narrative; it also
furnishes us with by far the most vivid and convincing portrait of the
Roman governor. This is one of the numerous cases of life-like
character-drawing with which the Fourth Gospel abounds. Nicodemus, the
woman of Samaria, Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and now Pilate, are
all known to history from St John's portraits of them. Should not this
significant fact lead us to attach great weight to his portrait of
Jesus Christ, which soars above the Christ-pictures of the synoptics in
the most exalted Divine glory?

Jesus had been tried soon after His arrest before Caiaphas and the
Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews, and there He had been
condemned to death, not on the charge for which He had been
arrested--threatening to destroy the Temple--for the evidence against
Him had broken down, but for blasphemy during the course of His trial,
when adjured by the high priest to declare whether He was the Christ.
But the presence of Pilate prevented the council from executing their
sentence (as doubtless they would have done if he had been away at
Caesarea), in defiance of the law, which was entrusted to a weak and
capricious governor. Accordingly they brought their Prisoner to the
procurator's residence--probably Herod's palace, a magnificent building
with two marble wings, containing large rooms sumptuously furnished,
and spacious porticos surrounded by gardens and enclosed in a lofty
wall with towers, situated in the western district of the city, and
approached by a bridge across the Tyropaean valley. The facts that a
later governor, Gestius Florus, resided here, and that Pilate lived in
Herod's palace at Caesarea when in that city, and that he hung the
shields about which there was so much trouble in the Jerusalem palace,
make this view more probable than the traditional idea that the trial
of Jesus took place in the Castle of Antonio, the imperial barracks,
close to the Temple.

The Jews objected to enter this fine palace, because as a Gentile
residence it was defiled, and therefore defiling, and they wished to be
"clean" for the feast they were to eat in the evening. Pilate humoured
them, and had his conferences with them outside the building. Seeing
their object and observing their temper, he must have discovered at
once their miserable hypocrisy. These were the men who affected to be
the leaders of the one pure faith on earth, a faith which looked with
scorn on the "idolatry" of the culture