Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

368 Journal of Biblical Literature
with techniques of literary criticism, specifically audience-oriented criticism (a footnote
on p. 22 cites several practitioners of reader-response criticism). Like an audience, readers
of the Gospels “build” or “assemble” Pilate’s character, Carter suggests. Indeed, the
following chapters offer a close reading of the literary object, Pilate’s character, and with
this method Carter draws attention to literary verities such as paradox and irony. With
an interest in Pilate as a governor who makes alliances with the Jewish elite under the
aegis of the Roman empire, Carter introduces a second methodology, postcolonial criticism.
This reading strategy, Carter argues, foregrounds “the impact of imperial structures
and worldviews” on the Bible’s composition and subsequent interpretation (p. 31).
Reading Pilate from a postcolonial perspective, he maintains, allows readers to see how
the Gospels resist the Roman imperial system rather than submit to it. Here he cites
Gerhard Lenski and R. S. Sugirtharajah.
Carter’s use of postcolonial criticism merits an evaluative aside. On the one hand,
reading the trial scenes as a highly political confrontation between God’s providential
order and Roman domination is not unique to postcolonial criticism (see, e.g., Marcus
Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1999], 91).
Postcolonialism additionally critiques current developments such as American imperialism,
economic globalization, and power dynamics that have shaped the field of biblical
studies, and readers would be profitably alerted to this fact. On the other hand, Carter’s
applications of postcolonialism are often masterful. For example, that the Matthean
Pilate manipulates the crowd through words and signs such as his handwashing invites a
postcolonial reading. Postcolonialism would identify in this part of Matthew a hegemonic
code of discourse designed to authenticate the dominant values, prejudices, and
prerogatives of the ruling class (see R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical
Interpretation [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], 79–86). While not using
Sugirtharajah’s terminology, Carter captures the scene's hegemonic element: “[The
people] are puppets prompted by their masters to declare themselves in control of this
situation in doing the elite’s will” (p. 97). He concludes that the scene’s hegemonic discourse
is attenuated by Matthew’s narrative, itself a different type of discourse that foregrounds
not the people’s demand for Jesus’ execution but rather the elites’ instigation of
the same (p. 97). Such analysis offers readers a nuanced understanding of the political
realities confronted by Jesus and early Christians, and explains in detail how Christians
mustered a defiant response when threatened by the Roman Empire.
Chapter 3 explains how power was structured in the Roman Empire, where the
emperor established alliances with ruling elites such as Pilate. These alliances typically
resulted in the domination of the populace by means of taxation and military intimidation.
The elites, in turn, were in league with a retainer class of provincial officials, who in
the case of Judea included the Jewish leaders bolstered not only by their religious
authority but a temple-based tax system. Barred from power were all other classes,
including the artisans, slaves, and commoners such as Jesus. Carter’s clear delineation of
the social hierarchy illuminates his reading of the NT accounts of Pilate’s interaction
with Jesus. To conclude the chapter, Carter adds detail to the portrait of Pilate, the
Roman praefectus. He notes the great likelihood of one in Pilate’s position to inflict corporal
punishment when a commoner like Jesus was brought to trial, and he characterizes
the governor of the day as plundering and exploitative, per Josephus’s tale of the
bloodsucking fly.