Summary of passage: Jesus was taken to Pontius Pilate’s house and addressed outside so his Jewish captors could remain clean. They took him there to be tried under Roman law because Roman law allowed executions.
Questions:
3) They would become unclean if they entered Pilate’s palace and they wanted to eat the Passover meal. More concerned about food than the life of a man. Hypocrites.
4) Jewish law does not allow executions but Roman law does. Pilate tried to have the Jews try him. He will be crucified and flogged.
5) Personal Question. My answer: I’m not one for excuses and I try to do what is right.
Conclusions: We’re marching along with Jesus to his death and are seeing everything people will do to kill him–doing things they normally wouldn’t do probably. The sad thing is man hasn’t changed.
End Notes: John leaves out how Jesus was first presented before the council recorded in Matthew 26:57-68 and the official, daylight meeting of the Sanhedrin in Luke 22:66. Thus, the Jews have condemned Jesus to death and now need the Romans to carry it out.
The palace or praetorium was likely at the Roman Fortress Antonia, where Pilate held court and conducted public business. It was the commander’s headquarters. The word is better translated judgment hall. Palace is a misnomer.
We see the hypocrisy here as the Jews refused to break relatively small commands regarding ceremonial defilement, but broke much greater commands in rejecting God’s Messiah and condemning an innocent man to death. The law stated they couldn’t come into contact with unclean Gentiles or enter an unclean home with leaven.
“Eat the Passover”: This statement introduces a controversy, namely this – was the Last Supper a Passover meal, and was Jesus crucified on the Passover or the day following? This statement in John 18:28 seems to indicate that Passover was the coming day, the day Jesus would be crucified and that the Last Supper was the day before Passover. Yet several passages seem to indicate that the Last Supper was a Passover meal (Matthew 26:18, Mark 14:12, 14:16, Luke 22:15). The best solution to this difficult chronological problem seems to be that Jesus was crucified on the Passover, and the meal they had the night before was as Passover meal, held after sunset (the start of the day in Jewish reckoning). We can speculate that Passover lambs were sacrificed on both days, a necessity due to the massive number of lambs sacrificed in Jerusalem at the temple on Passover (later described by Josephus as being more than 200,000).–Taken from enduringword.com
It was early, perhaps before 6 am and we see Pilate’s irritation. The religious leaders did not expect objections from Pilate. He was a ruthless man, known for his corruption, his acts of insolence, his rapine, his habit of insulting people, his cruelty, his continual murders of people untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity. The Jews are evasive cause they know the charges are trumped up and false. Luke 23:2 does have a more specific answer.
Josephus tells us, that it was not lawful to hold a court of judgment in capital cases, without the consent of the Procurator. Besides, Jewish law allowed for death by stoning. Only the Romans could crucify.
The Jews were the ones who wanted Jesus dead. He wasn’t really on the radar as an enemy of Rome. The Jews were the ones who made him so. Tragic.
Who was Pontius Pilate? Pilate was the Roman procurator or regional ruler for Judea at the time of Jesus’ death from 26-36 AD. His early life is unknown and most of what we know before Jesus is speculation like how he came to be governor. Some say it was punishment. Others say it was political connections. Governors were mainly in charge of tax and financial matters but because Judea was so difficult and troublesome a province the governor there answered directly to the emperor and had authority over judicial matters as well.
Most governors hated being posted to so distant a post but Pilate seems to enjoy it. He was cruel to them as he tried to force Rome upon them. Pilate was in Jeruasalem to keep the peace during Passover. He was staying at Herod’s Palace near the temple. He didn’t want to offend the Jews nor condemn an innocent man so he kept trying to get Jesus set free. Eventually, he succumbed to politics and sentenced Jesus to death.
Judea was a source of turmoil as the Jews hated Rome. He didn’t want to deal with Jesus and tried sending him to Herod instead. He asked, “What is truth?” and didn’t see truth right in front of him.
He condemned Jesus to be rid of him and keep the peace between Rome and the Jews. Pilate would be out of power a few years later for massacring Samaritans and after that he disappears from history with only unsubstantiated claims he killed himself.
