There's actually a Pontius Pilate thread here, though it's framed in terms of asking people's opinion of him.
Hmm that's interesting and I hope I didn't upset anyone by starting a new one. He was vile and disgusting man who was removed from office in 36 CE for slaughtering Jews when they were tricked. I'm not sure if I mentioned it above or not. Then his position was eliminated in 44 anyways. Interesting enough Caiaphas from the passion narrative was removed along with him suggesting that they were co-conspirators. This furthers the idea that Caiaphas would've been a puppet for Pilate as opposed to the traditional view that Pilate was passive. What are your thoughts on him?
No, not upsetting. We just might want to get a moderator to merge them into a Pilate Megathread of sorts.
He was certainly an immensely vile and unlikeable historical figure. My interpretation of the reasons for the Gospels portraying him somewhat more sympathetically than the historical record and his role in the Crucifixion should indicate is that it's something to do with how the Gospels engage in a lot of subversion or role reversal of expected portrayals, such that the in-groups in Jewish society come off somewhat worse and the out-groups, be they 'unclean' people, minorities, the underclass, or in this case foreign tyrants, come off somewhat better.
