[gitmo]

Pilate and his wife are fascinating characters in the biblical account and in the movie.

His wife's dream is fascinating. Did this come from God? If so, what was God's objective? Was he giving Pilate warning so he could extract himself from this illegal execution?

And Pilate is the ultimate politician. He knows what is right in this case, but comes up with this Barabas / Jesus choice as an out. He declined to take the leadership position and free the man he had already declared innocent, thinking he had come up with a way that the crowd would make the decision instead. The scheme backfired in his face. He finally caved to public pressure and tortured an innocent man to death. The moral is to stand for what is right and don't try to hide behind cop-outs that will lead to what is right.

[Liz]

There's also the wisdom of Solomon when two women came before him each claiming to be a baby's mother.

What to do? Who does he believe? Solomon's "decision" was to order the child cut in two and to give half to each woman.

When one of the two women came forth and renounced her claim to the child, Solomon knew she was the real mother b/c, in his wisdom, he knew the real mother would not want her child harmed.

[AFPhys]

One comment to yours, then I must run:

Pilate is portrayed precisely as I would expect him to be, and I found out last night (after the movie) that one of the items about him that I thought was wrongly portrayed is actually historical (that he had been bawled out twice by Rome.) Gibson really did his homework.

I saw someone nastily criticize that Herod was portrayed as a buffoon, or some such, and thought that was over the top. I suspect that critic had no idea that Herod was in town on a vacation, and that it is certainly highly likely that during that time he was drunk and having a "good time" - I thought it a fascinating, and interesting and instructive take by Gibson and the writers.