This feature is already found in Mark, but it is made surprisingly explicit in John with the famous question: quid est veritas?
it is as if, in an otherwise obscure affair, Pilate's function is to throw a beam of light to illuminate something, even if - obviously - he does not explain anything.
This feature is made quasi plastic by the deliberate contrast beetwen the night - during which the sinedrites would like to kill Jesus on the place - and the sunrise, with the entrance of Pilate. Someway, Pilate has to bear light on the sinister affair. So there is some link between the sunrise and Pilate. A torch is lit.
The function of Pilate is someway educational.
I found a partial answer of this educational, illuminating function of Pilate in the following words of Marc Stephane:
How will Mark succeed, with such a public, to illustrate the Passion of Jesus? This is the center of the Christian religion; it is the center of the Gospel. But too much just here appears the Loisy's expression of the "original poverty" of the Gospel tradition (84). What do Paul's writings, that is, verses 7-8 of chapter 2 of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, give to Mark, and even the corresponding passages of the Ascension of Isaiah? (85). We can say, to the letter, a single expression: Jesus Christ was crucified (86).
But if in the middle of the 1st century, in the neighboring regions of Judea, which still has an active national existence, the crucifixion of the Son of God means the hanging of the corpse after the killing, raising a "scandal" for the Israelites or Christian Jews respectful of the prescriptions of the Bible and the curse of Deuteronomy, what images can the Greek word stauros or the Latin word crux awaken in the readers or listeners of Mark? (87).
They are people who have never known the religious penal laws of Judea - if they are pagan converts - or who have forgotten them - if they are ancient Israelites. The crucifixion for these men, threatened by the possible inquiries of Rome's justice and police, is the Roman torment of death on the cross. To respond to their thoughts and expectations, Jesus Christ, the object of Christian worship, must have perished in this way. And the suggestion is all the stronger because, as the Epistle to the Philippians 2:6-8 proclaimed, Jesus Christ, obedient to God, took the figure not only of a man but of a slave, whose supreme punishment, for him too, was death on the cross(88): a conception, moreover, it may be remarked, very different from the evangelical presentation, which makes the Jewish prophet Jesus a carpenter, but a man free.
Thus, in order to render the illustration plausible for a Roman milieu, the death on the cross was essential, and perhaps for Marc himself, a Romanized Jew, the image was natural.
And in such an atmosphere, it is also necessary to make the circumstances of the illustration plausible. We are no longer in the Jewish circles of the eastern regions of the Roman Empire, dominated by the tradition of the Bible and the Hellenistic myth, but by a positive people, imbued with paganism and legal training, for whom the religious belief must materialize.
Under these conditions, death on the cross of God made man must correspond to a real fact, ordered by a Roman magistrate, and as, at the end of the first century, the separation becomes irremediable between the Christians and the orthodox Jews, the trial is associated with a plot of the Jews against Jesus Christ.
But if in the middle of the 1st century, in the neighboring regions of Judea, which still has an active national existence, the crucifixion of the Son of God means the hanging of the corpse after the killing, raising a "scandal" for the Israelites or Christian Jews respectful of the prescriptions of the Bible and the curse of Deuteronomy, what images can the Greek word stauros or the Latin word crux awaken in the readers or listeners of Mark? (87).
They are people who have never known the religious penal laws of Judea - if they are pagan converts - or who have forgotten them - if they are ancient Israelites. The crucifixion for these men, threatened by the possible inquiries of Rome's justice and police, is the Roman torment of death on the cross. To respond to their thoughts and expectations, Jesus Christ, the object of Christian worship, must have perished in this way. And the suggestion is all the stronger because, as the Epistle to the Philippians 2:6-8 proclaimed, Jesus Christ, obedient to God, took the figure not only of a man but of a slave, whose supreme punishment, for him too, was death on the cross(88): a conception, moreover, it may be remarked, very different from the evangelical presentation, which makes the Jewish prophet Jesus a carpenter, but a man free.
Thus, in order to render the illustration plausible for a Roman milieu, the death on the cross was essential, and perhaps for Marc himself, a Romanized Jew, the image was natural.
And in such an atmosphere, it is also necessary to make the circumstances of the illustration plausible. We are no longer in the Jewish circles of the eastern regions of the Roman Empire, dominated by the tradition of the Bible and the Hellenistic myth, but by a positive people, imbued with paganism and legal training, for whom the religious belief must materialize.
Under these conditions, death on the cross of God made man must correspond to a real fact, ordered by a Roman magistrate, and as, at the end of the first century, the separation becomes irremediable between the Christians and the orthodox Jews, the trial is associated with a plot of the Jews against Jesus Christ.
(La Passion de Jésus, Dervy, 1959, p. 201-203, my translation and my bold)
(I would question, apart from the OT: is the expression “positive people” for the Romans, as opposed to Jews before the understanding of the Passion of Jesus, a racist expression? I mean: is it licit as expression, as allusion to the Romans as opposed to the Jews? )
So, it seems that Pilate was introduced to give light, for Gentile readers, to an otherwise obscure scene:
the enigmatic scene of ''Jews'' alone crucifying Jesus.
