What is Truth?

Antonio Ciseri, 1871

In honor of Good Friday, this selection of paintings (click to enlarge) depicts what for me is the most fascinating event of that day--Christ's trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea. The scene takes place after Christ has been scourged and mocked by the soldiers, and the crowd gathered outside the judgment hall has called for his crucifixion.

Hieronymus Bosch, 1480

A remarkable exchange ensues: 

Quintin Massys,1520

JOHN 33-38: 
"Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, 'Are you the King of the Jews?'  Jesus answered, 'Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?'  Pilate answered, 'Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me; what have you done?'  

Andrea Mantegna, 1500

Jesus answered, 'My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.'  Pilate said to him, 'So you are a king?'  Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice.'   Pilate said to him, 'What is truth?'"

Master L. Cz, 1500

It's a taunt more than a question, cynical and dismissive, and brings their conversation abruptly to an end. But the conversation continues to echo down through history, and Pilate's scoff reverberates even more loudly today. 
What is truth?

Here is the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart on the question:

"It is worth asking ourselves what this tableau, viewed from the vantage of pagan antiquity, would have meant. A man of noble birth, representing the power of Rome, endowed with authority over life and death, confronted by a barbarous colonial of no name or estate, a slave of the empire, beaten, robed in purple, crowned with thorns, insanely invoking an otherworldly kingdom and some esoteric truth, unaware of either his absurdity or his judge’s eminence. Who could have doubted where, between these two, the truth of things was to be found?  But the Gospel is written in the light of the resurrection, which reverses the meaning of this scene entirely. If God’s truth is in fact to be found where Christ stands, the mockery visited on him redounds instead upon the emperor, all of whose regal finery, when set beside the majesty of the servile shape in which God reveals Himself, shows itself to be just so many rags and briars."

Frans Halsmuseum, 1560