In The Bible, was Pontius Pilate an evil man or was he innocent of Jesus Christ's death? He seems to be very misunderstood.

 

The Bible is very clear: Pilate was innocent. The crime was that of the Jewish religious leaders. My personal belief is that this is correct. Jesus was no threat to Roman rule. But Jesus would have been perceived as a threat by the Jewish religious leadership. Throughout history, virtually every Prophet and Messenger of God has been bitterly opposed by the religious leadership of the day.

On the cross Jesus pleads, “Father forgive them; they know not what they do.” This, to me, is directed towards the Romans and towards the common people in the crowd. They did not know what they were doing. The Jewish religious leaders of the day, however: they knew. And a century later, or so, their entire world came hurtling down, not to begin to be rebuilt until modern times. Rome received no divine punishment for that crime, because it was innocent of it. (It would later be not so innocent, and in time would suffer accordingly, even as Christianity became the dominant religion in Rome).