The case against Pontius Pilate
Pontius Pilate
Why did Pilate execute Jesus when he believed him to be innocent?
Pilate was the Governor of Judea, a province of the Roman Empire. He had 6,000 crack troops with him and 30,000 more on call in nearby Syria.
Pilate was effectively a dictator; so long as he kept Rome happy, he had absolute power, including power of life and death.
The case against Pilate is that he found Jesus not guilty, but had him executed in order to keep the peace.
The two Pilates
We don't know what Pilate was like. The Bible story paints him as a weak but innocent man who didn't want to execute a man he believed innocent, but who gave in to political pressure.
Some historians disagree. Philo, writing at the time, said that Pilate was calculating, cruel and brutal. He probably had a typical Roman's disdain for any other culture, thinking the Jews not nearly as civilised as the Romans.
Pilate was well known for having executed prisoners even without trial, so it would not be out of character for him to be responsible for killing Jesus.
What were Pilate's motives?
Pilate was desperate to keep the peace. His career in the Roman Empire depended on his running the province smoothly and efficiently.
He had 6,000 soldiers on hand to keep the peace in a city bulging with 2.5 million Jews. The religious authorities, whose cooperation he needed for a quiet life, wanted him to execute Jesus and there was an angry mob baying for Jesus' blood.
To release Jesus would have been likely to cause a riot; Pilate could have lost control of the city, and possibly the province.
Pilate sacrificed Jesus to preserve Roman rule and his own career.
Passover
No matter how little he thought of the people of Judea, Pilate could not get out of attending the major festival of Passover.
The message of Passover was one that was certain to unsettle anyone who was trying to keep the Jewish people under their thumb, for it celebrated the time when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt into the Holy Land, shaking off foreign oppression.
So it's no accident that nearly all of the riots that we hear about in the first century took place at Passover.
Pilate would have been anxious about any possibility of trouble breaking out, particularly trouble near the Temple, the heart of the Jewish community.
And because trouble in that sort of situation is contagious, Pilate knew that he would have to be ruthless in stamping out any sort of disorder.
The Romans wouldn't have been able to rule without an extensive network of spies, so it's certain that Pilate knew all about Jesus' arrival in Jerusalem, his preaching and the havoc he'd caused in the Temple.
But Pilate was probably unprepared for the problem that Caiaphas presented him with when he brought Jesus before him.
A trial for treason
Instead of leading with the conviction for blasphemy, Caiaphas claimed that Jesus was guilty of sedition.
Jesus, Caiaphas said, thought himself, or his followers thought, or people said that he was the King of the Jews. This was a capital crime against Rome and Pilate had to deal with it whether he wanted to or not.
The rumour raced round Jerusalem: Jesus of Nazareth was on trial for his life.
Crowds began to gather, some of them probably a mob organised by the Temple authorities; just what a Roman governor hoping for a peaceful Passover did not want.
Pilate asked Jesus if he was calling himself King of the Jews. Jesus made little or no reply.
Pilate read the reports that he had from his officials and saw that it was quite clear that Jesus wasn't leading a military revolution. There was simply no evidence against Jesus.
Pilate said, 'this man is innocent'.
The crowd was angered by the verdict and began to shout for Jesus to be crucified.
Pilate faced a dilemma: If he released Jesus there might be serious riots. But the alternative was to execute an innocent man.
Pilate wanted a way out (he didn't need one - it was well within his authority to execute people on flimsy evidence) and he tried a masterstroke of lateral thinking.
There was a Passover amnesty, which allowed the Roman governor to release a prisoner on the festival. Pilate offered the crowd a choice between Jesus and Barabbas, a convicted murderer.
The crowd shouted for Barabbas to be released.
There was no way out for Pilate, but he made a last attempt at saving his own reputation.
Pilate declared that Jesus was innocent and condemned him to death by crucifixion. Then he symbolically washed his hands in front of the crowd, telling them he was innocent of Jesus' blood.
Pilate's fate
Pilate was recalled to Rome to be tried for his brutal treatment of Jews, but the Emperor Tiberius died, and Pilate was never brought to trial. He is thought to have committed suicide in 37 AD - not long after the crucifixion.
There is a Christian tradition that Pilate and his wife eventually converted to Christianity.