Why Did Pontius Pilate Really Wash His Hands?
The hand-washing scene appears only in Matthew's Gospel (Matt. 27:24). Pilate washes his hands before the crowd and declares himself innocent of Jesus' blood. Matthew seems to want to place responsibility for Jesus’ death on those Judeans calling for his execution. It is perhaps worth noting here that Matthew was probably Jewish himself and was fluent in, and a highly skilled reader and writer of, both Aramaic (the local language in Judea, Jesus own mother-tongue) and Greek, the common language of the Roman Empire itself.
Hand-washing as a symbol of innocence had precedent in Jewish tradition and scripture. Deuteronomy 21:6–7 describes elders washing their hands over an unsolved killing to disclaim guilt. Matthew, writing largely for a Jewish-Christian audience, may have used this gesture since Rome had no equivalent ritual for declaring judicial innocence.
Because the scene is absent from Mark, Luke and John, and its symbolism draws on Jewish rather than Roman custom, many scholars view it as a literary and theological addition by Matthew, designed to underline both Pilate's reluctance and the responsibility of the crowd, and especially its leaders. Whether a Roman prefect would actually have performed a specifically Jewish ritual gesture in this setting is a genuine point of historical debate. Pilate though had already served several years as Prefect and could have known his audience well enough to understand how the locals would read the symbol.
If it was a literary addition, though questionable today, such usage of literary devices was entirely acceptable in the first-century Roman genre of biography. The scene works well dramatically within Matthew's own narrative aims, but it cannot be treated today as an independently attested historical event. That is why, in Maximus, this particular event is not mentioned.
Enjoyed this article? John writes regularly about the historical world behind the Maximus novels.