I recently came across Pilate’s Wife, a novel by Antoinette May about the wife of Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea who allegedly prosecuted Jesus. As a religion major fascinated by ancient history, I started researching this figure and what I found made me wonder about the Judaism of today vs. the days of yore, and how people qualified their Judaism in the time of Jesus.
The Gospel of Matthew, Pilate’s wife, who remains unnamed, pleads with her husband for Jesus’’ innocence. While Pilate was in judgment, “his wife sent word to him, ‘Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him'” (Matthew 27:19).
Although she is unnamed in Matthew, tradition assigns Pilate’s wife the name of “Claudia Procula.” Matthew’s portrayal of Claudia might draw on the prototypical image of a noble pagan woman intervening for a Jewish cause, say some scholars. Still, why is this particular woman assigned such an important position in later Christian tradition? According to New Advent, the Abyssianian or Coptic Egyptian Church recognizes her and her husband as saints. Some later traditions even portrayed her as a “secret disciple of Jesus.”
Apocryphal Christian texts like the Acts of Pilate — a fifth-century writing — elaborate on Pilate’s wife’s role. Although the later version is the only extant copy, the Acts of Pilate did exist earlier. In the Acts of Pilate, Pilate calls his wife “a worshipper of G-d” who “adheres to the Jewish religion.” Presumably, the reason she tries to exonerate Jesus, then, is because she sees him as a fellow worshipper of G-d. However, Claudia is noticeably not called a “Jew,” perhaps because she is not a member of the Jewish ethnic people. Still, though, she would represent one of the earlier gentile followers of Jesus if she, indeed, did believe in his message.
What can the tradition of Claudia Procula teach us about Judaism? For one, the Acts of Pilate’s proclamation that Claudia, like Jesus, seems to be a member of the Jewish religion implies that Jesus didn’t see himself as the founder of a new religion. He might have just seen himself as a reformer of Judaism and a messenger from G-d Himself. Secondly, what does it mean that a prominent gentile woman in Judea followed the religion not of her ancestors, but of the land in which she resided? Did that make her “Jewish”?
It appears that the wife of Pilate was not regarded as a Jew, but as a pious woman who followed the faith. The categories of “Jew” and “Judaism” were perhaps more separate in some ways in ancient times — one could follow the G-d of Israel and perhaps be “Jewish” religiously, but not ethnically. Do those distinctions still exist today? If one wants to be considered religiously Jewish, one often needs to convert to Judaism. Does that mean that you convert to an ethnicity or a religion, or both? Were the ancient Jews able to extricate the questions of faith and ethnic ties so easily? Perhaps it was just as difficult then as it is now. These questions about the meaning of “Judaism” and the “Jewish people” still resonate today, just as they did in ancient times.
