Pilate......Good or Evil?

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according to the Bible and to the various Christian commentary I heard on Ponteus Pilate is that he is evil yes. He is not evil in a sense as Jews who killed Jesus were evil. They were the initiators of murder of an innocent man. Pilate is an example of evil that happens when we fail to defend someone and simply stay silent . This happens in our life too. Someone says something nasty or unfair about someone or a group of people and we would remain silent and not say anything out of fear of not being welcome by the group we are in. I've seen this happen when someone makes a racist joke and the person who doesn't laugh or who would otherwise criticize it doesn't say anything.

In real life, Pontius killed many Jews. I doubt he really would have been conflicted about killing another one. Really, it does not make much sense for Jews to want Crucifixion either, as thier holy texts call for other, specific punishments.

It would only be answerable when you put context around it.
Evil is can only be assigned as a virtue when you are in a specific frame of reference. In most western christian religions, he would be considered evil for handing over Jesus for execution.

From a Roman point of view, he would have only been seen as "throwing a bone" to the jewish religious leadership in order to keep them from causing problems which for someone in Pilate's position was a regular happening.

He didnt exactly hate the Jews, nor did he have any exceptionally good feelings towards them either. There are some indications that he may have studied the Jewish religion prior to his being assigned to there as he appeared to have at least some understanding of why some things that the Romans did were so hated by the Jews.

One thing that is clear, he was eventually recalled, and disappears from reliable history... he has pretty much been exculpated by some christian sects however. in the Ethiopian chruch he is a saint and the greek orthodox (i think its greek orthodox at least) his wife has become a saint.

Historically, Ponctius Pilate was a rather cruel governor. More than usual. It's unlikely that he took pity on Jesus or anything of the sort. He just wiped him, as easily as he has done to so many others. In those days, there were hundreds of executions per year. He may have never seen Jesus...

But the gospels were written in days when the growing Christianity was trying to gather members from the Roman Empire - almost everyone nearby at the time. So they've portraied a much nicer Pilate, and put all the blame on the Jews, as if they've ever had any influence on who was to be executed or not.

Thanks to this effort to leave Rome's pride untouched, the Christianism became so huge, taking over an empire in a century or so... But, in doing so, they've lost their essence, the essence of Jesus' teachings, and ended up building no Heaven's Kingdom, but rather an Eartly Hell...

JCS doesn't escape from a nice Pilate because it is a new reading of the Bible, without adding any more ingredients other than a new way of reading the gospels. And they've managed to notice many things that scholars came to confirm years later, by considering the accounts of ancient historians and non-biblical gospels...

In reality, as many have said, he was not a nice man. If I remember, he was recalled for upsetting the people more than was necessary.

That being said, I read someplace that he really only had a couple hundred troops with him, so if there had been a riot or rebellion, things would have been ugly until his superior could march down with his legion.

All that being said, remember that Jesus refused to say he was a king, even though he was claiming to be the Messiah- which in reality, meant the King of the Jews, i.e. the heir of David and Solomon. That would have been the only crime against Rome, but essentially Jesus "pled the Fifth". However, Jesus upset the Jewish leaders, because he was essentially accusing them of being corrupt (which they were). That's why they were so insistent that he be crucified. When he arrived in Jerusalem, he was essentially greeted as King. And as King, he would have had the authority to replace Ciaphas and his entire bunch. He probably could have even had them put to death, if the people accepted him as king. Of course, in the end, he would have run afoul of Rome that way, and his reign would have been pretty short...

As Pilate's portrayed, (and remember, all we have to go on is the tradition, since there's no solid evidence linking him to Jesus in any way) he's trying merely to keep the peace, since the situation had the potential to explode quickly. He doesn't want to execute Jesus, and sees no reason for it- in some ways, upsetting the High Priest might not even have been a bad thing in his eyes.

I really like the way he's portrayed in JCS. Conflicted, and trying not to convict a man unjustly. But as Jesus tells him during the Trial, "you have nothing in your hands". It's a situation which a pagan can't understand, and he needs help to save Jesus. But the Jewish leaders want him dead, and there's nobody to defend Jesus except himself. And he refuses. So Pilate just says "go ahead and kill him if you want. I won't stop you."

So whether it's strictly true or not, I'll take Pilate as a guy with no really good options. So he took the least bad one.

The movie has a LOT in it that isn't biblical. In the bible Pilate tried everything to let Jesus off, but the crowd wanted his crucifixion. Pilate's wife told him to let Jesus go. He even tried to say Jesus was just a fool that didn't know what he was doing but that didn't work either. If Jesus had uttered anything in his own defense he would have been let go, but he knew he had to make the sacrifice. Pilate said that he 'washed his hands' of the whole affair meaning that the crowd could have what they wanted but he wanted nothing to do with it.

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