Land, Christopher D. “Jesus before Pilate: A Discourse Analysis of John 18:33–38.” In Modeling Biblical Language: Selected Papers from the McMaster Divinity College Linguistics Circle., edited by Stanley E. Porter et al., 233–49. Linguistic Biblical Studies. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Jesus before Pilate: A Discourse Analysis of John 18:33–38 Christopher D. Land Introduction The Fourth Gospel closes with an endorsement of Jesus’ beloved disciple: “We know that his testimony is true” (21:24). Historical critics, two thousand years later, are rarely so supportive. Jesus’ disciple has been interrogated by a dizzying array of examiners and made to answer a great many questions. In the end, many have chosen to reject his testimony. Among the points which have been disputed, perhaps none is more sensitive than “Who killed Jesus?” Looking back on the anti-Semitic atrocities of the Second World War, scholars of all persuasions have undertaken to re-examine the events surrounding Jesus’ death. How did Jesus, a Jew, end up the victim of a Roman crucifixion? It is indisputable that John’s Gospel must be admitted as a vital piece of evidence; as Raymond Brown acknowledges, “With all its drama and its theology, John’s account of the trial is the most consistent and intelligible we have.” 1 Yet scholars have generally taken a very reserved position concerning John’s trustworthiness, and some have forthrightly declared his account tainted and prejudiced. Winter’s verdict is particularly blunt: “From John 18,9 onward the Fourth Gospel contains nothing of any value for the assessment of historical facts.” 2 What is it about John’s narrative that evokes such distrust? For one thing, the account is sometimes said to reflect a shift of responsibility whereby the Roman authorities who orchestrated Jesus’ death are exonerated and the Jewish people are held accountable for a crime they did not commit. 3 [234] To some scholars, John’s account appears to be “extremely biased in favor of Pilate and against the Jews.” 4 Some would go further and insist that, as regards John’s depiction of Pilate, “history has been rewritten to put more blame on ‘the Jews.’” 5 In this essay, I will make no attempt to deny the (obvious) fact that the Fourth Gospel is extremely biased, but I will challenge the suggestion that it is biased in favour of Pontius 1 Raymond E. Brown, John XIII–XXI (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 861. Similarly, Andreas J. Köstenberger, John (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004), 521: “John’s account of Jesus’ Roman trial is by far the most detailed in the Gospels.” 2 Paul Winter, On the Trial of Jesus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1961), 89. 3 For instance, C.K. Barrett summarizes John’s account of Jesus’ Roman trial as follows: “The Jews are constantly malevolent, and seek the blood of Jesus, even at the cost of denying their own faith; Pilate on the other hand declares three times that Jesus is innocent, seeks to release him, and is compelled to crucify him only by the threat of 19:12” (The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text [2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978], 530). 4 These words are from Herman Ridderbos (The Gospel According to John: A Theological Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], 586), although Ridderbos does not himself endorse such an interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. 5 Maurice Casey, Is John’s Gospel True? (London: Routledge, 1996), 186.