Pilate's Postmodern Question: A Paper in Speculative Historical/Contextual Reconstructive Anlysis

“What is truth?” Such a question is probably assumed by most people today to come from that young postmodernist. That person who denies objectivity, denies the overarching metanarrative of life. That person who believes in only stories, only interpretations, not in truth.[1] But the question, however, did not come first from the postmodernists of our age; it came from the “postmodernist” of Jesus’ age. It was the question of Pontius Pilate to our Savior. A closer look at Pilate’s postmodern question, however, does reveal something to us about his Postmodernist descendants today; it is, therefore, worth our investigation.

The year was A.D. 33. Pilate had been warned, presumably, about the man Jesus and the Jewish authority’s reaction to him and his teachings. It was probably not until the evening of Friday April 3rd , however, that he was affected by it. The Jewish Sanhedrin had brought the man Jesus of Nazareth before the governor to be put to death. Pilate, however, sought to give Jesus a confidential hearing first. Taking his cue from Scripture Paul L. Maier has written a historical fiction piece on Pilate, he records their exchange as thus:

“Are you king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “How do you plead?”
Jesus looked up at him. “Do you ask this of your own accord, or did others tell it to you concerning me?”
“What! Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have brought you before me. What have you done?”
“My kingship is not of this world. If it were, my followers would fight to defend me. But my authority as king comes from elsewhere.”
“So? You are a king, then?”
“It is as you say, that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world: to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.”
“A kingship of truth, you say?” Pilate asked quizzically. “What is truth?”
What was truth indeed, Pilate reflected. As a child he had believed in the mythological gods and goddesses, only to repudiate them as a thinking adult. Truth used to be the word of Sejanus, yet Sejanus was a liar. Once he could swear by the nobility of Rome, but that city murdered innocent children and flung them into the Tiber. Truth was Roman state, yet now the Senate itself could not trust the princeps, nor he the Senate.[2]

The exchange, though somewhat fictional, does reveal something important to us about Pilate: his skepticism. The story that Maier has written describes a Pilate who has become disenchanted with the Glory of Rome. Though history records for us that Pilate was, in truth, a vicious and cruel man,[3] there may be some plausibility to Maier’s assessment. In considering what compelled Pilate to initially hand Jesus over to Herod Antipas, H.W. Hoehner suggests that it may be connected to the failures of Pilate’s mentor Senjanus.

If Jesus was crucified in A.D. 33, the removal of Pilate’s mentor Sejanus, and his failure to ingratiate himself with the emperor, may have broken Pilate’s backbone and left him fighting for political survival. He might then have handed Jesus over to Herod Antipas in order to prevent Herod from making another unfavorable report to Tiberius as he had done within the last few months…Herod Antipas took no action and handed Jesus back to Pilate so that Pilate could gain no advantage, for Herod also had been a friend of Sejanus.[4]

The man Sejanus was the sole commander of the Praetorian Guard during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, but his greed and thirst for more power led him to plot against the emperor, who upon discovering the plot had Sejanus put to death in A.D. 31. After Sejanus’ arrest Tiberius began a further investigation of the conspiracy. The investigation would have, undoubtedly, put Pilate on edge, since he himself was a friend of Sejanus. Perhaps it was for this reason that he sent Jesus to Herod, to avoid making the wrong decision, and drawing the attention to himself, and to avoid upsetting Herod (whom he had already done so, by killing a group of Galileans over whom Herod governed, cf. Luke 13:1). Whether or not Pilate was ever “enchanted” with Rome and was now “disenchanted,” cannot be stated, but a skepticism connected with the fall of Sejanus may be conceivable.

Expediency was most likely the motivation of Pilate’s actions. Again Hoehner writes, “Pilate is described by his contemporary Philo, and later by Josephus, as being one who was greedy, inflexible, cruel, and who resorted to robbery and oppression.”[5] He was a pragmatic man; for him truth was what achieved the desired results. If killing and stealing brought him what he desired, then it was right. It’s a life philosophy that is echoed in our modern expression, “The end justifies the means.” He had done things in his term that brought a great deal of condemnation down upon him, from Herod Antipas, Herod’s sons, from the Emperor himself, and from the Jews of Palestine as well. Many riots and slaughters were the result of Pilate’s pragmatism.

Now with the fall of Sejanus, and the investigation nipping at his heels, Pilate’s expediency only increased. Perhaps he gave Jesus, a Galilean, over to Herod to save his own skin. Perhaps he conceded to the Jews demands for Jesus’ crucifixion because some were shouting, “If you release this man you are no friends of Caesar’s,” a rumor, no matter how absurd, which Pilate could not risk. For a man such as this truth has no reference. The commentators of the ESV Reformation Study Bible write, “Truth does not matter to those who, like Pilate, are motivated by expediency.”[6]

There have been a number of interpretations of Pilate’s response to Jesus: “What is truth?” So D.A. Carson assesses the question as “curt and cynical,” and furthermore that Pilate “abruptly turns away, either because he is convinced there is no answer, or, more likely, because he does not want to hear it.”[7] Herman Ridderbos passingly qualifies the reaction as Pilate “shrugging his shoulders.”[8] R. Kent Hughes assesses that involved in the response is more emotional distress on the part of Pilate.

“What is truth?” Pilate asked (v.38). It is important to grasp the tone of these famous words. I think Francis Bacon misunderstood when he wrote, “‘What is truth?’ said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.” Pilate was not joking. He was sarcastic perhaps, but unsmiling, and whatever his exterior countenance, he was confused and despairing…in that moment he was arrested by his wife’s spiritual premonition and the mystical authority of Christ. But we know he did not truly want an answer because he did not wait for one.[9]

While one may rightly wonder where Hughes discovers the intricacies of the internal struggle of Pilate, he does share some interpretation with the author of this paper. He continues:

He was a materialist, hungrily pursuing the fantasies of power, celebrity status, and sensual satisfaction…Pilate exemplifies the modern man. On the simplest level, his is the cry of the modern world. Television in Hong Kong, Bangkok, or Chicago is all the same- materialism and sensuality. I recall a Philippine commercial given in sonorous tone urging Filipinos to watch Dallas, saying it was relevant to the common challenges in Philippine life. With his “What is truth?” Pilate stood transparent before Christ, as does the whole world.[10]

With real candor Hughes has brought us to the real manner in which Pilate’s question is a bridge between two different worlds. The postmodernists of today find a great similarity in their pursuits and those of Pilate’s. The question of truth is not so much an epistemological question, if it were Pilate would have stayed to hear Jesus’ response, but the verse reads, “Pilate said to him ‘What is truth?’ After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews…” No the question was not about knowledge. Hughes may be right in supposing that there was some real genuine distress in Pilate’s soul, as there undoubtedly is for a number of postmodernists, but the true nature of the reaction was a verbal attack. Pilate was not really inquiring about the nature of true reality, he was re-acting against the notion of objective authority; such is also the case for postmodernism in our own age.

Man, in all ages, rejects the notion of an objective authority which has the right to tell him what to do and how to live. The postmodernist has attempted to resolve this issue by simply disposing with the notion of objectivity. Pilate was a man, as has been stated, of pragmatism, materialism, and self-promotion. As everything came tumbling down around him, perhaps even the thought of arrest, trial, and death confronted him, he was afraid. His political career was turning into a sham, and his power and authority were almost dwindled away, if ever a there was a time for his expediency it was now. Jesus responses shook Pilate on, undoubtedly, multiple levels, and his reaction was a firm resistance to any notion of objectivity, of judgment.

Pilate was a modern man in many ways. His question is shockingly similar both in construct and grammar, and in veiled meaning to that of the postmodernist in 2006. But there is a lesson to learn for us today. Christ before Pilate spoke of His spiritual kingdom. He had been handed over to be crucified just as He had predicted, He was raised from the dead, just as he predicted, and now we await the fulfillment of his other great prediction: His Second Coming. Christ has shown again and again that there is objectivity, and He is that objective authority and judge. To resist truth now, like Pilate then, is to wrestle with the coming King. What is truth? Christ is truth, and we will all one day see it clearly.


[1] Which of course is a self-contradictory belief.
[2] Paul L. Maier, Pontius Pilate. (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968).219-220.
[3] Philo, Legaio ad Gaium. 299-305. Josephus, Antiquities. 55-89.
[4] H.W. Hoehner, “Pontius Pilate.” The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels. ed. Joel B. Green, Scott McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall. (Downers Grove: IVP, 1992). 616.
[5] Ibid. 615.
[6] ed. R.C. Sproul, The Reformation Study Bible. (Lake Mary: Ligonier, 2005). 1549. fn. 18:38.
[7] D.A. Carson, The Gospel According to John. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991). 595.
[8] Herman Ridderbos, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). 596.
[9] R. Kent Hughes, John: That You May Believe. (Wheaton: Crossway, 1999). 426.
[10] Ibid.