Pontius Pilate Deserves No Sympathy

Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate condemned Jesus to the cross. Christians have always known this. However, due to a failure to look at the big picture when reading the accounts in the New Testament Gospels, some Christians are reluctant to place much blame on the merciless leader.

As we all know, Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus to the authorities in Jerusalem. These authorities were the ones who arrested Jesus. This makes sense historically, as the authorities, not Pilate, would be responsible for handling Jewish matters such as this.

High priest, Joseph Caiaphas and others decided Jesus had to be executed and brought him to Pilate.
All four canonical Gospels tell us that Pilate gave a crowd of Jews the opportunity to choose whether or not to crucify Jesus.

The Jews in the crowd loudly proclaimed to Pilate that Jesus should be crucified. In the Gospel of John, Pilate stated that he found no fault in Jesus. Despite this, he gave into the demands of the crowd and condemned Jesus to his bloody fate.

Since the actions of Caiaphas and Judas brought Jesus to Pilate and Pilate initially opted not to execute Jesus, some Christians today have argued that Pilate had "no choice" in the matter. To make their case, they have acknowledged that Pilate was a "coward," but argued that the two previously- mentioned Jewish men deserve much more blame.

To be perfectly blunt, that is a ridiculous argument. The prefect ultimately DID sentence Jesus to death on the cross. While I would not disagree Caiaphas was the worst of the three since he was so eager to kill Jesus, Pilate was unbelievably cruel to kill anyone in that fashion.

Had Pilate simply wanted to punish Jesus and stop Him from creating a major disturbance at Passover, he could have thrown Jesus in jail for a while instead. Pilate had many soldiers at his disposal, so if angry Jews protested the decision to simply imprison Jesus, Pilate could have used them to silence the dissenters. 

So, what does this tell us? Is it possible Jesus' claims of God's kingdom and power angered the Roman elites as well and this also led the prefect to agree to the death penalty? After all, there is the possibility the talk of such a kingdom was viewed as a insult to someone who was the current ruler. We cannot know for sure.

This is not to say the Gospels are wrong when they said Pilate was reluctant to kill him initially. My argument is that Pilate ultimately did make the decision to give Jesus the most horrific punishment known to man, despite the fact Jesus had done nothing wrong. There is no need to feel sorry for him or cut him slack, just because Jewish elites were the ones who initially wanted him to die. 

The point is, Pilate was a violent man who actually put a LOT of people to death. Here are just two examples of Pilate's violent side:

The famous Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus wrote in his Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.2 that Pilate spent money from the Jewish Temple to build an aqueduct. Pilate had soldiers hidden in the crowd of Jews while addressing them and, when Jews again protested his actions he gave the signal for his soldiers to randomly attack, beat and kill – in an attempt to silence Jewish petitions.

Additionally, the ancient Jewish writer, Philo of Alexandria harshly criticized Pilate, writing that the prefect feared of being reported to his superior, Emperor Tiberius, for "...the briberies, the insults, the robberies, the outrages and wanton injuries...the ceaseless and supremely grievous cruelty (On the Embassy of Gauis, Book XXXVIII).

The point is that Pilate was not a man who made a cowardly decision after dealing with demands from a Jewish crowd and some Jewish leaders... He was a brutal man who put large numbers of people to death.

I don't believe, even for a second, that Pilate lost any sleep over the matter. Since he had killed many others, he probably decided killing an innocent man was no big deal, even though he didn't personally see any reason for a death sentence. As mentioned before, there is also the possibility some of Jesus' teachings of God's kingdom did not sit well with the an authoritarian leader like Pilate. 

Though we as Christians believe Jesus had to die for us, Pilate's cruelty against an innocent man was still hard to fathom. The Roman prefect should be remembered for what he was. To portray him otherwise is to miss the overall point- He put Jesus to death.