Ponsi Ponschis Pilot, the Roman Prefect of Judea, who in the Bible, oversaw the trial of Jesus of

Nazareth and ultimately condemned him to death by crucifixion on what we today call

Good Friday. Now what is very interesting about

Ponsch's pilot is that we have a lot of surviving information about this Roman

official and about his rule over Judea, we can say that absolutely Pontius pilot was a real historical figure.

So in this special Easter episode, we're going to do an in-depth exploration of Pontius Pilate.

What literary sources do we have for him, both biblical and non-biblical?

What do they say? How do they differ? And what does the archaeological

evidence reveal about him from coinage, architecture, a famous inscription, and more? To explain all we have Professor Helen Bond from the University of

Edinburgh returning to the show. I really do hope you enjoy and he is Helen.

Helen it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast today. Thank you, it's lovely to be here.

And we're doing it for the first time ever in person, in your office at the University of Edinburgh to talk about one of our favourite figures,

definitely one of your favourite figures. I find this person absolutely fascinating because he's a real figure.

This is Pontius Pilate. And we know a lot about him. I feel like I've lived a long time with Ponchus pilot. I wrote my PhD thesis about Ponchis pilot. So I feel I have a connection.

Now, of course we will delve more into the detail but as a start a bit of an overview question,

who was Pontius Pilot? Why do we know that name today?

He was the Roman Prefect of the province of Judea and most importantly he and the reason why we know

him today is that he sent Jesus of Nazareth to the cross.

And is he almost to say a major character in the Gospels when telling the story of Jesus or is that trial that big episode is it still quite a concise one?

It's a fairly big thing. I mean particularly in some of the Gospels. It's a bigger thing in John's Gospel than in the others, but it's sort of, it's like the climax, you know, it's like one of these films that ends in the big courtroom drama. And this is a thing that needs to be explained away for Christians

because you know how do you get people to join the new movement if the central

figure has been crucified as as a rebel against Rome so they do have to do a little bit of maneuvering

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