
The Innocence of Pontius Pilate
How the Roman Trial of Jesus Shaped History
- 440 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
The gospels and ancient historians agree: Jesus was sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate, the Roman imperial prefect in Jerusalem. To this day, Christians of all churches confess that Jesus died ‘under Pontius Pilate’. But what exactly does that mean?
Within decades of Jesus’ death, Christians began suggesting that it was the Judaean authorities who had crucified Jesus—a notion later echoed in the Qur’an. In the third century, one philosopher raised the notion that, although Pilate had condemned Jesus, he’d done so justly; this idea survives in one of the main strands of modern New Testament criticism. So what is the truth of the matter? And what is the history of that truth?
David Lloyd Dusenbury reveals Pilate’s ‘innocence’ as not only a neglected theological question, but a recurring theme in the history of European political thought. He argues that Jesus’ interrogation by Pilate, and Augustine of Hippo’s North African sermon on that trial, led to the concept of secularity and the logic of tolerance emerging in early modern Europe. Without the Roman trial of Jesus, and the arguments over Pilate’s innocence, the history of empire—from the first century to the twenty-first—would have been radically different.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- Author’s Note
- List of Figures
- Note on Citations
- Prologue: The Drama of Pilate and Jesus
- Part One: A World-Historical Trial
- Part Two: The High Politics of Pilate and Jesus
- Part Three: Twenty Centuries of Innocence
- Part Four: The Unlikely Origins of Secularity
- Part Five: The Great Refusal
- Epilogue: The Unfinished History of Pilate and Jesus
- List of Premodern Titles
- Notes
- Select Bibliography
- Index