The Creed

stoneill

Folks,
I'm not religious, nor do I force my view on anyone.
My wife is a devout catholic and I respect her wishes to bring the kids up in the catholic faith, and in that vein, I do go to mass with her and the kids every week.

During the reciting of the creed, there is the line
"crucified under Pontius Pilate"
But in the four gospels, he avoids responsibility of the death of Jesus, he washed his hands of the affair, so how come the creed then says it was him?

BrianCalgary

He was the reigning governor of Judea at the time and had the power and the ability to let Jesus off. Pilate even stated that he could find no fault with Jesus or a reason to crucify Him.

I would say that he went along with the crucifixion for political reasons.
He then washed his hands of it. It may have set his own mind at ease, but he still takes on some of the responsibilty.

But in having said all that Jesus was crucified at the time Pilate was governor so therefore He was crucified 'Under" pilate.

stoneill

Does that mean that all capital punishments are attributed to the leader at the time - for example Barak Obama is responsible for all death sentences in the US at the moment? (can be extrapolated for any jurisdiction)

From what I understand from my readings (again I am not a religious person) of gospels and historical works that Pilate essentially said that this is nothing to do with him and that the Jewish community of the time make the decision.

Chucken

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate

martinedwards

As governor, he still needed to give the order to actually do it.

Manach

As a Roman government, by tradition, he would have a wide variety of civil/military powers and thus all decisions would ultimately devolve to him as the Representative of the Emperor (inspite of earlier reforms of the system driven by Cicero).

newmug

Its a bit like Bertie Ahern saying "Nobody knew the economic crisis was coming". It still happened "under" him.

newmug

Mod Edit.

Let's not derail this thread by going there.

Erper

Off topic - mod delete

BrianCalgary

stoneill wrote: »

Does that mean that all capital punishments are attributed to the leader at the time - for example Barak Obama is responsible for all death sentences in the US at the moment? (can be extrapolated for any jurisdiction).

No not at all. Two completely different styles of government.

stoneill wrote: »

From what I understand from my readings (again I am not a religious person) of gospels and historical works that Pilate essentially said that this is nothing to do with him and that the Jewish community of the time make the decision.

Yes he did say that, yet as I noted above, he had the ability to release Jesus yet chose not to, probably because of political reasons, in granting this request to get rid of Jesus by the Pharisees.

bonniebede

One of the ways that the romans showed they were the rulers of a conquered people was to remove from them the right to use the death penalty. Hence the jewish sanhedrin could no longer sentence someone to death and had to bring him to pilate.
one of the things this highlighs is when they were trying to trap jesus with the woman caught in adultery and asked if she should be stoned. If he answered no he was breaking the law of moses but if he answered yes he was breaking the roman law. neat .
Jesus was crucified on the orders of Pontius pilate, because without his say so it could not have happed, also it was carried out by roman soldiers.
his saying he had nothong to do with it was just a politically expedient device not to get caught taking sides in what he saw as a rivalry between religious factions.