Pilate’s Lepton

In the winter of last year, as I traveled in Israel, I bought one very precious artifact for my collection – it is a bronze coin known as Pilate’s lepton.

Pilate’s lepta were minted in Judea, under the rule of Pontius Pilate between 26 and 36 AD. Lepton (or minute) is the smallest coin of those times, which equaled one eighth of assarius, and one assarius equaled one tenth, and later – one sixteenth part of denarius. There is an inscription on the coin that says Emperor Tiberius — TIBEPIOY КАIСАRОС. Since these coins were struck in Judea, where human images were forbidden, the Roman emperor’s profile is absent from them, but items of religious cult are in abundance: vessels, bowls, augural staff (lituus) etc. As for our coin, there is an image of the augural staff on it.

Pontius Pilate was a Roman prefect, who ruled in Judea and Samaria at the lifetime of Jesus Christ and who is known from a number of sources. Philo and Tacitus mention Pontius Pilate briefly; Joseph Flavius gives a more detailed story about him.

The nickname Pilate (Pilatus) is probably derived from the word for a Roman javelin – pilum; thus, Pilatus means javelin thrower. It is believed that javelin thrower was a third name that every Roman citizen had, and it speaks of military merits of Pontius Pilate’s ancestors. It is also believed that Pontius belonged to an ancient Samnite family of the Pontiuses. Joseph Flavius in his works reports that the prefect’s office in Judea was granted to representatives of the Equestrian order. Thus, Pontius Pilate was also a Roman Equestrian.

The rule of Pontius Pilate was marked with mass executions and violence. Tax and political oppression, provocative actions of Pontius Pilate that offended Jewish religious beliefs and practices, caused mass Jewish uprisings that were ruthlessly suppressed by the Romans. According to philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who lived in the Ist century, Pilate bears responsibility for numerous cruelties and executions that were carried out without any court justice.

In the Gospel of Luke, chapter 23, verses 21 through 25, there is a narration of how Pontius Pilate during the judgment three times refused to sentence Jesus Christ to death, which was demanded by the Sanhedrin under the high priest Caiaphas.

«…But they kept shouting, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”For the third time he spoke to them: “Why? What crime has this man committed? I have found in him no grounds for the death penalty. Therefore I will have him punished and then release him.”But with loud shouts they insistently demanded that he be crucified, and their shouts prevailed. So Pilate decided to grant their demand. He released the man who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, the one they asked for, and surrendered Jesus to their will.»

After sentencing Jesus to the penalty of death, Pilate took some water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, using in this way an old Jewish tradition that symbolized innocence of the shedding of the blood.

After the complaint from Samaritans about the bloody massacre caused by Pontius Pilate; in 36, Roman legate in Syria Vitellius, father of the future emperor Vittelius deposed Pilate from his office and sent him to Rome. The future destiny of Pilate is unknown.

Concerning the future life of Pilate and his suicide there are many legends that can be hardly verified historically. According to Eusebius of Caesarea (IV century), he was exiled to Vienne in Gaul, where different misfortunes eventually forced him to commit suicide. According to another, apocryphal¹ legend, his body after the suicide was thrown into Tiber, but it caused such a disturbance of waters, that the body was pulled out, carried to Vienne and sunk in Rhone where the same thing happened, so that eventually they had to drown it in a bottomless lake in the Alps.

According to other reports, he was executed by Nero. In Vienne there is a pyramidal column of the circus (horse race track), which for a long time was falsely identified as “Pilate’s tomb.”

An image of the Pilate’s lepton was also discovered on the famous Turin shroud. According to tradition, the coin was lying on the left eyelid of the deceased. Numismatists assert that the Pilate’s lepton from Turin is a very rare coin.

On the Turin coin there is an inscription Emperor Tiberius, but the inscription itself has an error in spelling – instead of TIBEPIOY КАIСАRОС it reads TIBEPIOY САIСАRОС. As of today, there are six coins known with this misspelling that are kept in private collections. In actuality, the coin’s image was identified from separate details, to be more exact, the following combination of letters was positively verified – «ОYCAIС»; thus, the conclusion was made that the coin belonged to this particular type. There is some information that has not been confirmed officially, that apart from these letters, 50 smaller fragments of the coin were identified through comparison of the image of the shroud in the polarized light with the coins in the existing collections.

The Shroud of Jesus Christ is mentioned in all four canonical Gospels. Believers accept that it is the very Shroud, in which Joseph and Nicodemus buried the body of Christ after His crucifixion. The Saviour’s Shroud in a scientifically inexplicable way bears the image of His crucified body, the image being on a thin surface layer of the Shroud’s cloth about 10 microns thick. The Shroud is considered to be the fifth Gospel – the material evidence of the Saviour’s existence.

For an unprejudiced observer the Shroud of Turin is a piece of old cloth which is approximately four meters long and one meter wide. There are two full-stature images of a naked male body on the cloth, located symmetrically to one another, head to head. On one half of the Shroud – there is a view of a male with his hands folded in the front; on the other half – the same body viewed from the back. The image on the Shroud is monochromic, yellowish-brown in different degrees of intensity. Special research methods showed that this image is absolutely true in terms of human anatomy and could not be painted by an artist. By the way, the scientists still do not know how the image appeared on the cloth; it is impossible to reproduce it using modern technologies. There are stains of blood on the Shroud trickling from numerous wounds, blood marks on the head from spikes of the crown of thorns, marks from nails in the wrists and feet caused by the crucifixion on the cross, traces of whip lashes on the back, breast and legs, a large stain of blood from a spear wound in the left side. The fact that these are really traces of human blood has been proved through the modern methods of biochemistry.

¹Apocrypha – from the ancient Greek ἀπόκρῠφος — hidden, mysterious, secret — works of the late Jewish and early Christian literature that have not been included in the Biblical canon.