Pontius Pilate the release of Barabbas and said of Jesus, "Crucify him!" In Matthew, Pilate responds, "Why? What evil has he done?" The crowd continued shouting, "Crucify him!" Pilate ordered a sign posted above Jesus on the cross stating "Jesus of Nazareth, The King of the Jews" to give public notice of the legal charge against him for his crucifixion. The chief priests protested that the public charge on the sign should read that Jesus "claimed" to be King of the Jews. Pilate refused to change the posted charge, saying "What I have written, I have written." (""Quod scripsi, scripsi""). This may
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