[Restorer]

I believe you missed my point. I believe these two comments, with one person proclaiming his innocence of Christ's judicial murder and a group gleefully assuming responsibility for it, is in there for a reason.

Pilate could not make himself innocent by washing his hands. He was guilty of a horrific crime, and proclaiming one's innocence does not make it so.

The Jewish leaders and their (possibly hired) mob were equally guilty. But they could not, regardless of what they said, assign guilt to their descendants. Notice that the Bible, and Jesus, nowhere imply that the Jewish leaders' assumption of this guilt for their offspring had any validity.

Jesus forgave both his Roman and Jewish murderers before he died, and asked his Father to do the same.

What the Bible says is never irrelevant. What Pilate and the Jewish leaders said was the ultimate in irrelevance.

[ellen_rometsch]

1 Thessalonians 2

[14] For ye, brethren, became followers of the churches of God which in Judaea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews:

[15] Who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: