John 18:38

38. What is truth? Pilate supposes that he had now applied a finisher. All the philosophy of the age in which he lived had decided that man could know but this: that nothing could be known. That higher truth is undiscoverable, that in fact there is no absolute truth, no difference between ultimate truth and falsehood, were the conclusion at which highest human thought had arrived. And what the philosophers thus taught, political and military men readily accepted. It was, therefore, readily and generally agreed that visible and tangible things, things of sense and of the present world, were all. Talk to such a man in high strain of philosophic, religious, or divine truth, and his reply is: “Bah! What is truth? I understand positive science; but as for your higher truth, it is a chimera.”

He went out He waited for no answer, because his very question was intended to deny the possibility of all answer. He is ready to return to the Jews with the full feeling that it would be a real murder to take the life of so harmless an abstractionist. He again takes his stand in front and pronounces his finding in him no fault. This announcement to the people drew forth murmurs of disapprobation, in which their utterance of the word Galilee (Luke 22:5) suggested to Pilate his first method of rescuing Jesus by sending him to Herod. After his return, the second expedient, his attempt to release Jesus instead of Barabbas, next occurs, as is related in the following verses and in the parallel sections of the other Evangelists.