9 6 EARLY WISDOM GOSPELS
And Pilatus said to them,
"Look at the man."
When the high priests and the serving men saw him, they shouted,
"Crucify, crucify!"
Pilatus said to them, "You take him and crucify him. I find no fault in him."
The Jews answered him, "We have a law and according to that law he
should die, because he made himself son of god."When Pilatus heard this word, he was more frightened. Again he went back
into the Praetorium and said to Yeshua, "Where are you from?"
But Yeshua didn't answer him.
Then Pilatus told him, "You don't speak to me? Don't you know that I have
the authority to free you and I have the authority to crucify you?"
Yeshua answered him,
"You would have no authority over me at all
were it not given to you from above.
Therefore the one who handed me over to you
has the greater sin."^60
Thereupon Pilatus sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, saying, "If
you free this man, you are not a friend of Caesar! Everyone who makes him-
self a king defies Caesar."
When Pilatus heard these words, he led Yeshua outside and sat on the judg-
ment seat called Stone Pavement, but in Hebrew Gabbatha.
Now, it was Friday, the Preparation Day for Pesach, the sixth hour, which is
noon. He said to the Jews, "Look, here is your king."
Then they shouted, "Take him away, take him away and crucify him!"
Pilatus said to them, "Shall I crucify your king?"
The high priest answered, "We have no king but Caesar."
So he gave him to them to be crucified.^61
- Jesus fully exonerates Pilate, who is acting not through his authority or free will, but by the
authority given to him from the father. The Jews, however, have acted freely and therefore their
sin is greater. - Robert J. Miller, in The Complete Gospels, offers the following comment: "The resulting im-
plication that all the Jews/Judeans, or perhaps only some Jewish officials, crucified Jesus—as
Pilate had suggested (v. 6)—is wholly inaccurate. In historical fact, whatever Pilate's view of
Jesus' guilt, it was certainly he who saw to the execution (see v. 19); crucifixion was never prac-
ticed by Jews. The monstrous unreality of this half-verse, if it reads as intended, must be en-
tirely a function of theological or political polemic" (p. 240).