My bible study's a little rusty but isn't that supposedly why they crucified him, for calling himself King of the Jews?
That was a charge the Jewish Pharisees used when they brought him before the Roman authorities. Jesus's answer was vague, basically amounting to "so you say". The supposed reason they were able to bring this charge against him was some of his followers were already declaring him to be the Messiah.
He was also supposedly charged with preventing the payment of tax to Caesar and inciting the nation.
In the Gospel of John his does indeed confirm his kingship, however he qualifies that his kingdom is not of this world, and thus supposedly should not have been a problem with conflict between him being a King and Caesar.
Anyway Pilate finds no fault with Jesus but for some inexplicable reason leaves his fate to the crowd, who choose to free Barabbas and shout that Jesus should be crucified.
People should avoid using the new testament of the bible without outside supporting evidence when looking for the historical basis of the events. Everything that was included in there was agreed upon by leading Bishops and Emperor Constantine purely for political expedience. They wished to ensure that the christian religion was as homogeneous as possible so that the Roman Empire would not fracture apart into factions of religious infighting. That's the reason there is such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church in the first place.
There is some truth to this, in so far as they made some Gospels canonical while condemning other texts of early Christian groups. However they didn't have these Gospels written for that express purpose more these were the text upon which they agreed. It is fair to say that any process of Canonisation will be influenced by politics.
While Constantine did wish for a unified church, there is less evidence that he had much to do with development of the cannon. It is unknown what books the 50 bible he commission for the Bishop of Constantinople contained. The process of cannonsiation had been ongoing for centuries before the First Council of Nicaea, and there is no record of the council discussing the issue at all.
the Muratorian fragment is the earliest known list of of books contained in the new testament. The fragment itself is 7th century in origin, but makes reference to being a translation of a Greek original. The date of the Original Greek text is generally agreed to be from 170 though the exact date is debated and the fragmentary nature of the Latin text complicates matters.
