Hardly had the Procurator climbed the stairs to his apartment and ordered his long delayed breakfast to be brought in, when a soldier assigned to the Praetorium reported to him.
“Sir, the Galilean whom you sent to the Tetrarch Herod has been returned to you,” he announced. “The High Priest and his Temple associates, together with a throng of excited Jews, are down there awaiting your return to the Praetorium to resume trial of the prisoner.”
“By great Jove!” The Procurator’s scowl was heavy. Why had Herod sent him back? Surely the bumbling Tetrarch hadn’t been clever enough to comprehend Pilate’s scheme to evade responsibility.
He did not question the soldier, however, and a few moments later he mounted the tribunal again and sat down upon the curule. From the pavement before the Praetorium the captain of the Temple guards and his detachment, forming a square about the Galilean, advanced to the tribunal. Jesus, Pilate saw, was wearing a bedraggled, purple-bordered robe. One of the soldiers was carrying the folded brown homespun robe which the prisoner had been wearing before.
Pilate, color mounting, pointed to Jesus and glared at the officer. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Why is he wearing this emblem of authority? Speak up! Who is responsible for this mockery?”
“Not I, sir,” the captain hastened to declare. “The Tetrarch ordered one of his old robes to be placed upon the prisoner; he said he appreciated the Procurator’s raillery in calling the man the King of the Jews, and he ordered him arrayed in the purple in order to further your joking, sir.”
“Didn’t he examine the prisoner?”
“He questioned him, sir, and sought to have him work some tricks of magic, but the prisoner made no reply.”
Once again Pilate descended from the tribunal and went out upon the pavement before the Praetorium. At first sight of him the mob began to raise a clamor. “Bar Abbas!” a man toward the rear of the multitude screamed. “Bar Abbas! Give us Bar Abbas!” Others joined in the uproar. Pilate seemed not to understand them. “They want to see the revolutionaries’ leader,” he said to the soldier who had accompanied him. “They will see him as the condemned men start for the Hill of the Skull. But not until I have disposed of this Galilean. There is already too much commotion. Go into the courtyard, and tell the centurions not to start to the execution ground until I give the order.” He turned back to face Caiaphas and the priests and behind them the motley crowd. “You brought me this man and charged that he was a revolutionary, that he sought to overthrow the rule of Rome in this province, but I found no guilt in him, and when I sent him to the Tetrarch Herod, ruler of Galilee, he, too, found nothing worthy of death. So I shall discharge him. And now, disperse and let us have no more of this tumult.”
“No! No! O Procurator, crucify him! Bar Abbas! Bar Abbas!”