Barabbas

"Give us Barabbas!," from The Bible and its Story Taught by One Thousand Picture Lessons, 1910

Barabbas was the Jewish insurrectionist whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem in the Christian narrative of the Passion of Jesus. According to some texts, his full name was Yeshua bar Abba, (Jesus, the "son of the father").

The penalty for Barabbas' crime of treason against Rome—the same crime for which Jesus was also convicted—was death by crucifixion. However, according to the four canonical gospels and the Gospel of Peter, there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim. The crowd was offered a choice of whether to have Barabbas or Jesus released from Roman custody. According to the closely parallel gospels of Matthew (27:15-26), Mark (15:6-15), Luke (23:13–25), and the more divergent accounts in John (18:38-19:16), the crowd chose for Barabbas to be released and Jesus of Nazareth to be crucified. A passage found only in the Gospel of Matthew has the crowd saying, "Let his blood be upon us and upon our children."

The story of Barabbas has special social significances, partly because it has frequently been used to lay the blame for the Crucifixion on the Jews and justify anti-Semitism. The story may also have served to shift blame away from the Roman state, removing an impediment to Christianity's acceptance.

Background

Barabbas lived during a time when the independent Jewish state established by the Hasmonean dynasty had been brought to end by the unrivaled power of the Roman Empire. The Hasmoneans themselves were considered corrupt by strict religious Jews, and Jewish client kings such as Herod the Great created an atmosphere of widespread resentment. The two mainstream religious parties, the Sadducees and Pharisees, came to represent opposing poles, with the Sadducees generally controlling the Temple priesthood and the Sadducees appealing to a more popular piety. Consequently, the Sadducees came to be seen as Roman collaborators, while the Pharisees themselves were divided in the attitude toward Roman rule. In this context, the group known to history as the Zealots arose as a party of passionate opposition to Rome, willing to use violence against these foreign oppressors to hasten the coming of the Messiah.

Several claimants to the title of Messiah arose in decades immediately before and after the time of Jesus and Barabbas. Most of them led violent revolts in an attempt to overthrow Roman rule. The Essenes, meanwhile, prepared for the day when the corrupt Temple priesthood would be replaced by their own purified priests and the Day of the Lord would bring about the advent not only of the kingly Davidic Messiah but also the priestly Messiah, son of Aaron. The Book of Acts lists several messianic pretenders, as does the Jewish historian Josephus.

In the time of Barabbas, Rome no longer ruled Judah through a client king, or even an "ethnach," but through a Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The New Testament explains that members of the priesthood and the ruling Sanhedrin were particularly concerned lest messianic movements become such a serious threat that Rome would clamp down even further on Jewish rights.

"If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation," the Gospel of John reports members of the Sanhedrin as saying. To this, the high prest Caiaphas replies: "It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." (John 11:48-50)

It is in this context that the story of Barabbas and Jesus is told.

Barabbas' crime

John 18:40 refers to Barabbas as a lēstēs, "bandit." Luke refers to him as one involved in a stasis, a riot (Luke 23:19). Matthew calls Barabbas only a "notorious prisoner." (Matthew 27:16). However, Mark (15:7) makes his crime more specific, saying that he committed murder in an insurrection.

Clearly, Barabbas was no mere murderer, but a leader of a group that had acted violently against Roman authority. Some scholars posit that he was a member Zealots or of the sicarii (dagger-men), militant Jews that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force.

Barabbas in the gospels

Three gospels all state unequivocally that there was a custom at Passover during which the Roman governor would release a prisoner of the crowd's choice: Mark 15:6; Matt. 27:15; John 18:39. The corresponding verse in Luke (Luke 23:17) is not present in the earliest manuscripts and may be a later gloss to bring Luke into conformity. The gospels differ on whether the custom was a Roman one or a Jewish one. Such a release or custom of such a release is not recorded in any other historical document.

A possible parable

This practice of releasing a prisoner is said by Magee and others to be an element in a literary creation of Mark, who needed to have a contrast to the true "son of the father" in order to set up an edifying contest, in a form of parable. An interpretation, using modern reader response theory, suggests no petition for the release of Barabbas need ever have happened at all, and that the contrast between Barabbas and Jesus is a parable meant to draw the reader (or hearer) of the gospel into the narrative so that they must choose whose revolution, the violent insurgency of Barabbas or the challenging gospel of Jesus, is truly from the Father..

Dennis R. MacDonald, in the The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark, notes that a similar episode to the one that occurs in Mark- of a crowd picking one figure over another figure similar to the other occurred in The Odyssey, where Odysseus entered the palace disguised as a beggar and defeated a real beggar to reclaim his throne. MacDonald suggests Mark borrowed from this section of The Odyssey and used it to pen the Barabbas tale, only this time Jesus- the protagonist- loses to highlight the cruelness of Jesus' persecutors. However, this theory too is rejected by mainstream scholars.

External links

• John Dominic Crossan, "Crowd control": identity, purpose and size of "the crowd" in Mark and its adapted purposes in Luke and John, on the occasion of the Mel Gibson film of 2004.
• More on the interpretation that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person
• Why Barabbas Was Released Instead of Jesus

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