An Amnesic Pontius Pilate

If the greatness of a work of art is to be measured by its power to shock, Anatole France's short story, The Procurator of Judea is the greatest.

The Procurator is none other than Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea at the time of crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. The canonical gospels tell us how the Jerusalem-based Jewish establishment forced Pilate to pass the sentence of crucifixion on Jesus against his own desire to set the Messiah free and the warning of his wife not to do "any harm to that innocent man" because of who she "suffered a lot in a dream". In the Gospel of Mathew, Pilate gives his nod to the judicial murder of Jesus after a dramatic washing of hands to symbolize his disagreement. In John's narrative, we even see Pilate trying to engage the divine prisoner in a dialogue on truth.

In Procurator of Judea, the by-then aged and retired Pilate is shown spending time at the seaside resort of Baiae in Southern Italy. One day, he had a chance meeting with Aelius Lamia a fellow-Roman and old acquaintance of his time in Judea. They discuss the characteristics and eccentricities of Jewish people. Pilate is very harsh in his assessment of them while Lamia is sympathetic. The discussion is long but we find no mention of the Messiah affair. Before the story climaxes, Jesus is mentioned just once, without naming, as just some mad fellow who took upon himself the task of driving trades out of the Jerusalem temple. Towards the end, the pleasure-loving Lamia spoke of a bewitching Judean beauty of liquid-fire eyes and supple hips (Mary Magdalene), later rumored to have joined a little band of men and women following a young preacher from Galilee called Jesus the Nazarene who was later crucified for for some crime or other.

Then, like a hammer hitting the reader's skull, comes the punchline of the story. Lamia asks Pilate whether he had any remembrance of the young preacher. After a hard effect to recollect, Pilate emphatically replies: "Jesus? Jesus the Nazarene? No, I cannot remember him. The name means nothing to me."

Of course, it is old-fashioned to look for a moral in every story. But, after the initial shock, no reader whether believer or nonbeliever, would be able to help wondering what the point of this story is. Probably, the famously skeptical Anatole France is telling us this: The boundary of history and myth is open and undemarcated. There is no way of ascertaining the true nature and proportions of celebrated individuals and episodes in history. Greatness is often thrust on obscure individuals and forgettable incidents after twisting them out of recognition. While all this is very obvious, isn't dragging the believer's camel of faith through the needle's eye of skepticism, subversion of the first order?

The story's argument can be seen from another angle too: More recent European scholarship consider the Gospel narrative of the trial of Jesus as biased and responsible for the rise of Christian antisemitism. To them, the Gospels were influenced by the then-emerging Church's wish to be on the right side of imperial Rome. Blaming the Roman Governor for crucifixion would not have been prudent or politically correct when the Gospel's were written. Pilate's inability in Procurator of Judea to recall Jesus show him as a person devoid of scruples. This follows the new trend and minimize the role of Jewish leadership. If Pilate was a reluctant accomplice and had a troubled conscience over Jesus, he would at least have remembered what was done in his name.

This may be correct. But, it is not a conclusion objectively arrived at. It is shaped more by politics than objectivity. Scholarship which earlier served Christian antisemitism now serve Judaeo-Christian political solidarity in the West.