Abstract
In modern parlance, it is only the guilty who confess. Yet we read in one of the New Testament letters, I Timothy, that Jesus “testified to the good confession in the time of Pontius Pilate”. What is an innocent man—or, in Christian belief, the most innocent man in human history—doing making a confession to a brutal official like Pontius Pilate? It is of immense historical interest that one of the preeminent legal theorists of early modern Europe, Hugo Grotius, commented on this verse in I Timothy in his fabulously learned twelve-volume commentary, Annotations on the Old and New Testament. This chapter shows how Grotius’ biblical exegesis, and his poetic composition Christ Suffering, illuminate the Christian idea of Pilate’s innocence.
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