Many NT scholars think the Gospel account of Jesus’ appearance before Pilate is not historically accurate. Pilate was notoriously cruel and ordered crucifixions like popcorn. Scholars think the Gospel accounts, written after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, are artificially pro-Roman and anti-Jewish.
What really were the dynamics of the crucifixion?
The Pharisees were the good guys of Judaism. The were the sect of the common people, fascinated by theological discussions, and willing to engage with someone like Jesus. They anticipated a Messiah, but a purely human military and political leader.
The Sadducees were the bad guys, the rich elite who were closely aligned with the Romans. To them, the Pentateuch was everything, and they applied it rigidly. They accepted the Prophets and Writings as divinely inspired, but the Pentateuch was the Law. They completely rejected the oral law the Pharisees recognized and loved. It’s believed they had no concept at all of a resurrection or a Messiah; the dead simply went to shadowy Sheol.
The High Priests of Jesus’ era, including Caiphas, were all Sadducees. The High Priesthood was a thoroughly corrupt office, with the High Priest being appointed by the Romans or their stooges the Herods, often as the result of bidding or bribery. (One teenage High Priest appointed by Herod was soon drowned by him because he seemed to be too popular with the people.) Key fact: the High Priest was entirely beholden to the Romans for his office.
The Sanhedrin was the governing council of the Jews. It had about 70 members, with a Sadducee majority and High Priest. It thus was aligned with the Romans.
To the Torah-obsessed Sadducees, the Temple and the High Priesthood were the heart of Judaism. An absolutely key objective of the Sadducees was to NOT give the Romans any reason to interfere with the operation of the Temple.
A Roman prefect like Pilate had one objective: to keep the peace and swiftly curtail any hint of a threat to Roman authority. The vast majority of crucifixions were for sedition – meaning anything resembling a threat to Roman authority. The term the NT translates as “thief” for one of the men crucified with Jesus is more accurately translated as “rebel” or “insurrectionist,” and scholars think this is more probable than thief.
99% of the reason Jesus was crucified was: THE CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE. This incident, which occurred in the large and crowded Court of the Gentiles (only recently established by Caiphas) would have been a horror to the Sadducees and Romans, and neither would have tolerated it.
Any hint that Jesus was proclaiming an imminent Kingdom of God, otherworldly or not, likewise would have been viewed as seditious by the Romans and a threat by the High Priest. If Jesus were actually using the term Messiah or King of the Jews about himself, or others were saying this about him, the Romans likewise would have viewed this as seditious.
This seems to me like a plausible explanation of the crucifixion: The cleansing of the Temple was the last straw for the pro-Roman Sadducees, specifically the Roman-appointed High Priest Caiphas, and gave Pilate a more-than-sufficient reason to order the crucifixion of the “King of the Jews.” (Scholars don’t view the sign above Jesus as being sarcastic or ironic but rather a very real message about the consequences of sedition.)
Pilate as a deeply conflicted guy who simply caved to the will of a crowd of bloodthirsty Jews is likely agenda-driven fiction. Those responsible were not really “the Jews” but rather “the Romans, including the High Priest and Sadducee leaders who were closely aligned with them.” Perhaps it is highly significant and equally agenda-driven that the Sadducees scarcely appear in the Gospels at all.