Pontius Pilate Death: What Did Pontius Pilate Die Of?

The circumstances surrounding Pontius Pilate’s death in circa 39 A.D. are something of a mystery and a source of contention.

According to some traditions, the Roman emperor Caligula ordered Pontius Pilate to death by execution or suicide. By other accounts, Pontius Pilate was sent into exile and committed suicide of his own accord.

Some traditions assert that after he committed suicide, his body was thrown into the Tiber River.

Still others believe Pontius Pilate’s fate involved his conversion to Christianity and subsequent canonization. Pontius Pilate is in fact considered a saint by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Regardless of what truly became of Pontius Pilate, one thing has been made certain — that Pontius Pilate actually existed.

During a 1961 dig in Caesarea Maritima, Italian archeologist Dr. Antonio Frova uncovered a piece of limestone inscribed with Pontius Pilate’s name in Latin, linking Pilate to Emperor Tiberius’s reign.

The New Testament suggests that Pilate had a weak, vacillating personality.

His wife sends him word of a revelatory dream she has had about Jesus and urges him to “have nothing to do with that innocent man” (Matthew 27:19), and Pilate abdicates his responsibility to the emperor.

In John (19:7–11), Pilate is depicted as having accepted the Christian interpretation of the meaning of Jesus, and he rejects Jewish leaders’ reminder that Jesus has merely said that he is “the king of the Jews” (19:21).

On the other hand, John’s picture of Pilate delivering judgment from a tribunal in front of the prefect’s mansion fits typical Roman procedure.

Clearly, as an index to the character and personality of Pilate, the New Testament is devastating, but it is preoccupied with concerns of the nascent Christian communities, increasingly making their way among the Gentiles and eager to avoid giving offense to Roman authorities.

An early church tradition that had taken a favourable opinion of Pilate persisted in some churches into the early 21st century.

He and his wife are venerated in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; their feast day is June 25.