people. Jews might be expected to stand by a fellow-Jew under the
Roman tyranny. How comes it to pass that the Jewish people have
brought a man of their own race to the foreign tribunal, prosecuting
Him before this alien power, seeking His death from the hated Imperial
government? What can He have done to bring about so unusual a
situation? Pilate is perplexed; and the answer of Jesus does not
clarify the magistrate's ideas. It seems only more mystifying. Jesus
describes His kingdom, so different from any institution bearing the
name that Pilate has ever heard of. It is not of the order of things
in this world. If it were, of course Christ's servants would fight, as
do the servants of the claimants of earthly thrones. But they do not
resort to violence. The kingdom and its methods of government are both
unearthly. Pilate is interested, perhaps amused, with what now seem to
him the fancies of a fanatical dreamer. He pursues the inquiry, we may
suppose, with a smile on his lips, "_Art thou a king, then_?" he asked.
There is no ambiguity in his Prisoner's reply. He is a king. This
strange kingdom, not resting on any basis of earthly power, dispensing
with fighting, with all that an army suggests, with force, is the very
opposite to Pilate's idea of a state. Rome was materialistic to the
core. Her rule rested on brute force. The Empire, the _Imperium_, was
the dominion of the _Imperator_, that is to say, of the
commander-in-chief of the army. It was a military despotism.
Nominally the government was still republican, and the older and more
peaceable provinces were administered by proconsuls, whose appointment
rested with the senate, or was supposed by a legal fiction to rest with
that body. But the newer and more troublesome provinces were governed
as conquered territory directly by the emperor as the head of the army.
Now Judaea came in this latter division. Pontius Pilate and his
superior, the Legate of Syria, were both directly responsible to
Tiberius Caesar. Pilate was Caesar's officer under military direction.