'Pilate wrote a title also, and put it on the cross.'--JOHN xix. 19.
This title is recorded by all four Evangelists, in words varying in
form but alike in substance. It strikes them all as significant that,
meaning only to fling a jeer at his unruly subjects, Pilate should have
written it, and proclaimed this Nazarene visionary to be He for whom
Israel had longed through weary ages. John's account is the fullest, as
indeed his narrative of all Pilate's shufflings is the most complete.
He alone records that the title was tri-lingual (for the similar
statement in the Authorised Version of Luke is not part of the original
text). He alone gives the Jews' request for an alteration of the title,
and Pilate's bitter answer. That angry reply betrays his motive in
setting up such words over a crucified prisoner's head. They were meant
as a savage taunt of the Jews, not as an insult to Jesus, which would
have been welcome to them. He seems to have regarded our Lord as a
harmless enthusiast, to have had a certain liking for Him, and a
languid curiosity as to Him, which came by degrees to be just tinged
with awe as he felt that he could not quite make Him out. Throughout,
he was convinced that His claim to be a king contained no menace for
Caesar, and he would have let Jesus go but for fear of being
misrepresented at Rome. He felt that the sacrifice of one more Jew was
a small price to pay to avert his accusation to Caesar; he would have
sacrificed a dozen such to keep his place. But he felt that he was
being coerced to do injustice, and his anger and sense of humiliation
find vent in that written taunt. It was a spurt of bad temper and a
measure of his reluctance.
Besides the interest attaching to it as Pilate's work, it seems to John
significant of much that it should have been fastened on the Cross, and
that it should have been in the three languages, Hebrew (Aramaic),
Greek, and Latin.
Let us deal with three points in succession.