Who is truly to blame for Christ’s death? In this new post in our series, we discuss an article by Olena Peleshchenko devoted to the image of Pontius Pilate in the apocryphal tradition.
Olena Peleshchenko holds a Ph.D. in philology and is a lecturer in the Volodymyr Morenets Department of Literary Studies.
The article focuses on the remarkable transformation of the image of Pontius Pilate in the apocryphal tradition. While early historical sources mostly portrayed him as a cruel ruler and one of those responsible for Christ’s death, in later texts he increasingly appears as a repentant man who converts to Christianity, and sometimes even as a saint.
The researcher shows that this change was linked to a reinterpretation of the figure of Pilate himself. At the same time, responsibility for the Crucifixion was increasingly attributed to the Jewish community. Such notions gradually became entrenched in the medieval Christian tradition.
«In a number of sources, Pilate is portrayed not as a cruel judge, but as a repentant sinner who converted to Christianity along with his wife and children. In this way, the image of Pontius Pilate becomes one manifestation of the long-standing Judeo-Hellenistic polemic, within which the Roman prefect’s exoneration was achieved by constructing an image of the Jews as a religious and ethnic Other».
The author devotes particular attention to Ukrainian manuscript sources. In these texts, Pilate may appear as a repentant sinner, a newly converted Christian, or even a righteous man, while anti-Jewish motifs are often intensified. At the same time, the Ukrainian tradition often proves to be more restrained than the Western European one and does not always equate Pilate with the Jewish community.
Olena Peleshchenko’s article demonstrates how literary and religious texts influenced the perception of historical events and shaped ideas about various communities. The story of Pontius Pilate illustrates how character portrayals evolve in cultural memory and what meanings society ascribes to them in different ages.
The full article will be available this summer following the online publication of the project’s Imagological Collection on the website.
This publication was produced as part of the project "Jewish Heritage in Ukraine: Interdisciplinary Reflections through the Lens of Archival Documents, Culture, History, and Literature", implemented by the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy with the support of UNESCO Ukraine and the European Union.
All publications are produced with the financial support of the European Union. Their content is the sole responsibility of the partners and does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union.