The Jews Under Gaius and Pilate

After the death of Tiberius, Gaius received the empire. Among his countless outrages against many people, he did no small harm above all to the whole Jewish nation. This can be learned briefly from Philo’s own words, in which he writes word for word as follows: [a] “So great was the inconsistency of Gaius’s character toward everyone, and especially toward the Jewish race. He hated them bitterly, and he took over their prayer-houses in the other cities, beginning with those at Alexandria, and filled them with images and statues of his own likeness; for when he allowed others to set them up, he was in effect setting them up himself. The shrine in the holy city, which alone remained untouched and had been granted every right of sanctuary, he altered and transformed into a temple of his own, so that it would be called the temple of Gaius, the New Zeus Made Manifest.” [b] The same author records countless other terrible things, beyond all description, that happened to the Jews at Alexandria under this emperor, in a second work, which he titled On the Virtues. Josephus agrees with him; he too shows that the disasters of the whole nation began from the time of Pilate and of their daring crimes against the Savior. [c]

Listen, then, to what he reports in the second book of his Jewish War, in these very words: “Pilate, sent to Judea as governor by Tiberius, brought the images of Caesar secretly into Jerusalem by night, covered. They are called standards. At daybreak this caused the greatest uproar among the Jews. Those who were near were horrified at the sight, as though their laws had been trampled underfoot, for they do not allow any image to be set up in the city.” [d] If you compare these things with what the Gospels record, you will see that it was not long before the cry they had raised before this same Pilate came back on them, when they shouted that they had no king but Caesar alone. [e]

The same writer then records that another disaster followed. He says: “After this he stirred up another disturbance by spending the sacred treasury, which is called Corban, on an aqueduct. It brought water down from a distance of about thirty-seven miles. [f] The people were indignant at this, and when Pilate was in Jerusalem they surrounded him and shouted against him. But he had foreseen the disturbance. He had mixed armed soldiers, dressed in civilian clothes, into the crowd, forbidding them to use the sword but ordering them to beat the shouters with clubs, and from the tribunal he gave the signal. The Jews were beaten; many died of the blows, and many were trampled to death by their own people as they fled. The crowd, stunned by the fate of those who were killed, fell silent.” [g] Besides these, the same writer shows that countless other revolts broke out in Jerusalem itself. He makes it plain that from that time on, factions and wars and one evil scheme after another never left the city and all Judea, until at last the siege under Vespasian overtook them. In this way the punishment of divine justice pursued the Jews for what they had dared against Christ.