Philo of Alexandria on Pontius Pilate

Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BC – AD 50) was a Jewish philosopher and diplomat from Egypt who wrote Embassy to Gaius (Legatio ad Gaium), a defense of Jewish rights before the emperor Caligula. In this work, Philo describes Pontius Pilate as a ruler who intentionally provoked the Jewish people, spent sacred temple funds on an aqueduct, and had soldiers disguised in civilian clothes club demonstrators to death. These details give a vivid picture of the same Pilate we meet in the Gospels: a Roman prefect who governed Judea with force and little respect for Jewish sensibilities.

Philo is not a Christian writer; he is a Jewish intellectual writing about the same Roman governor at roughly the same time as the New Testament. His testimony about Pilate's character and methods corroborates the Gospel picture of a man who could hand Jesus over to crucifixion without flinching. Because Philo was not trying to prove Christianity, his negative portrait of Pilate is an independent witness, not a Christian tradition. Together with the Pilate Stone, the Pilate Ring, Tacitus, and Josephus, Philo gives us multiple lines of evidence that Pontius Pilate was a real, specific figure who governed Judea in the first half of the first century AD.

• ·Philo, Embassy to Gaius 299–305

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  Archaeology

  Pontius Pilate Ring

  Archaeological ring from Pilate's administration

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  History

  Josephus on Jesus and James

  Jewish historian on the same period

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  History

  Tacitus, Annals 15.44

  Roman historian on the crucifixion