Would Pontius Pilate have Released a Prisoner at Passover?

This is a question I’ve heard raised from a few sceptics previously. It stems from a popular strain of thought that suggests the more sceptical of something you are the more critical you are being. However the problem is that if such a level of ‘hyper-scepticism’ were used for any other ancient events or figures we would know very little about anything in the past. This leaves people espousing radical scepticism no more critical than those whose credulity may lead them to the same or other conclusions, as vocal as they may be.


A type of informal logical fallacy known as an argument from silence is being used, what this means is someone draws a positive conclusion from the silence of a person or event. The argument from silence is unanimously recognised amongst historians to be one of the weaker weapons in the historians arsenal. Specifically here the argument used to deny that the gospels are correct in their recording of Pilates release of a prisoner at Passover (Mk 15:6, Mat 27:15, Luke 23:17 and John 18:39). It's argued that because there is no record of Pilate taking part in this custom outside of the New Testament it therefore is unlikely to have occurred. Now I may not be able to prove that this happened but it can be shown with a fair amount of certainty that it was most likely a historical event. All four Gospels record the practice of releasing a prisoner at Passover and its likely that Johns Gospel does so independently of the other three.