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“Pilate Defended”
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The question of Pilate’s innocence is debated with greater sophistication at the end of the seventeenth century than ever before. A liberal professor of law in the city of Halle, Christian Thomasius, is now remembered as one of the master-thinkers of ‘secularization’ in the early Westphalian era. Yet Thomasius is rarely if ever remembered as the author of a highly interesting 1675 text On the Unjust Judgement of Pontius Pilate. Thomasius’ juridical text on Pilate is likely the high point of European legal reasoning on the innocence (or guilt) of Jesus’ Roman judge. However, Thomasius’ 1675 text is written in reply to two other forgotten texts: Pilate Defended, by Johann Steller; and A Refutation of the Defence of Pontius Pilate, by Daniel Hartnaccius. This chapter offers a reading of, and a reflection upon, this collection of early Enlightenment texts on the Roman trial of Jesus.
Title: “Pilate Defended”
Description:
The question of Pilate’s innocence is debated with greater sophistication at the end of the seventeenth century than ever before.
A liberal professor of law in the city of Halle, Christian Thomasius, is now remembered as one of the master-thinkers of ‘secularization’ in the early Westphalian era.
Yet Thomasius is rarely if ever remembered as the author of a highly interesting 1675 text On the Unjust Judgement of Pontius Pilate.
Thomasius’ juridical text on Pilate is likely the high point of European legal reasoning on the innocence (or guilt) of Jesus’ Roman judge.
However, Thomasius’ 1675 text is written in reply to two other forgotten texts: Pilate Defended, by Johann Steller; and A Refutation of the Defence of Pontius Pilate, by Daniel Hartnaccius.
This chapter offers a reading of, and a reflection upon, this collection of early Enlightenment texts on the Roman trial of Jesus.
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