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Barabbas
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In the Christian narrative of the Passion of Jesus, Barabbas, according to about five of the thousands of Greek texts Jesus bar-Abbas, (Aramaic: ??-???, Bar-abbâ, "son of the father"), was the insurrectionary whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem.
The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the four canonical gospels and the Gospel of Peter there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate, the praefectus or governor of Judaea, to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim, and the "crowd" (ochlos) — which has become "the Jews" and "the multitude" in some translations — were offered a choice of whether to have Barabbas or Jesus Christ released from Roman custody.
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In the Christian narrative of the Passion of Jesus, Barabbas, according to about five of the thousands of Greek texts Jesus bar-Abbas, (Aramaic: ??-???, Bar-abbâ, "son of the father"), was the insurrectionary whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem.
The penalty for Barabbas' crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the four canonical gospels and the Gospel of Peter there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate, the praefectus or governor of Judaea, to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim, and the "crowd" (ochlos) — which has become "the Jews" and "the multitude" in some translations — were offered a choice of whether to have Barabbas or Jesus Christ released from Roman custody. According to the closely parallel gospels of Matthew (), Mark (), Luke (), and the more divergent accounts in John () and the Gospel of Peter, the crowd chose 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, forming the basis for allegations of Jewish deicide.
Barabbas' crime
John 18:40 refers to Barabbas as a lestes, "bandit;" Mark and Luke further refer to Barabbas as one involved in a stasis, a riot. Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19. Matthew refers to Barabbas only as a "notorious prisoner." Matthew 27:16. Some scholars posit that Barabbas was a member of the sicarii, a militant Jewish movement that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force, noting that Mark (15:7) mentions that he had committed murder in an insurrection. In his 2007 Encyclical Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI mentions Barabbas in this context: "Jesus was not Spartacus, he was not engaged in a fight for political liberation like Barrabas or Bar-Kochba" (paragraph 4).
The sicarii and the ongoing revolt of Jews against foreign presence in Judea have been discussed by Robert Eisenman; however, many historians maintain that the sicarii only arose in the 40s or 50s of the first century — after Jesus' execution.
Various authors contend Barabbas's crime would translate today as terrorism. Some however, have argued that he was a freedom fighter campaigning for autonomy from Roman imperialism. He is called a terrorist in the Contemporary English Version of the Bible.
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.
Abba has been found as a personal name in a First Century burial at Giv'at ja-Mivtar and Abba also appears as a personal name frequently in the Gemara section of the Talmud, dating from AD 200-400. This would mean that Barabbas was the son of one named Abba.
Abba also means "father" in Aramaic. Jesus sometimes referred to God as "father;" Jesus' use of the Aramaic word Abba survives untranslated (in most English translations) in Mark 14:36. In the Gospels, Jesus rarely refers to himself as the "son of God" and never refers to himself as the "son of the father." However, some speculate that "bar-Abbâ" could actually be a reference to Jesus himself as "son of the father".
Hyam Maccoby and some other scholars have averred that Jesus was known as "bar-Abba", because of his custom of addressing God as 'Abba' in prayer, and referring to God as Abba in his preaching. It follows that when the Jewish crowd clamored before Pontius Pilate to "free Bar Abba" they could have meant Jesus. Anti-Semitic elements in the Christian church, the argument goes, altered the narrative to make it appear that the demand was for the freedom of somebody else (a brigand or insurrectionist) named "Barabbas". This was, the theory goes, part of the tendency to shift the blame for the Crucifixion towards the Jews and away from the Romans.
Benjamin Urrutia, co-author with Guy Davenport of The Logia of Yeshua: The Sayings of Jesus agrees completely with Maccoby and others who aver that Yeshua Bar Abba or Jesus Barabbas must be none other than Jesus of Nazareth, and that the choice between two prisoners is a fiction. However, Urrutia opposes the notion that Jesus may have either led or planned a violent insurrection. Jesus was a strong advocate of "turning the other cheek" - which means not submission but strong and courageous, though nonviolent, defiance and resistance. Jesus, in this view, must have been the planner and leader of the Jewish nonviolent resistance to Pilate's plan to set up Roman Eagle standards on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. The story of this successful resistance is told by Josephus — who, curiously, does not say who was the leader, but does tell of Pilate's crucifixion of Jesus just two paragraphs later in a passage whose authenticity is heavily disputed. (See article Josephus on Jesus, in particular the section "Arabic Version." This version seems to be free of the postulated Christian interpolations, but still makes it clear that Pilate ordered the crucifixion of Jesus.)
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.
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.
Jesus Barabbas
In a minute few of the Greek texts of the New Testament, Barabbas is referred to as Yeshua bar Abba which translates roughly to ("Jesus son of the Father"). Some scholars, such as Hyam Maccoby and Benjamin Urrutia, claim that this should be thought as the name of Jesus Christ due to his habit of always praying to God as Abba, meaning "Father." According to the theory, when the multitude demanded the freedom of "Jesus Barabbas," it was Jesus of Nazareth they meant.
See also
External links
- 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.
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