Orrin at Brothersjudd.com has an article summarizing some of the countervailing facts regarding Judaism and Christianity at the time of Jesus' Crucifixion.
Both interpretations above of the Jewish role on Good Friday are grossly mistaken. To deny any Jewish prosecution may be almost normative in current revisionist theology, but it flies in the face of historical fact. Quite apart from the New Testament accounts, the traditions in the Babylonian Talmud about Yeshu Hannozri, Jesus the Nazarene (Sanhedrin 43a), and the minim ("heretics," particularly Christians) are very negative, an attitude fully congruent with the opposition portrayed in the Gospels. The traditions are negative also toward the house of Annas, incidentally, so any attempted rehabilitation of that priestly family must fail (Pesachim 57a).From the earliest records, the hostility between synagogue and church is well attested, and much of the apostle Paul's life and theology would have no meaning if this were not the case. Again, quite apart from the New Testament epistles and Acts, the testimony of the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus demonstrates early Sanhedral opposition to Christianity in a remarkable incident that has so many startling parallels to Good Friday that it might well be styled "Good Friday II." This incident involved James, the half-brother of Jesus, and presiding authority at the Apostolic Council (Acts 15). Josephus reports that the high priest Ananus... indicted James during the interim between the administrations of Festus and Albinus as governors of Judea:
Ananus thought that with Festus dead and Albinus still on the way, he would have his opportunity. Convening the judges of the Sanhedrin, he brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law, and condemned them to be stoned to death. (Antiquities, xx, 197)
That Christianity was the charge on this occasion is confirmed by Hegesippus, the earliest of the church chroniclers, who was quoted by the early church historian Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (ii, 23). The comparison, then, is conclusive.
Pilate's defensive posture vis-à-vis Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, also finds dramatic resonance in the attitude of a later successor, Albinus, who was so angry that Ananus had incited the stoning of James that, upon his arrival, he arranged for the deposition of the high priest.
But what about the bloodthirsty Pilate?
As for Pilate himself, that he had ultimate legal responsibility in Jesus' case is beyond debate. That he could have been subject to the pressures portrayed in the Gospels also appears highly credible. Riot control in Jerusalem was not the simple matter claimed by revisionist critics, and Pilate's Jerusalem cohort of Samaritan and Syrian mercenaries would have been hard pressed to handle thousands of angry demonstrators. According to Josephus's Jewish War (ii, 538f.), a later Roman governor named Cestius Gallus of Syria commanded no less than a legion (several thousand soldiers), but he and his men were chased out of Jerusalem by the riots that sparked the Jewish rebellion in A.D. 66.Pilate was probably under further pressure from the Roman imperial government in the so-called Episode of the Golden Shields in Jerusalem, according to the first-century Alexandrian Jewish philosopher Philo (Embassy to Gaius 38ff.). Months earlier, Pilate had received a truculent letter from the emperor Tiberius, ordering him to remove shields that he had hung in his praetorium, which Herod Antipas and his brothers had found offensive. The imperial directive also warned Pilate to uphold all Jewish religious customs henceforth. Clearly, then, Pilate was in no position to disregard the wishes of the crowd by setting Jesus free, as critics claim he could so easily have done.
Let's see, political considerations tie the hands of a military man. Sound familiar? Does to me.