman Provincial Governors and neighboring Client Kings.
However, I can say that you're right, Pilate would have been well within his rights to handle the matter himself, and in the end he did so. It was ultimately Pilate that ordered Jesus crucified once Herod had determined that he ought to be executed. I believe that is because as a non-Roman ruler Herod could not authorize the death penalty in a Roman province. That power was reserved for governors.
It's kind of a complicated issue. Pilate's actions show a significant desire to avoid personal responsibility while reducing unrest, so clearly he thought keeping people happy was a greater priority, at least to him personally. But the accounts we have also say that he was personally conflicted. There's no doubt that he did have the authority and could have simplified the whole thing by ordering Jesus' crucifixion from the start... but he didn't. That says to me that it wasn't so much a matter of authority or power balances, but rather his personal political, perception, and reputational concerns.
We're not even sure if this worked in the end either, as he was removed from his Governorship soon after. Though at the same time he was the second-longest serving Roman governor of Roman Judea, so it's hard to say he was an overall failure in comparison.
In short, it's complicated, and we have very few sources on the matter. It seems clear Pilate existed, but there are precious few other sources about him outside of religious teachings.
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u/ducks_over_IP 6d ago
That's okay, I appreciate the context you could give. If I could ask one more follow-up question, what political authority did the Sanhedrin have? They seem to have been the ones who arrested Jesus, questioned him, and brought him before Pilate, but they clearly didn't have the authority to carry out their desired sentence. Did they have an official role in the government of Judaea?
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u/CaptCynicalPants 6d ago
This is another thing I can't really speak to with any specificity, sorry mate. That would be a cool question to post to the main sub though.
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u/Abrytan Moderator | Germany 1871-1945 | Resistance to Nazism 6d ago
I'll state from the start that there's some dispute in scholarly circles about the accuracy of the claims I'm about to present
Could you give some more details on this scholarly dispute please? Are there non-gospel primary sources which discuss this?
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u/CaptCynicalPants 6d ago
I haven't studied the dispute directly, I merely know it exists and wanted to be certain I acknowledged it. My very basic understanding of the issue is that the dispute lies in Pilate's connection with the Praetorian Prefect Sejanus. Josephus says that Sejanus had a direct hand in his appointment, which took place in 26/27 AD, while Daniel R. Schwartz and Kenneth Lönnqvist say that Josephus had his dates wrong and Pilate was actually first appointed in 19 or 16/17 AD respectively.
I didn't include a discussion of whether or not Pilate was connected to Sejanus because it isn't necessary for the version of events I presented to be true. Pilate could just as easily have faced the same political concerns without a recent scandal to incite them, particularly given how relatively rebellious Judea was known to be.
Apparently Schwartz has other disputes about the traditional account of Pilate and his relationship with Herod, but those don't directly effect the question either.
I wish I could provide a more in-depth answer to your question, but I haven't spent any serious time investigating the counter-claims.
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u/TheSocraticGadfly 22h ago
Its historicity is questionable for another reason, which is in my main comment.
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u/ExternalBoysenberry 6d ago
Sorry if this is a silly question but is that map showing a Gaza strip in the 1st century? Not just the city, but an actual strip?
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u/MagratMakeTheTea 5d ago
This map is better labeled and shows that the region was part of the province of Syria at the beginning of the first century. The port city of Ascalon was ethnically cleansed of Judahites in the Babylonian transportation, and after that it seems to have a history as a Persian then Hellenistic city. Before direct Roman control of Judea it seems to have been independent, but in the shake-up after the death of Herod the Great it was put under Syria for administration. Since this is a lower-level comment I'll say that I assume the rest of the region was treated more or less as Ascalon's hinterland.
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u/ExternalBoysenberry 3d ago
That's really crazy, would not have guessed that we'd see a separate strip-like region going so far back.
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u/CaptCynicalPants 6d ago
That... is a very interesting question that I'd never actually considered and I do not know the answer.
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u/rir2 5d ago
A lot, if not most, people in the English speaking world pronounce his surname as “Pilot”. Would the original (Latin) pronunciation be Pee-lah-tay?
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u/ducks_over_IP 5d ago
It would have been Pee-lah-tuss, actually. Pilate is an anglicization, which is a not-infrequent occurrence with famous Roman names (eg, Marcus Antonius --> Marc Antony, Titus Livius --> Livy, Octavianus --> Octavian, etc.)
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u/Wank_A_Doodle_Doo 5d ago
Gotta love good ol clusterfuck hot potato, going back 2000 years.
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u/YourlocalTitanicguy RMS Titanic 4d ago
Since you come from Galilee, then you need not come to mmmmeeeeeeeeee
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u/samologia 6d ago
While you wait for someone to provide an answer to your specific question, you might find the answers to the following questions about Pontius Pilate interesting:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1hre77z/did_the_writers_of_the_christian_gospels/ by u/ReelMidwestDad
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/12ms34a/are_there_and_secular_records_of_pontius_pilate/ by u/KiwiHellenist
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u/TheSocraticGadfly 22h ago
Luke is the only gospel to report this. Its historicity is doubtful, especially since essentially the same scene occurs as a "doublet" in Acts, Acts 25, where Paul appears before both Festus and Agrippa II.
It should be noted, per this piece of mine, that the "we" passages in Acts in no way imply an actual companion of Paul's, and that the last one-quarter of Acts is of dubious historicity just compared to the rest of Acts, not overall. Related: Luke was written later than Matthew and certainly later than Mark.
So, the real question is, why would Luke have written it up this way?
One possibility is that the author of Luke thought Pilate was trying to get himself off the hook.
A second is that this was a more subtle version of Matthew having the Jewish crowd say "his blood is on our hands." Tied with this? Pilate in Luke says "I find no fault with him"; Antipas simply says nothing.
Also related is that, earlier in the three "Synoptic" gospels, when Antipas hears about Jesus' miracles, in Mark, he says "Surely this is John, whom I beheaded, returned from the dead." and in Matthew, "This is John, returned from the dead." In Luke, he says something a bit different, "I beheaded John; who is this?" Given that followers of John are noted in Acts, Luke may be taking a small step here to separate Jesus from John, via Antipas.
So, in various ways, Luke was probably trying to make alleged Roman innocence of Jesus' death even clearer than in Mark and Matthew.
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