OF PILATE
THE MEMOIRS OF PONTIUS PILATE. By C. M. Franzero. Allen and Unwin. HESE "memoirs" are not merely ficti-tious-the reader is meant to understand that-but somewhat blatantly so. They contain, for example, many details of Roman and Jewish history and life which the real Pontius Pilate would certainly not have bothered to record. His creator, or resuscitator, also strains the probabilities by giving him all sorts of personal contacts with people in whom 20th Century readers are likely to be interested (the Nicodemus of the Gospels is made one of his friends, and the emperor Tiberius a fellow-student). Perhaps, however, this crudity in the devices by which Mr. Franzero has enabled himself to deliver a history lessom in the form of gossip, does not greatly matter, He succeeds in holding the reader’s interest, and in showing us Roman despotism on the one hand and Jewish fanaticism on the other through the eyes of an intelligent anu _ well-intentioned though not heroic civil servant. The part played by Pilate in the Christian story is, of course, duly set down, and reviewed afterwards in a conversation with Nicodemus; but such topical appeal as the book possesses derives less from this
than from the resemblance between Pilate’s perplexities as a governor over Jews in Palestine and those of modern Englishmen in the same position,
A.N.
P.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19481029.2.35.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 488, 29 October 1948, Page 18
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223OF PILATE New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 488, 29 October 1948, Page 18
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