DAY 220
CHALLENGE
“The Gospels’ claim that Pilate customarily released a criminal at Passover is fiction. We have no records of this ever happening.”
DEFENSE
We do have records: the four Gospels.
We don’t have an extrabiblical record that says, “Pilate customarily released a prisoner at Passover,” but that’s hardly surprising. Releasing a prisoner at the Jewish capital on a Jewish feast would be a purely local custom, and we don’t have detailed records of the Roman administration in Judaea. The surviving sources are too patchy for that.
However, leaders often pardon popular prisoners to curry favor with their subjects. That happens today, even with political prisoners considered a danger to the established regime (e.g., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr.).
Further, we have records of ancient rulers in Judaea releasing prisoners to win favor. Both Herod Archelaus (4 B.C.–A.D. 6) and the Roman governor Albinus (A.D. 62–64) did so (Josephus, Antiquities 17:8:4[204–205], 20:9:5[215]).
Also, the Jewish Mishnah contains provisions for slaughtering the Passover lamb for prisoners to be released at Passover (m. Pesahim 8:6). Passover was a time when Jewish religious and national feeling ran high, and riots were known to break out in Jerusalem then (Antiquities 17:9:3[213–218], 20:5:3[106–112]), so releasing a prisoner to pacify the populace could be quite reasonable. (In fact, Matthew records a riot began to break out when Pilate dithered about releasing Barabbas; Matt. 27:24). Even if we didn’t know all that, the Gospels are historical records in their own right, and if even one of them mentioned the custom, it would need to be taken seriously. But the custom is mentioned in all four Gospels (Matt. 27:15; Mark 15:6; Luke 23:18; John 18:39), which
adds weight in several ways:
- If, as many think, John wrote independently of the synoptics (not my view), we would have a second and clearly independent source attesting the custom.
- Even if John knew the synoptics (my view), he was an eyewitness, as was Matthew, meaning we have two eyewitnesses reporting it.
- If the custom didn’t exist, this would subject the evangelists to criticism. The first evangelist to write wouldn’t be inclined to invent the custom, and later evangelists wouldn’t be inclined to repeat it. The fact that it appears in all four makes the report especially credible.