Chapter summary
The Roman procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate, comes out onto the colonnade of Herod's palace on a Nisan morning, with a migraine that makes half his head ache and the smell of rose oil he hates, which has pursued him since dawn. He orders brought in the prisoner from Galilee whose death sentence, handed down by the Sanhedrin, the tetrarch refused to confirm and sent back for him to decide: Yeshua Ha-Notzri, about twenty-seven years old, accused of inciting the people to destroy the temple of Yershalaim. When Yeshua calls him "good man," Pilate orders the centurion Mark, nicknamed the Rat-Slayer, to teach him to say Hegemon, the title due to the Roman procurator, and a blow of the whip knocks him to the ground.
At the interrogation, Yeshua says he is from Gamala, that he has no family or home and travels from town to town. He denies having incited anyone to destroy the temple: he only said that the temple of the old faith will fall and that the temple of truth will rise, and the one who writes everything down wrongly is Matthew Levi, a former tax collector who threw his money into the road and has followed him ever since. He also says that the truth, above all, is that Pilate's head hurts so much that he cowardly thinks about death, that he is attached only to his dog, and that the pain will pass. Pilate orders his hands untied and discovers that he has guessed that the procurator wanted to call the dog, Banga. Hearing that everyone is "good people," Mark included, Pilate concludes that the prisoner is a vagrant philosopher and mentally ill, unrelated to the disorders of the city, and settles on the mildest sentence: imprisonment in Caesarea.
But the secretary hands him another parchment, and Pilate's face darkens as he reads it. He asks Yeshua about Judas of Kerioth, the young man who invited him to his house, treated him cordially and insisted on knowing what he thought of the power of the state. Yeshua answers what he told Judas: that all power is violence against people and that a time will come when there will be no power at all, not even that of the Caesars. Pilate orders the escort out and, when Yeshua affirms that people are good and that the kingdom of truth will come, shouts that he will never come. He then confirms the death sentence. In the garden, he asks the high priest Joseph Caiaphas to have the Sanhedrin release Yeshua, the less harmful one, and not Bar-Rabban, who incited rebellions and killed a soldier; Caiaphas refuses three times, the two exchange threats, and Pilate receives a hooded man in his chamber. In the packed square, he announces that Dismas, Gestas and Yeshua will be executed at Golgotha, and frees Bar-Rabban. It was about ten in the morning.
Analysis
Pilate comes to the interrogation with his head aching, and even thinks that the simplest thing would be to have the prisoner hanged; only in the middle of the interrogation does he form the mildest sentence in his mind. What stops him is the secretary's record, which carries a remark by Yeshua against Caesar's power, and the Passover tradition, in which Caiaphas chooses to release Bar-Rabban. He tries to slip Yeshua the denial, with his gaze and a warning to weigh every word, hears the truth, and orders the guard out, since it is a matter of state.
any power is a violence against people, and a time will come when there will be no more power [...] Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where there will be no need for any power at all
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