LET’S GET BIBLICAL….Kieran Healy talks today about the fate of the last representative of a superpower who tried to modernize the Middle East:
For all his failings, [Pontius] Pilate was at least attempting to bring a European tradition of republicanism in politics, pluralistic tolerance of religion in civic life, and heavy investment in public infrastructure to a priest-ridden, monotheistic, backward Middle-Eastern region….History might remember Pilate better had he not had the massive bad luck to run up against a blowback problem the size of the Son of God during his governorship.
Heh heh. Poor old P? did have a spot of bad luck there, didn’t he?
