Pontius Pilate

I just finished reading the historical novel "Pontius Pilate" by Dr Paul Maier (Western Michigan Univ). It is a great novel mainly for those who love ancient history or Biblical backgrounds. Even though Maier is forced to invent alot of dialogue (etc) the book is based on historical facts and the dialogues/letters (etc) are based on historical circumstances and thus are likely (though not historical).

He searched "for all surviving bricks of fact, then cemented them together with regrettably fictional mortar" to create "something of an accurate restoration of the original structure of Pilate's career". "No liberties were taken with the facts". He uses "reference notes on the most significant and controversial points of scholarship...most of these notes involve original sources".

Dr Maier gives several standards he used in writing the novel:

1. "All persons named in this book are historical characters; no proper name has been invented -if it is not known, it is not given."

2. "No portrayal of any personality, no description of any event, and no episode, or even detail contradicts known historical fact"

3. "Only where all evidence is lacking is contructed history, based on probabilities, used to fill in the gaps. Even here, as much use as possible is made of authentic histrorical data as ballast, also in dialogue.".

For the most part I think Maier did a great job. If you are interested in this you might be interested in reading this book. It can be found at Amazon.com.

Knowing the history of Pilate helps us understand his actions as recorded in the Gospels.

Martin.