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Pontius Pilate Ann Wroe
Random House, 352 pages, $26.95

Pilate's Wife H.D.
New Directions, 160 pages, $12.95

Memoirs of Pontius Pilate: A Novel James R. Mills
Baker, 224 pages, $16.99

It's no surprise that, growing up, I did not hear much about the New Testament at my synagogue. I never heard much about Joseph of Arimathea, Judas, Paul, or, for that matter, Jesus. I did learn something about Pontius Pilate: that he was a very bad man—not because he killed an obscure carpenter from Nazareth, but because he was a coward. If he had handled Jesus' crucifixion with a little more courage, Pilate might have spared Jews centuries of grief, centuries of being labeled host-desecrating, blood-drinking Christ-killers.

Pilate's reputation may improve a tad, thanks to a biography and two novels of mixed quality.

British reporter Ann Wroe has garnered much acclaim on both sides of the pond for her elegantly written, engrossing study of Pilate. Pontius Pilate is not, as the dust jacket suggests, a biography of Pilate, about whom precious little is known: hard evidence amounts to an inscribed stone, a few coins, a few mentions by Josephus, a couple of pages on Philo of Alexandria, a sentence in Tacitus, and (of course) the Gospels.

Wroe's valiant attempts to reconstruct Pilate's life, therefore, are a little suspect. But her study of how Pilate has been remembered and imagined by writers, artists, and theologians for the last two millennia is striking.

One of the most fascinating passages in Pontius Pilate is about not Pilate but his wife, Claudia Procula. The Bible tells us little about Mrs. Pilate. Unnamed by Scripture, a la Lot's wife, she makes a brief appearance in Matthew 27:19: "While he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent to him, saying, 'Have nothing to do with that just Man, for I have suffered many things today in a dream because of Him' " (NKJV). That brief message, Wroe reminds us, earned Claudia a place in Christian history: in Greek and Coptic churches, she is a saint.

Since antiquity, Wroe says, people have been especially fascinated with a detail Matthew leaves out: just what Claudia dreamed. Nineteenth-century Claudia-philes insisted she dreamed of Jesus, "his face appearing with all the sad-eyed solemnity of the lithographs that lined their halls." But medieval writers said Claudia dreamed of the devil, who whispered seductively in her ear, "Your husband holds sway over the life and death of a holy and saintly man. His name's Jesus, who calls himself Christ. You must be sure your husband doesn't pass sentence on him, for if he does you'll both be utterly destroyed."

The different ways Christians have imagined Claudia's dreams point to a greater tension about Jesus' death. We revile Judas and Pilate for their role in it (as, in past centuries, we have also reviled Jews). But would we really go back in time and prevent Judas and Pilate from crucifying Jesus? After all, the salvation of the world depends on the Crucifixion.

Two new novels about Pilate also share an interest in Claudia. Modernist poet H. D. wrote Pilate's Wife in 1929, but it was published for the first time this June. In this rendering, Pilate's wife—H. D. calls her Veronica—is a spiritual seeker, casting about for a soothsayer or prophet who can help her answer the gnawing question of who she is. "I am Veronica," she repeats throughout the book, trying to convince herself. "She could say that and sense it, bite it and feel it."

But even the savviest star-chart-reading psychic in the empire fails to hold Veronica's attention the way an obscure Jew does. She sleeps restlessly, dreaming catch phrases from Scripture: "Unless ye become as a child," "Consider the lilies." Veronica, it seems, wants what all of us want—not fortune-telling and palm-reading but union with God. (It's noteworthy that H. D. was analyzed by none other than Freud, who pioneered the argument that dreams are all, at some level, wishes.)

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December 4 2000, Vol. 44, No. 14