(PREMISE: I am reading the Gospel as work of fiction, here).
I would see the following anomalies with the common portrait of a ''Saint'' Pilate:
1) it is the crowd - and not Pilate - who appeals to the ''custom of the festival'' (verse 8).15 Very early in the morning, the chief priests, with the elders, the teachers of the law and the whole Sanhedrin, made their plans. So they bound Jesus, led him away and handed him over to Pilate.
2 “Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate.
“You have said so,” Jesus replied.
3 The chief priests accused him of many things. 4 So again Pilate asked him, “Aren’t you going to answer? See how many things they are accusing you of.”
5 But Jesus still made no reply, and Pilate was amazed.
6 Now it was the custom at the festival to release a prisoner whom the people requested. 7 A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising. 8 The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9 “Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate, 10 knowing it was out of self-interest that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him. 11 But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
12 “What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
13 “Crucify him!” they shouted.
14 “Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
15 Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.
16 The soldiers led Jesus away into the palace (that is, the Praetorium) and called together the whole company of soldiers. 17 They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. 18 And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” 19 Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. 20 And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him.
2) Pilate asks to the crowd, but it is not clear at all that he wants to persuade the crowd to opt for the liberation of Jesus. The same episode may be interpreted in this way: Pilate exploited the hatred (and decision) of the crowd for Jesus to decide just the punishment of the latter.
3) it is not clear why Jesus is tortured by the Roman soldiers, if really Pilate had pity for him.
Now, according the evidence of the belief of the Cerinthians (the first users of proto-Mark), the spiritual Christ flew from the man Jesus. This fugue of the Christ could be happened even before the torture of Jesus, in the form of the same Jesus Bar-Abbas (Jesus son of Father).
(Haer. 1.26.1):
Seen from this point of view, then Pilate would have wanted the punition of the Jesus ''called king of Jews'' by using the caprices of the crowd (given the absence of a real accusation against Jesus in his hand).A certain Cerinthus, then in Asia taught that the world was not made by the Supreme God, but by a certain Power highly separated and far removed from that Principality who transcended the universe, and which is ignorant of the one who is above all, God. He suggested that Jesus was not born of a virgin (because that seemed to him impossible), but that he was the son of Joseph and Mary, in the same way as all other men but he was more versed in righteousness, prudence and wisdom than other men. And after his baptism, Christ descended upon him from that Principality that is above all in the form of a dove. And then he proclaimed the unknown Father and performed miracles. But at last Christ flew again from Jesus; Jesus suffered and rose again while Christ remained impassible, being a spiritual being
Note that Barabbas is not described as insurretionist and assassin, but only as a prisoner with the rebels and assassins: if he is innocent, he is the real Jesus who prayed God calling him ''Abbà'' in Getsemani.
Note that for Cerinthians the true Christ ''remained impassible'', therefore logically even the tortures of the Roman soldiers have not to be applied to him, but to the man Jesus ''called king of Jews''. But this can only be true if the spiritual Christ had abandoned Jesus even before these tortures. Only if the spiritual Christ was Barabbas.
A confirmation of this point comes from the description of Barabbas given by the proto-catholic Matthew:
(27:17)At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas.
''well-known'' proves that Barabbas is known by the crowd as a criminal.
The criminal nature of Barabbas is confirmed more explicitly also by Luke:
(Luke 23:19)(Barabbas had been thrown into prison for an insurrection in the city, and for murder.)
Curiously, in the fourth Gospel of John there is no Barabbas! No need of a ''masked'' divine Christ, if the principal hero of the story is already the divine Christ without dissimulations.
Therefore in this interpretation Barabbas is the good character of the story (the same spiritual Christ), while the man Jesus is Condemned by the demiurge (''Pilate'') just as he is ''the son of Joseph and Mary, in the same way as all other men but he was more versed in righteousness, prudence and wisdom than other men''.
(2 Cor 3:6)...for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life
The man Jesus is condemned just in virtue of the his observance of the Law of the Demiurge, symbolized by Pilate.