Page 75 - laten-08-06-2020

a threat. Pilate has the capacity to take decisions on his own
but the politics behind the Pilate’ continuous (at least 3 times)
asking to the crowd about the release of Jesus probably adds
the Paradoxical intention to the text. Pilate’s sympathy towards
Jesus is a paradox/contradictory intention and it instigated
and provoked mob to cling on to their views. No doubt that
the Roman Soldiers are trained to torture the victim but the
intensity of the torture elevates when they get more support from
the Roman government. Here in Jesus’ case, intensity of torture
was more (Matthew 27:27-31) and this gives some strength to
the view that Roman Empire wanted to teach a lesson to those
who opposes Empire and thereby they used mob as a tool to
accomplish their goal.

Religious Leaders Instigating Mob

No doubt that Jesus’ movement was certainly a threat
to the Jewish Religious Leaders. Always there used to be a huge
crowd (Luke 14:25, Mark 5:24, Matthew 4:25) around Jesus
because of his preaching, teaching and healing. Religious leaders
envied about Jesus not only because of the huge followers, Jesus’
encounter towards religious leaders (Mark 7:1-14, John 8:3-8)
and their deceitful interpretation of the scripture but also loss
in terms of income from the people. Another factor was that
Jesus moved with the marginalized community (Mark 2:15-
17, Matthew 8:1-4, Matthew 15:21-28) and this challenged the
institutionalized Jewish Religious system which encouraged/
forced people to come to the religious temples/ leaders. So
in order to cut off Jesus from the society, Religious leaders
instigated mob probably by threatening/bribing/convincing
them to speak against Jesus.

Mob Instigating Mob
Among the crowd there were many common people
who were in different commercial sectors. Jesus’ teachings and

69
Lenten Meditations Re - Imaging People