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Another interesting point from another area altogether:

I was reading Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, which for its day was pretty shocking reading. Rather than heap praise and eulogize the Caesars, he wrote a tell-all.

The bargain of power in that day was that civil obedience, high taxes, military conscription, etc. would be exchanged for the circus of the arena: bloodsport.

One caesar after another would top themselves in the bloodshed of it all until no amount of blood could compensate the people for the situation they were in.

Pilot reigned in the era of Claudius, the emperor who succeeded Caligula, and to a large extent spent the fourteen years of his rule righting a badly tottering empire left behind to him by that butchering sadist.

To hand a single man over to be murdered to placate the a populace was so small in that era as to be less than a footnote. During Caligula's reign, even Romans were made to battle like gladiators for their lives in the end. Nobody was safe. This incident with Jesus garnered attention only for the fact that never before had a people called for the blood of one man with such unified strength.

To test this lust, Pilot offered a choice between a convicted murderer of Jews, and Jesus, and it wasn't even close.

I think it was charitable that Mel personified Satan in this movie. Ultimately, 'the devil made us do it' might be the dodge.

Ultimately, Christ was killed by the very people he sought to save, including me. The whole 'Jews killed Jesus' question may just be an angle Satan has been using over the millenia to salvage what turned out to be a bad situation for him.

I think that Dennis Prager said it exactly right when he said that Christians and non-Christians watched two very different messages. I saw the movie on Saturday morning at 12:00 in the afternoon. It was packed 1/2 hour before it even started. It was a very powerful movie. I almost wanted to jump through the screen and just put an end to the torture. As it ended, we walked out stunned, silent, reflective, and peacefull. No one left the movie blaming the Jews or anyone else. I think Mel Gibson used the Pilate charachter as an indictment of our present politicians who knowingly sacrifice our rights, liberty, and freedoms in order to stay loyal to their corporate and special interest masters. I think that Jewish people who criticise this movie as being anti-semetic are giving the same baloney as Italian Americans who criticise the Sopranos. Just pure and utter garbage. The worst part is that most Christians I know are strongly in favor of Israel and fellow Jews, myself included.