Correctly, Neil does a good observation about Pilate in Mark:
A passage in Mark’s gospel, omitted from subsequent gospels, explains that Pilate knew that the chief priests charged Jesus with a capital crime because they envied him. So in Mark’s gospel Pilate not only judges Jesus to be innocent, but even sees through the motives of those wanting him dead. Pilate acts in the full knowledge of both Jesus’ innocence and the criminal motive of his enemies. This makes Pilate guilty at more than one level. He is not merely pressured against his desire to save an innocent man; he is cynically folding to the whims of evildoers.
https://vridar.org/2009/05/17/that-vill ... l-of-mark/
Mark 15:9-15
1. But Pilate answered them, saying, Will ye that I release unto you the King of the Jews?
For he knew that the chief priests had delivered him for envy.
But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them.
2. And Pilate answered and said again unto them, What will ye then that I shall do unto him whom ye call the King of the Jews? And they cried out again, Crucify him.
3. Then Pilate said unto them, Why, what evil hath he done? And they cried out the more exceedingly, Crucify him.
And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.
If Pilate is the demiurge, then the demiurge
could read the mind of the his worshippers, the Jews: hence Pilate knew the '
'envy'' that moved the scribes against Jesus.
But why would the demiurge help these sinners?
Sebastian Moll gives the answer:
The best example to demonstrate Marcion’s explicit blame of the Creator instead of his
people, however, is his concept of Christ’s descent into Hades274. According to Marcion,
Christ, when he descended into Hades, saved Cain, the Sodomites, the Egyptians and all
the others who were condemned by the Creator, whereas Abel, Enoch, Noah and all the
patriarchs and prophets were not saved by him. The interesting, and often neglected part
of this story is the reason why the latter group was not saved. One might perhaps simply
assume that they did not follow Christ because they stuck to their own God275. However,
Irenaeus clearly states that the patriarchs and prophets did not follow Christ because they
knew that their God was always tempting them, and so they suspected that he was
tempting them again. In other words, they did by no means remain faithful to their God
and therefore refused to follow Christ, but their horrible experience with their God had
blinded them and made them lose all hope for salvation.
(
At the Left Hand of Christ: The Arch-Heretic Marcion, by Sebastian Moll, p. 88, my bold)
So there is no better tempter than who helps you to do the precise temptation who is assailing you: the Demiurge.
Pilate helped the Jews to kill Jesus because he, as allegory of the Demiurge, wanted the Jews to committ sin of 'envy'.
Curiously, if you read this novel, reviewed here:
https://www.dailygrail.com/2014/07/a-gn ... s-war-god/
...the point is made again, in a modern work of pure fiction, that the Demiurge is the Tempter
par excellence:
In Graham’s novel he portrays the god as a demonic being – or a ‘demiurge’, in the proper Gnostic lingo – using Moctezuma as a puppet who subserviently tends to its insatiable hunger for blood and human hearts; but the demon also manipulates Cortés, to whom he appears as the figure of St. Peter in his dreams, filling his head with promises of glory and endless riches.
Just as Pilate in Mark.