THE GALILEAN VICTIMS: Luke 13:1–3. This incident is not further explained in the New Testament. While this may have been a cruel action on the part of Pilate and is used by some in building a case against him, it need not have been. In commenting on the episode, Jesus did not fault Pilate, and, by the context of the Siloam tower collapse, the implication is probable that this also may have been an accident involving the innocent. Cp. also Kraeling, op. cit., p. 288, who points out that Pilate might not have had anything to do with the event, since everything perpetrated by Roman auxiliaries in Palestine would be ascribed to him.
CHAPTER 13 (PAGES 166–176)
MEMMIUS REGULUS: Although Tiberlus and Sejanus were consuls for the year 31, they had appointed Regulus and Fulcinius Trio to succeed them as consules suffecti (“substitute consuls”) later that year, a common practice. See Tacitus, Annals, v, 11.
THE FALL OF SEJANUS: The chief source is Dio Cassius, lviii, 9 ff., since the relevant passages in books v and vi of Tacitus’s Annals are lost. See also Suetonius, Tiberius, lxv, and Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, xi, 11. For the FATE OF SEJANUS’S CHILDREN, see Tacitus, Annals, v (vi), 9; Dio Cassius, lviii, 11.
ANTONIA: Josephus, Antiq., xviii, 6, 6, is the sole source on Antonia’s crucial role in unmasking Sejanus.
SOURCES FOR THE SEJANIAN CONSPIRACY: Tacitus, Annals, iv, 1 to vi, 2; Suetonius, Tiberius, lxi, lxv; Dio Cassius, lvii, 19 to lviii, 16.
CHAPTER 14 (PAGES 177–187)
POMPONIUS FLACCUS: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 27.
A. AVILLIUS FLACCUS: Dio Cassius, lviii, 19, 6; Philo, In Flaccum, i, 1 ff.
CESSATLON OP LITUUS COINS: No crosier coins of Pilate dated after 31 A.D. have been discovered. On Pilate’s coinage, see “Historical Note” above and Ethelbert Stauffer, “Zur Münzprägung and Judenpolitik des Pontius Pilatus,” La Nouvelle Clio, I and II (1949–1950), 495–514, although Stauffer is unduly severe with Pilate. Such conclusions of his as “Dieser Mann [Pilatus] war unter den vielen schlimmen Prokuratoren Judaeas mit Abstand der schlimmste” (p. 511) simply contradict the facts, especially when Pilate is compared with such later procurators as Cumanus or Floris, See also P. L. Hedley, “Pilate’s Arrival in Judea,” The Journal of Theological Studies 35 (1934), 56–57; E. Mary Smallwood, “Some Notes on the Jews under Tiberius,” Latomus, XV (Juillet–Septembre, 1956), 314–29; A. Kindler, “More Dates on the Coins of the Procurators,” Israel Exploration Journal 6 (1956), 54–57; and B. Oestreicher, “A New Interpretation of Dates on the Coins of the Procurators,” Israel Exploration Journal 9 (1959), 193–95.
TIBERIUS’S LETTER TO PILATE: This is a paraphrase of Tiberius’s sentiments at this time regarding the Jews, according to Philo, De Legatione ad Gaium, xxiv, 160 ff. The exact date is presumed, though the year 32. would be accurate.
ZADOK: Gitten 56a (Babylonian Talmud).
NUMA AND THE SHEILDS: Plutarch, Numa, xiii; Horace, Carmina, i, 37, 2; Quintillian, Institutio Oratoria, i, 6, 40; Ovid, Fasti, iii, 259 ff.
JEWISH SHEILDS IN ALEXANDRIA: Philo, De Legatione ad Gaium, xx, 133.
THE INCIDENT OF THE GOLDEN SHEILDS: Philo, op. cit., xxxviii, 299–30. Some authorities have suggested that this is merely Philo’s version of the standards episode reported by Josephus, as F. H. Colson in Loeb Classical Library, Philo, X, 151. But the incidents are too different in too many details to give this suggestion credence. What is questionable is Philo’s extreme bias against Pilate in reporting this event. In fairness to Pilate, it should be stated that Josephus, our most competent and complete source on Pilate apart from the New Testament, omits this episode entirely.
Philo’s reference to Pilate’s dedicating the shields “in Herod’s palace in the holy city” (De Legatione, xxxviii, 299), which he further identifies as “the house of the governors” (op. cit., xxxix, 306) should end the long—and unnecessary—debate over whether Pilate and Procula stayed at the Tower Antonia or the Herodian palace during their visits to Jerusalem. It is further unlikely that Procula would have been subjected to quarters in a military barracks.
CHAPTER 15 (PAGES 188–201)
FEEDING THE 5,000: Matthew 14:13 ff.; Mark 6:31 ff.; Luke 9:11 ff.; John 6:1 ff.
EVENTS AT ROME IN 32 A.D.: Tacitus, Annals, vi, 1 ff. GALLIO: History would remember not him, but his son Gallio, before whose tribunal St. Paul would later stand in Greece and be acquitted (Acts 18:2 ff.). For the father, see Annals, vi, 3.
TIBERIUS’S LETTER: Philo, loc. cit. Philo mentions, but does not quote, the very threatening letter Tiberius sent to Pilate.
ANIMAL IMAGES ON ANTIPAS’S PALACE: Josephus, Vita, xii.
SIMON MAGUS: Acts 8:9 ff.
BAR-ABBAS: Some ancient NT manuscripts at Matthew 27:16–17 include the full name “Jesus Bar-Abbas,” while others cite only “Bar-Abbas.”
JESUS AT THE TEMPLE: John 10:22–39.
LAZARUS: John 11:17 ff.
CAIAPHAS AND THE SANHEDRIN: John 11:47–53.
THE SANHEDRAL PROCLAMATION: But for the caption and the last sentence, this proclamation is verbatim from the rabbinical tradition on “Yeshu Hannosri” in Sanhedrin 43a, The Babylonian Talmud, trans. by Jacob Shachter (London: Soncino Press, 1935), Nezikin V, p. 281. The last sentence of the notice is derived from what is undoubtedly the NT version of this proclamation in John 11:57.
CHAPTER 16 (PAGES 202–215)
EVENTS AT ROME IN 32–33 A.D.: Dio Cassius, lviii, 18–21 ff.; Tacitus, Annals, vi, 15–19.
PALM SUNDAY: Matthew 21:1 ff.; Mark 11:1 ff.; Luke 19:28 ff.; John 12:12 ff.
THE CONVERSION OF ZACCHAEUS: Luke 19:2 ff.
JESUS CLEANSING THE TEMPLE: Matthew 21:12 ff.; Mark 11:15–19; Luke 19:45–48; John 2:13. The Fourth Gospel, however, places this incident earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while the Synoptics assign it to Holy Week.
JESUS’ DIALOGUES WITH OPPONENTS: Matthew 21:23–23:39; Mark 11:27–12:40; Luke 20:1–47.
WHO WOULD ARREST JESUS?: The Synoptic Gospels credit the Jewish temple guard with the arrest of Jesus and make no reference whatever to any involvement by the Roman military. In John 18:3 and 12, the arrest is made by Jewish police and a “speira” (a “band,” presumably Roman, or the temple “guard”), which is led by a “chiliarchos” (“tribune” or “commander” of the temple guard). With this indefinite language, the Synoptics’ parallel citation of only the Jewish police, the absence of the term “Roman” even in John, and Pilate’s apparent surprise Good Friday morning that the case was coming to his tribunal, it seems unlikely that he committed Roman auxiliaries to make a religious arrest when the temple guard was entirely competent for this purpose. So also Kraeling, op. cit., p. 266: “That Roman soldiers had anything at all to do with the capture of Jesus is extremely doubtful.”
THE LAST SUPPER: Matthew 26:17 ff.; Mark 14:12 ff.; Luke 22:7 ff.; John 13:1 ff.