Pilate Quotes

“Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have.”
― Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale – A Fresh Look at the Many Dimensions of God and Humanity

“Jesus to Pilate:
"The trouble is," the bound man went on, not stopping by anyone, "that you are too closed off and have definitely lost faith in people. You must agree, one can't place all one's affection in a dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Pilate, as the histories reveal, was not one for trials. In his ten years as governor of Jerusalem, he had sent thousands upon thousands to the cross with a simple scratch of his reed pen on a slip of papyrus. The notion that he would even be in the same room as Jesus, let alone deign to grant him a "trial," beggars the imagination. Either the threat posed by Jesus to the stability of Jerusalem is so great that he is one of only a handful of Jews to have the opportunity to stand before Pilate and answer for his alleged crimes, or else the so-called trial before Pilate is pure legend.”
― Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

“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 released—Jesus, the preacher and traitor to Rome, or bar Abbas, the insurrectionist and murderer—the 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 Jesus’s death. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" (Mark 15:1–20). 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 Pilate—a 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 Rome—spending even a moment of his time pondering the fate of yet another Jewish rabble-rouser.”
― Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

“Doing nothing was as honourable as any available course of action. Think of Hamlet, think of Job, think of Jesus before Pilate.”
― Johnny Rich, The Human Script

“It is quite possible that Barabbas was the crucified person. The name Barabbas means Son of the Father. 'Barabbas' (or 'Bar Abbas') is the Hellenized form of the Aramaic name Bar Abba, which means 'son of the father'. And the name 'Jesus' (from the Greek 'Yesous') is the Hellenized form of the Hebrew name Yeshua. Pilate was essentially asking the Jerusalem crowd: Who do you want me to release: Yeshua son of the Father or Yeshua son of the Father whom your followers call Messiah?"
The fact that both men had the same name has been covered up by Catholic and Christian churches, but it is obvious that there was a great opportunity for confusion during this highly emotional, chaotic and devised moment.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“The TRUTH that sets FREE, the One that Jesus Christ was talking about is not the same as the human truth.
This is why Pilate asked Jesus Christ: "What is the Truth?"

So people will never be free unless they get the answer of Pilate's question!
And if you want the answer of Pilate's question, consult Jesus Christ Himself.”
― Bruce Mbanzabugabo

“[Pilate] washed his hands when he should have exerted them.”
― James Stalker, The Life of Jesus Christ: A Biographical Overview of the Life of Christ

“Pilate had perfected the political art of compromise.”
― James Stalker, The Life of Jesus Christ: A Biographical Overview of the Life of Christ