PILATE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN INVENTED MAN
By Ann Wroe
Jonathan Cape. xiii + 381 pages. £17.99 (hardback)
ISBN 0 224 05942 4
Medieval mystery plays, a novel by the Russian Mikhail Bulgakov, a sculpture in Westminster Cathedral, Mount Pilatus in Switzerland, United Beach Missions - these are some of the stops on Ann Wroe's dizzying tour through history's portrayal of one of the most intriguing characters in the Bible. Pilate barely steps from the wings onto the stage in the gospel narratives before he returns to the dressing room once more, this time to be clothed in the varied costumes of so many scholars, theologians, writers, artists and poets.
Ironically, there exists only a relatively minute quantity of evidence concerning the most renowned Roman provincial governor. Wroe presents the reader with the total sum of evidence: apart from the New Testament, a few paragraphs in the narratives of the 1st-century Jewish historians Philo and Josephus, one line from the 2nd-century Roman historian Tacitus, an inscription (discovered in the coastal city of Caesarea) apparently from a public building dedicated by Pilate to Tiberius, and a few tiny coins.
