Was Jesus the victim of an incompetent Roman governor- Pontius Pilate?
Just who was this man Pontius Pilate whose name we speak every Sunday: “—Crucified under Pontius Pilate—” “—suffered under Pontius Pilate—”? These familiar words from the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds record an event that is one of the cornerstones of the Christian faith. It is also a historical event, and Pontius Pilate was not a fictional character invented by the Gospel authors. The Roman historian, Tacitus, writing of early Christians, said that “Christ, the originator of their name, had been condemned to death by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius” (Annals 15-44). The most dramatic evidence of this man’s existence came in 1961: a two-by-three-foot stone (right) honoring emperor Tiberius found at the theater in Caesarea, the Mediterranean port that served as the Roman capital of Palestine at the time of Jesus. It was inscribed with a three-line Latin inscription, the left part of which had been chipped away. Most of the fourth line is missing, but a possible reconstruction reads
