A Famous Predecessor Inspires Politician’s Pen

Over the distance of time, one politician sizes up another and finds enough material for a juicy book. No need for muckraking; the facts are dirty enough. Here was a public official from the ancient Middle East who lived in an occupied country, betrayed his own people to get ahead, padded his wallet all the way to the governor’s office and distanced himself from at least one death sentence just to satisfy his constituents.

The book about him, “Memoirs of Pontius Pilate” (Fleming H. Revell), is a fictional account set nearly 2,000 years ago when Pilate governed Jerusalem and Jesus lived in nearby Capernaum. The author? James R. Mills, who, at 72, is a retired officeholder who says he knew men like Pontius Pilate during his time as president pro tempore of the California state Senate through the 1970s.

Mills, who lives in Coronado, represented southern San Diego County first as a member of the Assembly in the ‘60s and later in the state Senate. He is best known for his work to extend the state sales tax to include gasoline, making the money available to subsidize public transportation projects. His book “A Disorderly House” (Heyday Books, 1987) is about his time in the Assembly.

Those years as a public servant gave him a fresh perspective on Pontius Pilate--an unusual subject for a novel. By focusing attention on the ancient governor’s story, Mills fills in the background of the trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, which Christians around the world commemorate this week. The book should hold plenty of interest for non-Christians as well.

“His life as a politician and the drama of the scene where he plays a main character always interested me,” Mills said of Pilate’s tale. That interest first took shape in 1977 when Mills wrote “The Gospel According to Pontius Pilate,” his first fictional memoir. “I kept thinking I could tell the story better,” Mills said. He continued researching and took a slightly new approach for this book.

He relied on Gospel passages, secular histories from the time of Christ and personal knowledge of modern-day career politicians to help him imagine Pilate’s view of Jesus.

“I thought of Pilate as a fairly typical politician,” Mills said. “He was a corrupt and cynical bureaucrat.”

Pilate was governor of Judea, a province that included Jerusalem, from about AD 26 until his career ended 10 years later, when he was arrested and tried for crimes of his own, including murder. The details of that trial, like the rest of Pilate’s story, are not as well-documented as his years of public service. Tradition says he was exiled to Gaul--modern-day Vienne in southeastern France--where he drowned himself in the Rhone River.

History shows that Pilate, a nonpracticing Jew who supported Roman rule, made a habit of offending his Jewish subjects. He put the image of Caesar on coins although Jewish law forbade creating human images; he spent the Jewish temple treasury on building an aqueduct into Jerusalem; and he set spies on his suspected enemies.

He probably sold offices and favors, since that was a typical abuse of power in Pilate’s day, Mills said.

“In his time, people went into office to get rich,” he said.

Details about the governor’s reign come from the writings of Josephus Flavius and Philo of Alexandria, two 1st century historians whom New Testament scholars rely on for secular accounts about Judaism in that time, in which Pilate and Jesus figured.

“I wanted to create the world Jesus lived in and the scene of his trial to help people look at him from outside the Gospels,” Mills said. “Most Christians are sure if they’d been in the Holy Land, they would have been his faithful followers, but, as a matter of fact, many people would have found Jesus very disturbing.” Jesus was known to challenge the existing customs and values of his own religion. Those who are comfortable in their church today, Mills said, probably would have been comfortable with their faith back then and wouldn’t have welcomed change.

The fictionalizing of history is not an unusual device. Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal are among modern authors who have written fiction in the voice of historic figures.

“It’s a well-established approach to use the voice of a historic character to look back at history,” said Jonathan Kirsch, who published his “Moses, A Life” in 1998 and reviews religious and other books for The Times.

He points out that Mills’ main sources, Josephus and Philo, were Jews trying to explain Jewish history to the Roman world. Such sources, outside Scripture, are invaluable. he said. “The fundamental and crucial challenge to writing about biblical figures is that a gulf exists between the kernel of history [that is documented] and the elaborations that occur later.”

Pilate’s suicide falls into the second category, said John Wilson, director of the Institute for the Study of Archeology and Religion at Pepperdine University in Malibu. Along with reports of his suicide, there are letters Pilate supposedly wrote and a book about him written in the 4th century, “The Acts of Pilate.”

“‘Anything written after the 1st century you’ve got to take with a very large grain of salt,” Wilson said. “Pilate became a character of mythology.”

Wary of that, Mills researched social customs from Pilate’s time to help explain the meaning of certain Gospel passages. In one account, the Pharisees, who were rabbis, ask Jesus if Jews should pay Roman taxes. Jesus tells them to give Caesar what is his and give God what belongs to God. The more we know about ancient coins, the better sense the story makes.

“There were money changers at the temple in Jerusalem who exchanged Egyptian, Roman and Greek coins for Hebrew money,” Mills explained. “Only Hebrew money could be given to God. When the people asked Jesus about giving money to Caesar, Jesus was referring to that. They couldn’t give Caesar’s coins, Roman money, to the temple.”

For most of his public life Jesus worked in Galilee, a district outside Pilate’s control. But Mills points out another reason why he may have stayed outside Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin, the Jewish court of law that finally saw to it that Jesus was silenced, had no control over Galilee either. Jesus was safer there.

At one point in the trial of Jesus, Pilate sends him to be judged by Herod Antipas, who ruled over the territory in which Jesus lived. Mills said Pilate was playing politics to gain favor with Herod.

“Herod always wanted to meet Jesus,” Mills said. “He wanted Jesus to work a miracle for him. When he met Jesus, he decided Jesus wasn’t a threat to the Roman empire and sent him back to Pilate. From that day, the two politicians were friends.”

Passing judgment against Jesus was the last step in a game of back-room politics, Mills says in his book. The Sanhedrin, a 70-member Supreme Court of sorts, could legally try only cases of heresy--the teaching of anything opposed to official Jewish doctrine.

“They accused Jesus of heresy, among themselves, yet that’s not what he was tried for,” Mills explained. Sedition, a crime against the head of state, is the charge that stuck. The enemies of Jesus said that his claims about a new kingdom to come were threats to the government.

The crowds that followed Jesus into Jerusalem a few days before the trial--Palm Sunday on the Christian calendar--were looking for someone to lead a rebellion. Mills said the drama of that day convinced Jesus’ opponents he had to be stopped. The ruling body of priests “believed Jesus would raise a rebellion that the Jews could not win,” Mills explained. They complained to Pilate that he was dangerous. “There is a reference to their point of view in the Bible. Caiaphas, the high priest, said it was better that one man die than that the whole nation be lost.”

As the trial turned angry, with a mob gathering outside, Pilate washed his hands in a public display. A gesture, Mills said, which meant more than appears to modern eyes.

“In Jewish tradition, hand-washing had to do with murder,” Mills said. Whenever a murderer managed to escape the law, the elders of the community washed their hands as a ritual cleansing. “They were asking that God not hold all the people responsible or punish them all for the crime.” By washing his own hands, Pilate was saying that he should not be held responsible for the death sentence handed to Jesus, Mills explained.

“Politicians pussyfoot around the issues because it might lose them votes, although it is generally clear what is right to do,” Mills said about the Roman governor’s choice. “Pilate is alive today, serving in every state legislature, city council and executive mansion of our nation.”

Mary Rourke can be reached at mary.rourke@latimes.com.