Judy Johnstone
Verified User
I am not Jewish, I just generally do not let barely educated anti-Semites lie about Jews.
The cannonical Gospels are not consistent with each other regarding the events that transpired between Jesus of Nazereth and Pontius Pilate. If sentient human beings have any hope of understanding what happened, we have to turn to the use of reason and the principles of historical scholarship.
The claims of the later Gospels do not pass the criterion of contextual credibility. We know from the first century Jewish historian Josepheus that Pontius Pilate was a brutal Roman overlord who executed opponents on a whim and without trial, and he would not have been so meek as to cater to the whims of his Jewish underlings, or to their cries for blood. Pontius would have had no problem - none, nada, zilch - issuing an order to execute Jesus as a threat to Roman interests. First century Jewish historians attribute the execution of Jesus to Pontius Pilate and make no mention of him playing the good guy and attempting to spare Jesus.
The earliest Gospel chronologicaly, aka Mark, comports fairly well with the narrative of the Jewish historians - aka, Pontius Pilate was not the good guy, did not lift a finger to spare Jesus, and gave the order to execute him without giving it a second thought.
As noted earlier, the idea of the crowds calling for Jesus’ blood in chronologically later Gospels does not pass the criterion of dissimilarity; later Christians telling the story may have wanted to emphasize the culpability of the Jewish people.
Last, any attempt to hold all the Jewish people accountable in perpetuity for the actions of a handful of Jewish leaders in the thrall of Roman authorities is something that would only occur to an anti-semite. It is not something that would occur to a normal, ethical, thinking human being.
I think Pilate recognised Jesus standing before him was not just your average person.