Passion of Jesus released by Pilate instead of Jesus. Matthew, Mark and John have Pilate offer a choice between Jesus and Barabbas to the crowd; Luke lists no choice offered by Pilate, but represents the crowd demanding his release. In all the Gospels, Pilate asks Jesus if he is King of the Jews and Jesus replies "So you say". Once condemned by Pilate, he was flogged before execution. The Canonical Gospels, except Luke, record that Jesus is then taken by the soldiers to the Praetorium where, according to Matthew and Mark, the whole contingent of soldiers has been called together. They place a
Matthew 27:58 to approach Pilate, and also has Pilate exclaiming on how quickly Jesus died. Matthew, Luke, and John do not have these details. Gundry notes that at the time Mark was written the question posed by skeptics was whether Jesus really was dead. By the time Matthew was written this had faded as an issue, to be replaced by the allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus' body. Thus Matthew drops the sections emphasizing that Jesus was truly dead, and adds much evidence that the body could not have been stolen. There is also a much longer version of this scene