The plot about Pontius Pilate fell into the field of fictional works from the end of the ХІХth century. The main universal tendencies, which will remain significant throughout the ХХth century, are the «humanization» and the psychologization of the character, the addition and re-accentuation of some episodes of the Gospels, the saturation of the plot with various elements of imagery.
The authors of the first fictional stories about Pontius Pilate (A. France, L. Wallace, M. Corelli, J. M. Eça de Queiroz, J. London, L. Andreev, M. Artsybashev, etc.) have relied on the artistic depiction of evangelical plots, deprived of author's interference and direct voice. These authors have continued not as much the E. Renan's «historical» conception, but have developed latent psychological places of evangelical stories. They not only have «populated» the central characters of gospel history, such as Jesus Christ, Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate, but have created their multifaceted images using the latest means of psychology, nonlinear plot, complicated methods of narrative.
In modern fiction the character of Pontius Pilate was determined by such elements as psychological contradictions, national-cultural and socio-political motivation of behavior. In the axiological plan, two vectors, «positive» and «negative», remain relevant, however, the tendency to complicate the Roman procurator's position towards Jesus was gradually dominant up to the understanding and acceptance of his ideas. At the same time, Pilate's adherence to Jesus was accompanied by fear about political career and subsequent reproaches of conscience, or even perpetuation of Christianity, as in the N. Koroleva's novel «What is Truth?».
New trends in the transformation of the Pilate's Complex have been observed in the literature of the borders of the XXth and XXIst centuries. Works by A. Bernet, M.O. Silva, J. Saramago, E.-E. Schmitt shows a significant departure from the content of the Gospel original source, as well as the innovation of its conceptual meanings. The authors humiliate the characters of the Savior and Pilate and try to bring them as close as possible to the modern man. The writers detail and at the same time symbolize evangelical story, give non-canonical biographies to canonical characters, fill their inner world with doubts and strained searches of truth. Thus, they maintain the meaningful significance of the discursive interconnection between the central characters of this traditional plot, emphasize the moral and philosophical questions of Good and Evil, Truth and Hope, Faith and Doubt. The genre forms within which the plot of Pontius Pilate is transformed are: literary apocrypha, fictitious biography, parable, memoirs and confessional novel, existential novel.
