By vividly depicting the past using the vernacular, the dramatist is more easily able to reposition audience members, forcing them to see themselves as characters on the stage and, ultimately, as participants in the biblical narrative. When we look into the mirror that Sayers sets before us, we are meant to see ourselves as Herod, Pilate, the holier-than-thou Pharisee, the know-it-all Greek gentleman, and—perhaps most terrifying of all—part of the angry crowd, feverishly shouting, “Crucify! Crucify! Crucify!”
Rhetorically I get this point. But Part of the problem of identification is that we individualize scripture and make it only about us
