The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1897-11-20

auu 5dtlSueu themselves LQdC he SuOulO
die. But unless they assassinated Him
and they feared to do so, not knowing
the strength Of His followers-they
could not put Him to death, for Rome
had withdrawn that power from them
So they sought out PLATE. 1t was q
villainous crowd of cut-throats which
howled and shouted at Pilates gates
They would not enter for the feast was
begun and they might not defile them
selves by such contact with a gentle.
The Roman officer came to them.
His sympathy with the august prisoner
is plain. 1t was enough for him that
his enemies, the scribes and the priests
who had lodged complaints against him
self with the emperor, were this mans
accusers, for him to straghtway plan
his liberation. He took Jesus aside,
and st. John tells us in part the con-
versation between them. 1t is evident
that PLATE wished them to set Our
Lord at liberty. But he heard the
curses and the clamors below and he
knew what the Jews could say to a
jealous master. He tried to make Herod
assume the responsibility in the mat
ter, but Herod, visitor in the city,
shirked it as much as he did. The
crowd would not be bought off. The
charges were not proven, but proven or
not, they thirsted for his blood, and
passing from demands to threats, they
shouted at Plate that he was no friend
of Caesar.
The threat availed. He knew how
that would sound in Rome. He knew
how powerful the Jews were in Rome
and how they hated him. What to him
was the life of one man more than an
other, even though that man was in
nocent. His wife would fret; but it
was evident that the man had no friends
and that he should hear no more of
Him once he had satisfied the Jews.
So with protestations, washing his
/ hands to show that the man was not
condemned for any offence he had COM
mitted against Roman law, he let the
| priests have their way and ordered .-4e
| crucifixion Of Jesus. How little he felt
like acceding to their desires is shown
! by his tart refusal to change the Of
| fensive inscription on the cross. So
PLATE appears to us and then disappears
from the scriptural narrative
What his feelings were after Good
| Friday, when the resurrection had
taken place, nothing in the New Tes-
lament suggests. But clearly prepos-
| sessed in favor of Jesus it is not ur-
| reasonable to suppose that he learnt
/! from his soldiers of all that happened
on the cross Could he have failed to
| note the darkness that fell on the city
that mournful afternoon? Would not
his wife so greatly interested in Jesus
during the trial that she sent word to
| her husband not to have anything to
do with the transaction-would she not
have kept her husband posted on the
happenings of those tragic hours?
Would not then Plate have written to
his master in Rome an account of the
entire process?
One naturally asks these questions
| when one is confronted with that most
striking anomaly in history. that the
! death OF Christ or reference to His
! lie is with the exception of doubtful
| passage in Josephus found no where
outside of the New Testament That
Plate did make report to Tiberius Is
| attested by two early writer's. In the
second century and the beginning of
| the third, st. Justin in Rome and Ter
tulllan in Africa, were Christian apollo
| gists, we'll informed, learned, and deal
| Ing with men who could readily seize
on a weak point In argument or mis-
statement Of fact. Now both of these
writer's refer to Pilates report to Ii
| bcrius and speak Of it as well known
Us seen by them and as helping their
cause.
They say in substance that Plate
wrote to the Emperor about Jesus and
mentioned the claim He made to di-
vlnity, whereby the Emperor was So
greatly impressed that he submitted n
the senate the astonishing proposition
to mako Jesus a Roman god But these
writers add that for some unexplained
reason the subservient senate declined
to entertain the Emperors proposition
and let it fall to the ground. Now
there is large number of books-ano.
cryphal, all-which have propagated
legends about Plate. There are acts
of Plate and letters of Plate which
are OF late origin, but the story of these
carly apologsts is not found in them
Where did they get it? Was it from
a genuine report? Was 1t from an
apocryphal writing which has since beer
lost? Has this late discovery anything
to do with the report to which these
early writer's referred?
The question is still In the air. That
Plate ever wrote to Tiberius about On,
Lord seems very doubtful; that Tiberius
ever did rs these early writer's saw he
did is to the last degree improbable
or that doing SO, it has been left tf
some mole in the Vatican to find it on,
today seems all but impossible.