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Joh_18:38. Pilate, now fully convinced that he has before him an innocent and harmless enthusiast, asks, with that air of contemptuous deprecation which is peculiar to the material understanding in regard to the abstract and supersensual sphere, What is truth? A non ens, a phantom, he thus conceives it to be, with which He would found a kingdom; and weary of the matter, and abruptly breaking it off, he goes straightway forth to the Jews, and declares to them that he finds no guilt in Jesus,[233] from which definite declaration it is seen that by the above question he does not mean at all to designate the matter merely as not coming within his jurisdiction (Steinmeyer). Something of good-nature lies in this conduct, but it is the weak and shallow good-nature of the man of the world who is indifferent towards higher things; nothing of the disconsolate tone of the searcher for truth (Olshausen) is to be imported. Against the view of Chrysostom, Theodoras Heracl., Euth. Zigabenus, Aretius, and several others, however, that Pilate had actually become desirous to be acquainted with the truth (Nonnus even thinks: καὶ Πιλάτος θάμβησε ); it is at once decisive that he immediately turns his back and goes out.
Whence did John learn of this conversation of Pilate with Jesus? He can hardly have been himself an ear-witness of it.[234] But whether the fact be that it was communicated by Pilate in his own circles, and that hence it reached John, or whether it be that some ear-witness of the interview himself brought the information to John, the matter is not inconceivable (in answer to Scholten), and in no case have we the right to ascribe the account merely to the composition of John (Strauss), as Baur especially finds impressed on the declarations of Pilate that he “finds no guilt in Jesus,” only the tendency of the evangelist to roll the guilt as far as possible off Pilate’s shoulders, and place it on those of the Jews, which purpose also the question, What is truth? is intended to serve, in which Baur suggests the sense: how can one make a crime out of truth?
[233] Here we are to think of the sending away of Jesus to Herodes Antipas. See on Luke, note after Luk_23:12. But how could the fourth evangelist have omitted this episode, had he been a Gentile Christian, and had designed to concentrate the guilt of the death of Jesus as much as possible on the Ἰουδαϊοι ? This in answer to Baur and Schenkel.
[234] So Steinmeyer, Leidensgesch. p. 143.