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Question

Where did Pontius Pilate live?

Pilate's seat was Caesarea on the coast, the harbour city Herod the Great had built and named for Augustus, about 87 km north-west of Jerusalem in a straight line; the map point stands on its ruins south of Haifa. From AD 6 the Roman governors of Judea lived there, in Herod's palace on the promontory, and came up to Jerusalem for the feasts, when the crowds were largest.

Luke lists “Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea” beside the tetrarchs, and Acts shows his successors at home in Caesarea: Paul was held “in Herod's judgment hall” there, and Festus “ascended from Caesarea to Jerusalem” three days after taking office. In Jerusalem the governor used the praetorium, and the Gospels place the trial of Jesus there; most scholars take it to be Herod's palace on the western hill, where Philo says Pilate hung gilded shields and where the procurator Florus later set up his tribunal, though the tradition of the Via Dolorosa puts it in the Antonia fortress by the Temple. Josephus tells how Pilate, newly arrived, sent troops into Jerusalem by night with standards bearing the emperor's image, and how the people lay for five days in front of his house at Caesarea until he gave way.

In 1961 Italian excavators found in the theatre of Caesarea a reused limestone block inscribed with Pilate's name and title, prefect of Judea, from a building he had dedicated to Tiberius; it is the only stone inscription of his day known to name him, and it fixes both his rank and his city. Herod's palace, with a pool cut into the rock of the promontory, was excavated from the 1970s to the 1990s, and the governors' residence is placed there.

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Scripture: Luke 3:1; Matt 27:2; Matt 27:27; Acts 23:33–35; Acts 25:1–6; Acts 10:1

Sources

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