According to Mark, it was a custom of the Roman governor during the feast of Passover to release one prisoner to the Jews, anyone for whom they asked. When Pilate asks the crowd which prisoner they would like to have releasedJesus, the preacher and traitor to Rome, or bar Abbas, the insurrectionist and murdererthe crowd demands the release of the insurrectionist and the crucifixion of the preacher. "Why?" Pilate asks, pained at the thought of having to put an innocent Jewish peasant to death. What evil has he done? But the crowd shouts all the louder for Jesuss death. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" (Mark 15:120). The scene is absolutely nonsensical. Never mind that outside the gospels there exists not a shred of historical evidence for any such Passover custom on the part of any Roman governor. What is truly beyond belief is the portrayal of Pontius Pilatea man renowned for his loathing of the Jews, his total disregard for Jewish rituals and customs, and his penchant for absentmindedly signing so many execution orders that a formal complaint was lodged against him in Romespending even a moment of his time pondering the fate of yet another Jewish rabble-rouser.
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About Reza Aslan
Reza Aslan was Iranian us scholar of religious studies. Reza Aslan is an Iranian-American scholar of sociology, writer, and television host. A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam but continued to write about Christianity. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- History — Lessons from the past and the arc of human civilisation