Of course, early Christianity held that Pilate's wife was Christian herself. It rarely blamed the Roman magistrate, preferring instead to blame the Senehedrin who cried out, "let his blood be upon us!". So, a point of view that rehabilitates Pilate is not very shocking.
One that rehabilitates Judas is. Judas, according to this point of view, was the most idealistic of the apostles. Like Peter, he was one of those who left everything behind to follow his leader. When Jesus annointed himself with expensive oil, Judas alone protested. Judas, it is claimed, was an idealist who found himself getting disgusted with the waywardness of his leader. Jesus who had started out preaching to the Jews had now given up on them. All this caused Judas to lose faith in his leader. In an effort to refocus Jesus, he went to the Senehedrin. Even Matthew notes that when Judas realized that Jesus had been condemned, he realized that things had gotten out of hand and was contrite. So, what about those famous thirty pieces of silver? Judas was no common thief -- he was, after all, the treasurer of the group. And the thirty pieces of silver couldn't do much more than buy a burial plot -- an insignificant sum of money, definitely no motivation to kill the man you left everything for. Not the sole motivation, that is. Perhaps Judas was no more than an idealist, it is maintained, who tried to refocus his leader's attentions.
The two arguments, if you notice, contradict each other. If Judas was all-right, then the reason Jesus was condemned was that Pilate, the treacherous Roman governor, saw him as a regal aspirant. If Pilate was all-right, the Senehedrin had it going for Jesus. And Judas, being no fool, should have known that he was condemning his leader to death when he led the soldiers to Jesus. Either one of the two is to blame. Either Pilate the Roman who Christendom has treated benignly or Judas the Jew who Christendom hounded. What do you think?
