Chapter Two - Pontius Pilate
Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 7:50 am
Sympathy for the Devil , by the Rolling Stones, has the same chord pattern as Taking Care of Business by Bachman Turner Overdrive. But I am not sure if BTO read Bulgakov, which Mick Jagger cited as one of his sources, alongside Baudelaire, for the line that Satan made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands and sealed his fate.
In this chapter, Pilate discusses truth and other such esoteric matters with Jesus and the High Priest Caiaphas. Pilate is modelled on a languid Stalinist apparatchik, with all their disdainful ease about disposal of life and their corrupt antenna focussed more on political risk than ethics or outcomes.
The first mistake Jesus makes in this interrogation is to call Pilate ‘good man’. The appearances of hierarchical power imbalance require that this appellation, with its implied empathy and common humanity, requires a sound thrashing by the centurion Ratslayer, for lèse-majesté. Ratslayer informs Christ, following Pilate’s ‘no maiming’ instruction, that the correct term of address is Hegemon.
A hegemon is a dominant state, so there is a sun king ‘I am the state’ quality to this name, indicating that Pilate is absolute monarch. Pilate didn’t enquire about 1 Corinthians 12:3; Romans 10:9 and Acts 8:16; 19:5 and 1 Cor 6:11, where the affirmation “Jesus is Lord” implies that Caesar is not Lord.
The clear intent in this chapter is to subvert the communist state, pointing out its ‘some are more equal’ Orwellian hypocrisy. The absolute power of the Party meant that its claim to rule on behalf of workers was a hollow lie. For Pilate, Christ is a seditious criminal, and his death will be a 'tremble and obey' example. Bulgakov expands on the short conversation in the Gospel of John, with its infamous line ‘what is truth?’ to illustrate the nihilistic moral vacuity that delegitimises the Soviet state.
Jesus, far from the Gospel pillar of integrity in the martyr line of bearing witness to truth, behaves much like Soviet zeks do when their spirit has been broken by torture, and snitches on Saint Matthew, the tax collecting disciple, for getting confused about what Jesus actually said. Jesus tells Pilate it wasn’t him but Matthew who added the seditious bits about destroying the temple.
Pilate’s main concerns are his headache and his dog, his only friend in the world. The secretary at the meeting has to tactfully avoid writing down this bizarre stream of consciousness which Pilate expresses after asking Jesus about truth. It only gets worse when Jesus impudently offers some advice to Pilate about the need to have faith in people. The secretary expects an immediate death sentence for this outburst, but Pilate is intrigued, and has Jesus unbound. None of this makes it into the meeting record. Jesus then describes a future kingdom of truth and justice.
The biting irony here for Soviet readers was that the communists promised a future kingdom of truth and justice, so in a sense Bulgakov’s Jesus is expressing Bolshevik rhetoric, except that the communists saw militant godlessness as central to their ideology. Pilate is furious at this truth nonsense, seeing this language from Christ as demanding an obvious death sentence.
But there is an awkward trick here. Jesus must die, but Pilate must wash his hands. The conversation with the high priest is delicate. With great artfulness, Pilate expresses astonishment that the Jews want Christ killed. He intercedes for Jesus as a mere psychiatric case, helping us to think of Soviet psychiatry where speaking the truth became a mental illness. Caiaphas calls out Pilate for his subtle dissembling, provoking the further cat and mouse game where Pilate leaps to the defence of Jesus as a peaceful philosopher. The art of hypocrisy is central to politics.
The actual trial then proceeds in public, with Pilate presiding like Stalin at a May Day parade in Red Square, with just the same cringing obsequity from the minions.
In this chapter, Pilate discusses truth and other such esoteric matters with Jesus and the High Priest Caiaphas. Pilate is modelled on a languid Stalinist apparatchik, with all their disdainful ease about disposal of life and their corrupt antenna focussed more on political risk than ethics or outcomes.
The first mistake Jesus makes in this interrogation is to call Pilate ‘good man’. The appearances of hierarchical power imbalance require that this appellation, with its implied empathy and common humanity, requires a sound thrashing by the centurion Ratslayer, for lèse-majesté. Ratslayer informs Christ, following Pilate’s ‘no maiming’ instruction, that the correct term of address is Hegemon.
A hegemon is a dominant state, so there is a sun king ‘I am the state’ quality to this name, indicating that Pilate is absolute monarch. Pilate didn’t enquire about 1 Corinthians 12:3; Romans 10:9 and Acts 8:16; 19:5 and 1 Cor 6:11, where the affirmation “Jesus is Lord” implies that Caesar is not Lord.
The clear intent in this chapter is to subvert the communist state, pointing out its ‘some are more equal’ Orwellian hypocrisy. The absolute power of the Party meant that its claim to rule on behalf of workers was a hollow lie. For Pilate, Christ is a seditious criminal, and his death will be a 'tremble and obey' example. Bulgakov expands on the short conversation in the Gospel of John, with its infamous line ‘what is truth?’ to illustrate the nihilistic moral vacuity that delegitimises the Soviet state.
Jesus, far from the Gospel pillar of integrity in the martyr line of bearing witness to truth, behaves much like Soviet zeks do when their spirit has been broken by torture, and snitches on Saint Matthew, the tax collecting disciple, for getting confused about what Jesus actually said. Jesus tells Pilate it wasn’t him but Matthew who added the seditious bits about destroying the temple.
Pilate’s main concerns are his headache and his dog, his only friend in the world. The secretary at the meeting has to tactfully avoid writing down this bizarre stream of consciousness which Pilate expresses after asking Jesus about truth. It only gets worse when Jesus impudently offers some advice to Pilate about the need to have faith in people. The secretary expects an immediate death sentence for this outburst, but Pilate is intrigued, and has Jesus unbound. None of this makes it into the meeting record. Jesus then describes a future kingdom of truth and justice.
The biting irony here for Soviet readers was that the communists promised a future kingdom of truth and justice, so in a sense Bulgakov’s Jesus is expressing Bolshevik rhetoric, except that the communists saw militant godlessness as central to their ideology. Pilate is furious at this truth nonsense, seeing this language from Christ as demanding an obvious death sentence.
But there is an awkward trick here. Jesus must die, but Pilate must wash his hands. The conversation with the high priest is delicate. With great artfulness, Pilate expresses astonishment that the Jews want Christ killed. He intercedes for Jesus as a mere psychiatric case, helping us to think of Soviet psychiatry where speaking the truth became a mental illness. Caiaphas calls out Pilate for his subtle dissembling, provoking the further cat and mouse game where Pilate leaps to the defence of Jesus as a peaceful philosopher. The art of hypocrisy is central to politics.
The actual trial then proceeds in public, with Pilate presiding like Stalin at a May Day parade in Red Square, with just the same cringing obsequity from the minions.