In studying the last days of Jesus, like in lesson 26 of Gospel Doctrine, we habitually view the complicated chain of events that led to Jesus’ death from the viewpoint of the victim, with the dominant party furnishing the bad guys, the culprits of the story. Evidently, the Jewish authorities are prime suspects, but throughout Christian history one specific player has had a very bad press, Pontius Pilate. Most Christians have at least partly blamed him for the crucifixion, pointing either at his ruthlessness or at his presumed lack of spine, or even both. That, however, is the view from below. Let us now have a look from ‘above’, and see the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate in action as a colonial administrator. For me as a Dutchman, living in a country which has a – both lamented and glorified – colonial past, such a view might be closer than for an American. After all, Indonesia and West Papua once were Dutch colonies. And the insights I cite here stem from an anthropologist, my teacher Jan van Baal, who had a glorious colonial career as the before-last governor of New Guinea. So here is the story of Pilate and Jesus from a colonial viewpoint. The gospels indicate that Pilate was not by chance in Jerusalem; based in Caesarea, for this particular Passover he had taken his wife to the capital, always a ruler’s sign of confidence and courtesy. It was the…
