Pontius Pilate and the Imperial Cult in Roman
Judaea*
JOAN E. TAY LO R
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, University of Waikato, P. B.
3105, Hamilton, New Zealand
While Pontius Pilate is often seen as agnostic, in modern terms, the material evi-
dence of his coinage and the Pilate inscription from Caesarea indicate a prefect
determined to promote a form of Roman religion in Judaea. Unlike his predeces-
sors, in the coinage Pilate used peculiarly Roman iconographic elements appropri-
ate to the imperial cult. In the inscription Pilate was evidently responsible for
dedicating a Tiberieum to the Dis Augustis. This material evidence may be placed
alongside the report in Philo Legatio ad Gaium (299–305) where Pilate sets up
shields – likewise associated with the Roman imperial cult –honouring Tiberius in
Jerusalem.
Of all the figures that appear in the New Testament and early Christian
literature, Pontius Pilate is probably the most ambiguous, and yet also the most
well evidenced in non-Christian writings, importantly in Philo (Legat. 299–305),
Josephus (Bell. II.117–18; 167–279; Ant. XVIII.55–64; 85–89), and in Tacitus (Ann.
XV.22.4). The rhetorical aspects of the literary sources have been well discussed,
notably by J. P. Lémonon
1
and B. C. McGing,
2
and recently by Helen Bond,
3
who
has deftly explored the historical Pilate beneath this material.
In general such studies have an ultimate goal of interpreting Pilate’s role in the
execution of Jesus. A psychological interest is apparent: we find ourselves as
readers wanting to know Pilate’s motivations, what exactly he was trying to
achieve in his actions, what his feelings were in terms of the emperor, or the Jews.
555
* A first draft of this paper was read at the Institute of Classical Studies, Ancient History
Seminar, 20 May 2004. I would like to thank the convenors of the seminar, John North and
Bella Sandwell, for inviting me to participate, and also those who attended and contributed
to the valuable discussion afterwards. I would also like to thank Holger Szesnat, David
Jacobson and Judith Lieu for their help as I revised this study for publication.
1 J. P. Lémonon, Pilate et le govournement de la Judée (Paris: Gabalda, 1981).
2 B. C. McGing, ‘Pontius Pilate and the Sources’, CBQ 53 (1991) 416–38.
3 H. K. Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation (New York: Cambridge University,
1998).
New Test. Stud. 52,pp.555–582. Printed in the United Kingdom © 2006 Cambridge University Press
DOI:10.1017/S0028688506000300
This psychological interest is the result of two millennia of Christian speculation,
now expressed in the popular biography of Pilate written by Anne Wroe.
4
Additionally, there is hard evidence that comes directly from Pilate’s own
initiative, unmediated by writers whose purposes in recording incidents of his
rule derive from their own wider rhetorical strategies. In the first place there is the
bronze coinage issued by Pilate between 29 and 31, and in the second place the so-
called ‘Pilate inscription’. This hard evidence is particularly important because it
gives us indications of an aspect of Pilate that has often been ignored, namely
Pilate’s own religion.
Pilate, over the course of Christian history, is anything but ‘religious’ in
Christian terms. The Gospel of John has him, famously, asking Jesus: ‘
Tiv ejstin
ajlhvqeia;’ – ‘What is truth?’ (18.38) – and from henceforth Pilate has become, in
Christian imagination, a kind of archetypal agnostic. In Jewish literature, in the
writings of Philo and Josephus, Pilate can seem to us deeply anti-religious, in that
he appears deliberately offensive to Jews and Samaritans and uncaring about
their sensibilities.
5
However, as Roman governor of Judaea, Pilate’s position carried within it a
religious dimension. Beard, North and Price note in their comprehensive study of
Roman religion, that ‘in the provinces emperor and governor filled the role occu-
pied in Italy by the pontifices’ and the ‘role of governor included supervision of
religious matters along essentially Roman guidelines’.
6
In the present study, the material evidence is interpreted in a way that accords
with what might be expected of a Roman Prefect of a province in the immediate
post-Augustan age. Subsequently, there will be a concise foray into a consider-
ation of one literary source, the testimony of Philo of Alexandria. As this examin-
ation will show, it would appear that Pontius Pilate was actively engaged in the
promotion of the imperial cult in Roman Judaea.
A. Numismatic Evidence
Pontius Pilate’s coins in Judaea were small bronze perutahs (equivalent to
the Seleucid dilepton), measuring between 13.5 mm and 17 mm.
7
The coins were
minted in Jerusalem: a specimen dated to 31 ce has been found there in the
556 joan e. taylor
4 A. Wroe, Pilate: The Biography of an Invented Man (London: Jonathan Cape, 1999).
5 For a review of scholars who tend to follow this characterization, see Bond, Pontius Pilate,
xiii–xvi.
6 M. Beard, J. North and S. Price, Religions of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1998)
1:321.
7 David Hendin, Guide to Biblical Coins (4th ed.; Dix Hills, N.Y.: Amphora Books, 2001) nos.
648–50.
Pontius Pilate and the Imperial Cult in Roman Judaea 557
process of being manufactured; it is a tongue of metal that would have been
pressed between two clay moulds.
8
There are two types: type 1 shows a simpulum on the obverse and three ears of
wheat or barley on the reverse, while type 2 shows a lituus on the obverse with a
laurel wreath on the reverse. On the obverse of both coins is the Greek legend
‘
TIBERIOÁ KAIÇAROÇ’, ‘of Tiberius Caesar’. On the reverse of the type 1 coins
there is the legend ‘
IOÁLIA KAIÇAROÇ’, ‘Julia, of Caesar’, and with type 2 there
is no legend on the reverse (see Fig. 1).
9
8 See Y. Meshorer, Ancient Jewish Coinage (Dix Hills, N.Y.: Amphora Books, 1982) 2:186, Pls.
7–8.
9 Cf. Mark 12.16–17 (and parr.): ‘Whose is this image and the inscription? And they answered
him, “Caesar’s (
Kaivsaro~)”. So Jesus said to them, “Deliver what is Caesar’s to Caesar (ta;
Kaivsaro~ ajpovdote Kaivsari
) and what is God’s to God”.’ There were no images of the
emperor on Judaean-issue coins, but imaged coins circulated in Judaea from elsewhere.
Figure 1: Bronze coins issued by Pontius Pilate: type 1 above and type 2 below. (J. E.
Taylor)
The coins are given dates in the form of a Latin letter ‘L’ for Greek luvkaba~,
‘year’, followed by Latin–Greek letter-numbers: LIS, LIZ and LIH (Year 16, 17 and
18 of Tiberius’ reign, corresponding to 29, 30 and 31 ce). The date is found follow-
ing the inscription on the obverse in type 1 coins, while the date in type 2 coins is
found in the wreath. Type 1 coins were only issued in 29 ce, the year of the
empress’ death.
The coins are different from those issued by Pilate’s predecessors, Coponius
(6–9 ce), Marcus Ambibulus (9–12 ce) and Valerius Gratus (15–26 ce) in terms of
the images depicted. In 6 ce, Coponius issued a coin showing a barley head on the
obverse with an eight-branched palm tree bearing two bunches of grapes on the
reverse: images reflecting main crops of the region.
10
His successor, Marcus
Ambibulus, continued to issue the same types.
11
Valerius Gratus, arriving in
Judaea under a new emperor, issued coins with a wreath on the obverse and on
the reverse a double cornucopia with small caduceus, lilies or a palm branch,
while another type had a vine leaf on the obverse and a kantharos with scroll han-
dles on the reverse.
12
There appears in such coinage to be an interest in symbol-
ism rather than in simple agricultural motifs, but a symbolism with a certain
ambiguity. For example, the wine images may make reference to the trade in wine
from Judaea, but may also refer to Dionysus. The caduceus, which can be sym-
bolic of Mercury, the god of trade, is too small to make any clear reference to his
cult, but is used with the double cornucopia in order to refer to bounteous trade.
The lilies, associated not with any plants of the region but with the goddess Hera
(Roman Juno), may relate to the empress Julia, mentioned in the accompanying
legend. Livia/Julia was associated with the goddess Hera in coins and inscrip-
tions,
13
but lilies could also be symbolic of hope. Whatever their interpretation, it
would be hard to read the coinage of Valerius Gratus as strongly indicating cultic
sacra as such, even when there are allusions to certain Hellenistic deities; rather,
there is a Hellenistic iconographic repertoire employed, which incorporated
deities for symbolic intent.
Pilate’s coins, by contrast, depict two key items of specifically Roman religious
ritual use: the lituus and the simpulum. In depicting these instruments on the
558 joan e. taylor
The legend Kaivsaro~ was not uncommon and had appeared already in coins of the
Judaean governors Coponius and Marcus Ambibulus; see Hendin, Biblical Coins, nos.
635–8.
10 Hendin, Biblical Coins, no. 635.
11 Ibid., nos. 636–8.
12 Ibid., nos. 639–47.
13 See G. Grether, ‘Livia and the Roman Imperial Cult’, The American Journal of Philology 67
(1946) 222–52 (229–30, 241–2); E. Bartman, Portraits of Livia: Imaging the Imperial Woman in
Augustan Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1999) 94 n. 152, and see her Catalogue
of Epigraphic Sources (henceforth EpigCat.) no. 5 and 20.
Judaean coinage Pilate advertised particular rituals of exclusively Roman cult.
These instruments were not generic to all cults in the Empire, which now
embraced the Hellenistic world, let alone to Jewish or Samaritan rituals, but had
emblematic and ritual uses within Roman rites alone. The ritual instruments
themselves are described by terms not used for profane utensils, even when these
utensils are quite similar (see Arnobius Adversus Nationes XXIV.1–6). They were
entirely sacred implements, and they were cared for and stored in sacred space.
The lituus and simpulum appear in Roman Republican coinage from the
beginning of the first century bce.
14
The simpulum was a small utensil shaped like
a ladle with handle and shaft, with the top of the shaft slightly curved, and was
used by priests for tasting the wine of the libations before they poured it out on
the head of an animal about to be sacrificed. Additionally, it was a special emblem
of the college of pontifices.
The lituus was a wooden staff (or wand) with a curled end, made of a branch
of either ash or hazel that had knots, and the curl was supposed to be naturally
formed. The lituus was held in the right hand of the augures and was the augures’
identifying emblem. Traditionally the lituus was first used by Romulus when
Rome was founded and symbolised the augures’ authority and pastoral vocation,
but it was also raised to the sky when they invoked the gods and made predictions.
It was used to mark out regions of the heavens when assessing the placement of
sacred space on earth.
The image of the simpulum, in the coinage issued in 29, is unusual and may be
rather a culullus, which appears together with other cultic artefacts in the coinage
of Julius Caesar.
15
The distinctions are small on coins but a simpulum’s handle
tends to be long and turned away from the ladle bowl, while the culullus handle
turned inwards. The culullus is also squatter than the simpulum, and is made of
pottery, while the simpulum could be made of metal. This ritual artefact was an
emblem of both the pontifices and Vestals.
In using these artefacts on the coinage it might be argued that Pilate too was
employing symbols, like his predecessor Valerius Gratus. However, while Gratus
used common symbolism of the Hellenistic world to point to the importance of
trade or the wine industry – which all inhabitants of the region could accept as
positive phenomena – Pilate’s symbols point only to in a very limited way to other
facets of Roman religion, to the augures in the case of the lituus, or to the pontif-
ices and Vestals in the case of the simpulum/culullus.
Pontius Pilate and the Imperial Cult in Roman Judaea 559
14 M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (London: Cambridge University, 1974) lituus
cat. nos. 343, 344, 346, 402, 405, 423, 425, 426, 428, 456, 460, 466, 467, 468, 480, 488, 489, 496,
500, 511, 517, 520, 521, 537; simpulum: 378, 385, 405, 409, 484, 489, 502.
15 See Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome, 2:205; Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage,
cat. no. 443, 456, 467.
