Barabbas Remembered



Barabbas Remembered

‘It is frustratingly difficult to assess the historical value of the Barabbas episode, not least since the name is uncannily akin to that of Jesus . . . and the custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover . . . is otherwise unknown’

J. D. G. Dunn[1]

Barabbas is undoubtedly one of the most enigmatic characters in the whole gospel tradition. He appears fleetingly in all four gospels, playing a cameo role in the Roman interrogation of Jesus (Mark 15.5-15 par., John 18.38-40), then exits as quickly as he entered, to be noted only once more in Acts 3.14. But who was he? And, more importantly, why did early Christians remember him? This paper aims to explore these questions, in dedication to a wonderful Doktorvater who was always generous with his time, constant in his support, and gracious in his criticisms. It was under Jimmy’s inspiring guidance that I took my first tentative steps in the controversial yet fascinating puzzle that is the Roman trial of Jesus. I hope that this short essay can act as a tiny measure of gratitude.

Who was Barabbas?

There is little scholarly agreement over Barabbas. Researchers take their place on a spectrum, with those who accept the gospel record broadly as it stands at one end, and those who regard the story as a legendary development at the other. Upholders of the historicity of the biblical text argue that Barabbas was a freedom-fighter, a brigand chief. Mustering a raft of similar customs from the ancient world,[2] they claim that a Passover amnesty might well have existed, that it was the kind of thing that a Roman governor could have inaugurated (or continued) as a gesture of good will, a special concession, or a safety valve for public opinion at festival time, and that there is nothing historically improbable in the gospel accounts.[3] Some try to link ‘the insurrection’ in which Barabbas was apprehended (Mark 15.7, Luke 23.19, 25) with one of the many tumults outlined by Josephus and Philo at the time of Pilate, though clearly the dearth of evidence precludes firm identification.[4]

The difficulty with this view, however, is that it does not pay enough attention to the profound historical problems encountered within the scene. Paramount – as the quotation from Jimmy at the beginning of this essay indicates - is the complete lack of evidence for a regular amnesty in Judaea at this (or indeed any) period. It is not enough simply to dismiss this lack of evidence as an ‘argument from silence’: in his Antiquties of the Jews, Josephus was particularly keen to highlight Roman concessions to his compatriots; if he had known of such a custom it is virtually certain that he would have mentioned it. Furthermore, it seems highly improbable that any Roman governor would allow himself to be compelled by a regular amnesty to release a prisoner of the crowd’s choosing at the tense and politically volatile feast of Passover.[5] Less crucial, though indicative of the difficulties involved, are the discrepancies between the four gospels over the nature of the release and Barabbas’ crime.[6]

At the other end of the spectrum, Barabbas has been seen as the creation of the evangelists. Here there are a number of alternative theories. On the basis of his name (probably a Greek rendering of the Aramaic ‘Son of the Father’) and a number of manuscripts of Matthew which give his personal name as Jesus,[7] H. A. Rigg and H. Z. Maccoby independently concluded that Barabbas was none other than Jesus of Nazareth, his presence in the trial narrative being either the result of Christian confusion (so Rigg) or deliberate distortion (so Maccoby).[8] Others have looked to Jewish history or to the Scriptures for the background to Barabbas. Loisy famously suggested that the episode was modelled on Agrippa I’s visit to Alexandria in 38 when anti-Jewish citizens dressed up a lunatic named Karabas in mock-kingly regalia in order to ridicule the Jewish prince.[9] J. D. Crossan argued that Mark created the Barabbas incident as a symbolic dramatization of the fate of Jerusalem during the revolt of 66-70, when the city chose to accept the insurrectionary Zealots over the unarmed Saviour, Jesus.[10] D. R. Aus suggested that the Barabbas story was created by early Jewish Christians as a haggadic interpretation of the popular Esther story.[11] And most recently, drawing on Graeco-Roman curative exit rites, J. K. Berenson Maclean claimed that the episode grew out of the scapegoat ritual of Lev 16, with Barabbas functioning as a literary scapegoat and foil to Jesus.[12]

Again, all of these theories are problematic. While Crossan and Berenson Maclean may have captured something of the role of Barabbas in individual gospels (as we shall see below), the fundamental problem with attempts to see Barabbas as nothing more than a literary creation is the fact that the scene is found in all four gospels. There is broad general agreement amongst New Testament scholars that the general framework of the Passion Narrative was put together remarkably early. Although there are clearly quite far-reaching differences in detail and emphases between various retellings of the story, the invention of a new character at such an early date (well within the lifetime of eyewitnesses) seems unlikely.[13] Mark’s slightly awkward ‘the one called Barabbas’ (ho legomenos Barabbas) suggests a well-known figure, as perhaps too does Matt. 27.16.[14] Furthermore, the differences between the various gospels in their presentations of Barabbas (as we shall see in the latter part of this paper), suggests a relatively long period of reflection and development.

In view of these difficulties, most scholars have found themselves somewhere between the two extremes and accepted some degree of historicity.[15] Perhaps there was some confusion over which ‘Jesus’ was to be brought to trial and the prefect needed to seek clarification.[16] Or perhaps Pilate granted a one-off amnesty to a prisoner and the evangelists, removed from a Palestinian context, simply assumed that it was an annual event. Or maybe a man called Barabbas was arrested after some kind of a disturbance and was released (possibly due to lack of evidence) at about the same time as Jesus was sentenced. Christians may have reflected on the apparent injustice of Jesus’ execution and Barabbas’ release, with the two events becoming conflated in Christian consciousness.[17] This would have been all the easier if the earliest Aramaic speaking Christians noted a certain irony in the patronymic Barabbas, a name which (as Jimmy notes) could so easily have also described Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps too (though this is much more speculative) there was an appeal to Pilate by the Jewish authorities. Did they know an innocent man had been wrongly apprehended? Did they use their influence to have him released? And might this lie behind the recollection that the Jewish leaders were on the side of Barabbas? Or, more darkly, did followers of Barabbas manage to persuade the governor that the charges against him were groundless, and did the earliest Christians reproach themselves for not having had the courage to do the same for their master? Already, though, we have gone further than is methodologically proper. The historical likelihood is that there was an historical person called Barabbas, that he was released by Pilate around the time of Jesus, and that Christians reflected on the injustice of his liberation and Jesus’ condemnation. Beyond this, it would be unwise to venture.

Is this, then, where we must leave Barabbas and his story? Is he nothing more than a shadowy historical figure? I would like to suggest that what is most significant about Barabbas is not so much the man who found himself in front of Pilate’s tribunal in roughly 30 CE (about whom at best only traces remain), but the four subtly different literary Barabbases of the gospels. Jimmy’s work on Jesus, I propose, may offer a more fruitful way of analysing not so much the ‘Barabbas of history’ but ‘Barabbas remembered.’

Barabbas Remembered

One of the most impressive, and undoubtedly far reaching, aspects of Jimmy’s Jesus Remembered is his insistence that we cannot piece together an ‘objective’ account of the ‘historical Jesus.’ Right from the very beginning, disciples’ stories bore witness to the impact that their encounter with Jesus had on their lives. Thus tradition was, from the very first, a creation of faith and provides us not so much with an account of ‘the Jesus of Nazareth who walked the hills of Galilee,’[18] as Jesus as he was remembered (though clearly the two are linked). Jimmy puts great stress on orality: even though, like most scholars, he accepts that the passion narrative was probably fixed at a relatively early date, and despite the fact that Matthew and Luke clearly worked with a written version of Mark, he argues that some of the variants may be due not simply to literary redaction, but the incorporation of oral versions of some of the stories as they were known in their own churches. The gospels, then, bear witness to the lively retellings of the Jesus story within the earliest churches.[19]

Much of this can also be applied to Barabbas. As we saw above, the search for the ‘real’ Barabbas does not get us very far. There is simply not enough data from which to reconstruct the ‘real’ man, his crime, and his precise connection to the Jesus story. What we do have, though, are Christian memories of Barabbas – memories which were retained not because of what they told the earliest churches about a Jerusalem criminal, but because of what those stories said about Jesus. Alterations in the stories are due, no doubt in part, to literary editing, but also presumably bear witness to a long tradition of oral performance in which, though the bare bones of the story were constant, the details of Barabbas’ crime, the Passover amnesty, and the contrast between the two men, ebbed and flowed with the particular concerns of various Christian groups. The remainder of this essay is an examination of Barabbas as he was remembered – as his story was retold – by four of the greatest early Christian storytellers – the four evangelists.

Barabbas in Mark

How did Mark, or the tradition he inherited, remember Barabbas? A striking feature of Mark’s narrative is the parallelism between the Jewish and Roman trials (Mk 14.53, 55-65; 15.1-15). Both involve two charges, a general one, and a more specific one regarding Jesus’ identity (though they are reversed in the Roman interrogation where the question whether Jesus is the King of the Jews precedes the general charges of the chief priests). In both scenes, Jesus counters the general charge with silence (14.60-61; 15.5) but answers the question regarding his identity (14.62, 15.2). Both too culminate in mockery appropriate to each setting, so Jesus is ridiculed as a prophet after the Jewish trial (14.65), and as king after the Roman (15.16-20).[20] Finally, both involve a contrast between Jesus and another person: Peter in the Jewish trial, Barabbas in the Roman. Both contrasts revolve around three questions (14:67, 69, 70; 15:9, 12, 14), a common storytelling technique, and both are devoid of scriptural parallels, suggesting that themes other than scriptural fulfilment are uppermost at this point.[21] Adela Y. Collins is surely correct in her assertion that both are examples of rhetorical sunkrisis, or comparison, cast in narrative form.[22] The contrasts teach Mark’s readers something about Jesus and their own response. So, in the Jewish trial, Jesus is the model to follow, openly accepting his messiahship even before the High Priest, while outside in the courtyard Peter frantically denies everything to a mere serving girl and her companions, even to the point of cursing Jesus’ name. If Mark’s readers were themselves experiencing persecution, as is often supposed, then the contrast between Jesus’ behaviour and that of Peter would have been very clear, and very relevant, to their own situation.[23]

But what of Barabbas? The relatively lengthy scene dominates the Roman trial (ten verses as opposed to the five verses dedicated to Jesus’ initial interrogation). Remarkably, in a gospel which constantly redefines what it means to be Messiah, chapter 15 is saturated with references to kingship (15.2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32). Mark appropriately makes use of the Roman setting to contrast Jesus with a kingly leader of an altogether different type – a lēstēs, a bandit or insurrectionary, one of the brigands whose activities litter the pages of Josephus in the years prior to and during the Jewish war of 66-70.[24]

Barabbas, we are told, is bound (dedemenos) in prison, alongside the ‘rebels’ or ‘bandits’ (lēstai) who had committed murder in the insurrection (15.7). The reference to ‘binding’ immeditately links him to Jesus, who was also ‘bound’ (dēsantes) in 15.1.[25] And while this rather awkward formulation lends a certain ambiguity to his guilt, he is certainly tarred with an insurrectionary brush.[26] To Mark’s readers, the differences between the two men are abundantly clear. Jesus specifically contrasted himself with a lēstēs at his arrest: ‘Have you come out as against a robber (lēstēs), with swords and clubs to capture me?’ (14.48). His answer to the tribute question (12.13-17) and insistence on voluntary suffering (8.34-38) make it quite clear that he is no political activist. The two men embody quite different ideas of what it means to be Messiah, or King of the Jews: one a political aspirant, the other a suffering servant. Hearing this story around about the time of the Jewish revolt, Mark’s audience could not possibly miss the heavy irony in the Jews’ choice of Barabbas. Rather than accept the teachings of Jesus, the majority of Jews put their trust in rebels and bandits, with disastrous results. The Jesus/Barabbas contrast shows that their allegiance should not be to transitory revolutionaries and political rebels (the people who got the Jews into so much trouble, and perhaps still plague Mark’s hearers, 13.21-22) but to the true King of the Jews.[27]

Peter and Barabbas, then, each in their own way, form a contrast to Jesus, one that speaks to the situation of Mark’s particular audience. While Peter is a sympathetic character, however, who, despite his betrayal, is finally reinstated (16.7), Barabbas is an irredeemably negative example. He stands for all those who have led the Jewish people into revolution and bloody civil war, whose desire for power and self-aggrandisement (even if couched in nationalistic terms) can only lead to destruction.

Barabbas in Matthew

While Matthew follows Mark’s Jewish trial closely, altering the story only slightly to highlight the culpability of the Jewish leaders,[28] he rearranges the Roman trial quite considerably, making a number of unique additions. Running throughout the narrative is the haunting question of guilt: who is responsible for the death of Jesus? Each actor attempts to absolve himself from guilt: Judas confesses his sin and hangs himself (27.3-10); Pilate washes his hands and declares his own innocence (Matt 27.24; cf Deut 21.1-9); until finally ‘all the people’ accept responsibility with the chilling words, ‘his blood be on us and on our children’ (27.25).[29] Rome is not absolved of complicity, but it is clear that for Matthew the prime movers in the execution of Jesus were none other than his own people and their leaders.

The story of Barabbas too exhibits a number of alterations from the Markan telling. Most strikingly, the two men have been completely de-politicised. Jesus is offered to the crowd not as the politically explosive ‘King of the Jews,’ but with the religious title Christ, or Messiah (27.17, 22). And Barabbas is no longed tinged with insurrectionary activity, but is simply a ‘famous’ or ‘well-known’ prisoner (episēmos, 27.16). As Ulrich Luz notes, attempts to give the word a negative connotation (such as ‘infamous’ or ‘notorious’) depart from its common meaning.[30] Of course, it might be argued that Matthew’s hearers would be familiar with the Marking telling of this story, but there is absolutely no indication in this gospel that Barabbas is to be seen in a negative light. In fact, what is remarkable here are the similarities between the two men. Not only could the phrase ‘famous prisoner’ (desmion episēmon) also be applied to Jesus, but the name of the second prisoner was quite probably Jesus Barabbas.[31] Matthew shows a particular interest in the etymologies of names (he explains Jesus in 1.21, Emmanuel in 1.23, and Peter in 16.18); and although he does not explain Barabbas’ name here, it seems unlikely that the irony of the name and its application to both prisoners would have been lost on him. A final redactional change emphasises the element of choice: Pilate’s initial question is recast as ‘Whom do you want me to release for you, Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?’ (27.17); the evangelist adds another dramatic question in v.21: ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’; and the chief priests keep both men in view as they ‘persuaded the people to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus’ (v. 20). The overall effect of these alterations is that the Jewish crowd are given a choice between two famous prisoners: Jesus called Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ.

On one level, Matthew’s presentation makes sure that extraneous details concerning Barabbas do not interfere with the people’s decision.[32] In v.17 they gather (the verb here, sunagō, is the same as that used to describe the assembly of the Jewish council in 26.3 and 26.57), and persuaded by their chief priests, present their choice clearly and unambiguously. In fact, the passive imperative, staurōthētō, in v.22 (‘Let him be crucified’) gives the impression that the crowd itself is passing judgement. Only later does a riot threaten to break out and shatter the quiet, composed scene. The effect of all this is that Matthew presents the crowd rejecting their Messiah in the full knowledge of what it is doing. There can be no excuses: no suggestion that they preferred a freedom fighter, or that they were caught off guard by Pilate’s repeated use of the provocative title ‘King of the Jews’ (both impressions which could be derived from Mark). Instead, influenced by their leaders, the Jewish people have rejected their Messiah – as presumably Jews known to Matthew’s hearers continued to do in their own day.[33] The focus is not on the one chosen, but on the one rejected, the Christ.

But there is also another level in Matthew, one which has borrowed motifs and images from the Temple and its ritual, elements which would have been familiar to the evangelist and his Jewish-Christian audience.[34] Reading Matthew’s Barabbas scene, it is difficult not to hear echoes of the Day of Atonement ritual in Lev 16:7-10, 21-2 and its later interpretations in Barnabas 7 and m.Yoma 6.1.[35] The later accounts make it clear that the two goats were to be as similar as possible. Barnabas, dating to the late first century, says ‘the goats shall be alike, beautiful and equal’ (homoious tous tragous kai kalous, isous; 7.10a).[36] Similarly m.Yoma 6.1 states: ‘the two he-goats of the Day of Atonement should be alike in appearance, in size, and in value, and have been bought at the same time’. As Lester Grabbe notes, the most likely explanation as to why so many ancient authors mention details not in Lev 16 is that they draw on details of the actual ceremony as it was carried out at the end of the Second Temple Period.[37] The similarity of the two prisoners, then, corresponding to halakhic ruling regarding the goats, coupled with the element of choice (evoking themes of lottery/election) might well have recalled Yom Kippur. This is all the more likely given Matthew’s general framework: 1.21 contains a prophecy that Jesus ‘will save his people from their sin,’ and 26.28 makes it clear that Jesus himself is the sacrifice which is poured out for the forgiveness of sin.[38] Jesus’ death, then, in effect, takes the place of the ritual of Yom Kippur. Once Jesus was seen as the one who effected atonement (a development which, as Jimmy points out,[39] may have occurred quite early) both goats, the Scapegoat and the immolated goat, could be seen as figures for Christ. A long tradition of church fathers read Matthew in this way, some linking Jesus with the sacrificial goat (which fits better with Matt 26.28[40]), others equating him with the Scapegoat, and most linking him in some way or another with both goats.[41]

Barabbas, then, as a distinctive character has virtually disappeared from Matthew’s retelling. He has a double function within the story. On one level, he allows the Jewish people a choice – for or against their Messiah. But on another, he almost mirrors Jesus, symbolically evoking the rites of Lev 16, and so surrounding Jesus’ death with profoundly cultic significance.

Barabbas in Luke

Luke changes Mark’s narrative quite considerably, transforming the two trials into one uniform process involving four scenes: an early morning gathering of the chief priests (Luke 23.66-71); a preliminary hearing in front of Pilate (23.1-6); an interrogation before Herod Antipas (23.7-12); and a return to Pilate for sentencing (23.13-25).[42] The narrative has two overriding concerns: (a) to show Jesus’ innocence and (b) to minimise Roman involvement in Jesus’ execution while stressing the complicity of both the Jewish people and their leaders.[43] In pursuit of (a), Luke carefully lists the charges against Jesus in 23.2 – charges which the earlier narrative have shown to be false. He also uses both Pilate and Antipas as high status witnesses to Jesus’ innocence – Pilate explicitly three times (23.4, 14, 22) and Antipas implicitly by returning the prisoner (23.15); together they provide the witnesses required by Deut 19.15. The fact that the earlier narrative stressed the harshness of both men (3.19-20, 9.7-9, 13.31; 13.1-3) makes their judgement regarding Jesus all the more striking and significant. In pursuit of (b), it is clear throughout that the driving force behind Jesus’ execution are the Jews, both the people and their leaders. Three times Pilate declares Jesus innocent (23.4, 15, 22), and three times he tries to release him (23.16, 20, 22), but the chief priests (23.5), later allied with the people (23.18) refuse to accept his verdict. Finally, Pilate weakly bows to public pressure rather than risk a riot, and in the end gives sentence that the demands of the people be granted (23.24).

Both apologetic aims have a bearing on Luke’s Barabbas who, broadly following Mark’s outline, makes his entry in the final scene of the trial narrative. Jesus has been sent back from Antipas and Pilate summons the chief priests, rulers and people, telling them that he intends chastising Jesus and then letting him go. The audience, however, refuse to accept the prefect’s verdict: ‘Away with this man, and release to us Barabbas’ they cry (v.18). What is striking about Luke’s retelling of the story is the complete omission of any mention of a Passover amnesty (v.17 is regarded by virtually all scholars as an addition[44]). Did Luke chose to omit it (it was, after all in Mark)? Or did the retelling of the story with which he was familiar not include the story? Whichever was the case, the spontaneous call for Barabbas incriminates the Jewish crowd as fully as possible. There was no need to link the fate of Jesus with that of anyone else. Pilate judged the case, declared him innocent and intended to release him. The Jewish call for the release of Barabbas is completely unwarranted. Furthermore, while the Markan crowds could claim that they were stirred up to shout for Barabbas by their priestly leaders (Mark 15.11), this element is missing from Luke. The crowd quite spontaneously and inexplicably shout for another prisoner. And what a prioner he is: Luke’s description of Barabbas as a man involved in an insurrection and murder, 23.19, 25 (and Acts 3.14) is clearly derived from Mark, but the evangelist has tidied up his source’s ambiguities and brought the threat closer to home with the detail that the insurrection was started ‘in the city’ (v.19). Jesus is indeed ‘numbered with transgressors’ (Luke 22.37, citing Isa 53.12), as he himself predicted before his arrest.

Luke’s Barabbas, then, is a violent criminal who forms a stark contrast with Jesus. Ironically, the Jewish choice of an insurrectionary exposes their own nationalistic hopes and gives the lie to their charges against Jesus in 23.2. Luke’s repetition of Barabbas’ crimes in v.25 underlines once again and with great dramatic effect, the crowd’s incomprehensible choice of a dangerous criminal, an insurgent and murderer, rather than Jesus, the innocent martyr. With the demand of Barabbas, injustice has truly triumphed in the governor’s court.

Barabbas in John

John’s trial narrative is very different to those of the Synoptics. After the briefest of Jewish interrogations, Jesus is brought before Pilate for the start of a seven-scene trial in which the chief priests remain outside the praetorium, Jesus is taken inside, and the prefect is forced to move between the two. Like Mark, with which it shares a number of motifs,[45] John’s Roman trial is littered with references to kingship (the word basileus occurs nine times[46]), suggesting that an exploration of Jesus’ kingship will be an important component of the narrative.

In contrast to the synoptics, the Barabbas scene in John has been very much scaled down. While it accounted for two-thirds of the Markan narrative, John has pared it down to only two and a half verses (18.38b-40; comprising the third scene), leaving some to suggest that he has incorporated it only because it is traditional.[47] This, however, misses the fact that what John has done is to scatter material associated with the Barabbas episode throughout a number of scenes. So, for example, while the Barabbas scene itself focuses on the choice between the two prisoners (neither of whom are present), the cry of the Jewish leaders for Jesus’ crucifixion occurs two scenes later, after Jesus has been scourged (19.4-7), cries they repeat again in the highly explosive final scene where their demands for crucifixion are accompanied by the blasphemous acceptance of the kingship of Caesar (19.12-15). The ‘Barabbas motif,’ then, is still important to John’s gospel, though the evangelist’s literary artistry means that the character himself has been limited to just one short scene. Once he has served his purpose he disappears from the narrative (John does not even tell us whether Pilate released him).

The scene opens with Pilate who, after declaring Jesus innocent (18.38), reminds the Jewish leaders of the Passover amnesty, a custom which he identifies as their own (18.39). Perhaps the evangelist wanted to show that, even at this late stage, the Jewish leaders could have shown clemency. But Pilate’s question (Will you have me release for you the King of the Jews?) can hardly be taken seriously. These are the same men who handed Jesus over for execution in 18.28-32 (there is no neutral crowd in John’s gospel[48]), and the reference to ‘King of the Jews’ on the Roman’s lips can only be contemptuous and mocking.[49] The reader can hardly be surprised when ‘the Jews’ reject his offer, calling instead for the release of a previously unknown prisoner, Barabbas, whom John identifies dramatically in the very last word of the scene as a lēstēs.

But what exactly does John mean by this? Most scholars, drawing on the use of the word by Josephus and the fuller accounts of Barabbas’ crimes in the synoptics,[50] assume once more that Barabbas is an insurrectionary, a social bandit, or guerrilla. It is certainly true that the contrast between Jesus’ divine kingship and a more wordly, nationalistic conception of kingship is a dominant one in the trial narrative (18.36, 19.11). Indeed, the narrative goes so far as to make comparisons between Jesus and the Emperor (he is mocked as an imperial, purple-clad figure in 19.1-4, and the Jewish threat in 19.12 reminds Pilate that the actual ‘King of the Jews’ is none other than Caesar). It would be quite possible, then, to read lēstēs as a political insurrectionary, and perhaps on one level this is what John intends.

Yet it is surely curious that the only other time that lēstēs is used in the gospel it has its more usual meaning of a ‘robber’ (the word literally means ‘one who takes booty’; 10.1, 8). Significantly, these verses are found in the Good Shepherd discourse (10.1-18), a passage with great relevance for John’s presentation of the passion (11.51-2, 15.13, 18.37, 20.16).[51] There Jesus contrasts himself, the Good Shepherd, with thieves and robbers (kleptai . . . kai lēstai), people who come only ‘to steal and kill and destroy’ (10.10), hirelings, who do not own the sheep (10.12-13). Given the strong scriptural connection between shepherds and rulers (2 Sam 7.7-8, Is 40.11, Jer 31.10, Ezek 34.11-16), the discourse points to Jesus as the true ruler of his people in contrast to the Jewish leadership who have led the people astray. If the discourse lies behind the Barabbas scene, then the use of the word may have a double function. The Jewish leadership prefer a criminal to their true King, while simultaneously aligninging themselves with ‘thieves and robbers’, underlining once again their lack of true leadership.

Afterword

The evangelists were fundamentally uninterested in the person of Barabbas. He is remembered at all only insofar as he can be used to say something about Jesus, the central character of all the narratives. The way in which he can be adapted and shaped by the story shows how fluid the traditions surrounding him were, even at a time when written records were beginning to take shape. So for Mark he was an insurrectionary, for Matthew a ‘famous prisoner’ remarkably similar to Jesus, for Luke a murderer and rabble-rouser whose obvious guilt threw Jesus’ innocence into sharp relief, and for John a common criminal. These different pictures of Barabbas quite probably derive from lively oral traditions, seeking to make sense of the Messiah and his death, drawing on and transforming a historical character who was originally only loosely connected with Jesus’ last hours. The gospels provide four snapshots of the different ways in which Barabbas was remembered by the late first century church.

Modern ‘rememberings’ of Barabbas, transposed in time and context from the gospels, might see him symbolically as the first of ‘the many’ whose lives were ransomed by Jesus.[52] Such developments, while not explicitly authorised by the evangelists,[53] testify to the vitality of biblical characters and their afterlives, and the power of memory continually to readapt and recreate.

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[1] J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) 775, n.67

[2] On the proposed parallels in Assyria, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, Egypt, and the Talmud (some more likely than others) see discussions in S. Langdon, ‘The Release of a Prisoner at the Passover,’ ET 29 (1917-8): 328-30; J. Merkel, ‘Die Begnadigung am Passahfeste,’ ZNW 6 (1905): 293-316; C. B. Chavel, ‘The Releasing of a Prisoner on the Eve of Passover in Ancient Jerusalem,’ JBL 60 (1941): 273-8; and R. E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave (New York: Doubleday, 1994) 1: 814-20. R. L. Merritt’s detailed survey of parallels is often cited (though ironically he believed that the Barabbas scene was created by the evangelists), ‘Jesus Barabbas and the Paschal Pardon’ JBL 104 (1985): 57-68, esp. 62-7.

[3] See for example, J. Blinzler, The Trial of Jesus (Cork: Mercier Press, 1959) 205-21; A. Bajsic, ‘Pilatus, Jesus und Barabbas,’ Bib 48 (1967):7-28; F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (London: Oliphants, 1969) 193-4; E. Bammel, ‘The Trial before Pilate’ in Jesus and the Politics of His Day (ed. E. Bammel and C. F. D. Moule. Cambridge: CUP, 1984) 426-8; D. Flusser with R. Steven Notley, The Sage from Galilee (4th ed.: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007) 153-5; C. S. Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 668-70.

[4] See G. Theissen, The Gospels in Context (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992) 183. A rather extreme attempt to reconstruct Barabbas’ arrest was proposed by A. Vicent Cernuda, ‘La condena inopinada de Jesús. I. Pesquisa sobre la identidad de Barrabás’ EstBib 48 (1990): 375-422.

[5] So also S. G. F. Brandon, The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (London: Batsford, 1968) 101; M. D. Hooker, A Commentary on the Gospel According to St Mark (London: A & C Black), 368; S. Légasse, The Trial of Jesus (London: SCM, 1997) 68. J. D. Crossan cites Philo, Against Flaccus 81-4 who notes that a governor might postpone an execution until after a festival, or even allow a criminal’s family to bury his body, but there is no hint that a governor might order a reprieve, let alone a regular amnesty, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1994), 140-143.

[6] See the discussion in R. E. Brown, Death, 793-803, 807-14.

[7] The extant MS evidence is actually quite weak, but Origen’s reverential assumption that the many MSS in his day (c. 240 CE) which omitted the name were correct (because no sinner in the whole of scripture bore the same name as Jesus) provides a good reason why the name was deleted (In Matt. 122). See the discussion in B. M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (UBS, 1971), 67-68. On the possibility that Jesus Barabbas also appeared in Mark, see V. Taylor, The Gospel According to St Mark. London: Macmillan, 1953, 581. The name Barabbas is well-attested for the first century; see I. Abrahams, Studies in Pharisaism and the Gospels. (Cambridge: CUP, 1924) 2:101-2, who suggests Abba may be an abbreviation of Abraham.

[8] H. A. Rigg, ‘Barabbas,’ JBL 64 (1965), 417-56; H. Z. Maccoby, ‘Jesus and Barabbas,’ NTS 16 (1970) 55-60. Further arguments in support of this thesis were supplied by S. L. Davies, ‘Who is Called Bar Abbas?’ NTS 27, 260-2 and R. L. Merritt, ‘Jesus Barabbas’.

[9] A. Loisy, Les Évangiles Synoptiques II, Paris: 1908, 644 (Philo, In Flacc. 36-38).

[10] J. D. Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) 390; Revolutionary Biography, 141-3.

[11] R. D. Aus, ‘The Release of Barabbas (Mark 15:6-15 par.; John 18.39-40), and Judaic Traditions on the Book of Esther’ in Barabbas, Esther and Other Studies in the Judaic Illumination of Earliest Christianity (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992) 1-27 and ‘Caught in the Act,’ Walking on the Sea, and the Release of Barabbas Revisited (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).

[12] J.K. Berenson Maclean, ‘Barabbas, the Scapegoat ritual, and the Development of the Passion Narrative,’ HTR 100 (2007), 309-34. For a broadly similar, though much less tightly argued, identification, see A. H. Wratislaw, ‘The Scapegoat-Barabbas,’ ET 3 (1891-2), 400-3.

[13] See also Brown, Death, 1:812. Of course, the Passover amnesty is also found in three gospels (including Mark and John), suggesting that it too is an early tradition. But for the reasons outlined above, I would be reluctant to see it as historical. Once a contrast between the two prisoners had been set up, the creation of an amnesty as a literary device is relatively easy to understand.

[14] So G. Theissen, after discussing a number of possibilities, Gospels, 182.

[15] So, for example, S. G. F. Brandon, The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth (London: Batsford, 1968) 93-103; M. D. Hooker, Mark, 369; U. Luz, Matthew 21-28: A Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 498.

[16] So A. E. J. Rawlinson, The Gospel According to St Mark (London: Methuen, 1925) 227-8; P. Winter, On the Trial of Jesus (2nd ed.: rev. and ed. T. A. Burkill and G. Vermes: Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974) 134-5.

[17] So, for example, J. Gnilka, ‘Der Prozess Jesu nach den Berichten des Markus und Matthäus’ in Der Prozess gegen Jesus. Historische Rückfrage und theologische Deutung. (ed. K. Kertelge. Freiburg, 1988); S. Légasse, Trial, 69; R. E. Brown, Death 1.819-20; W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to St Matthew (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 3:583; H. K. Bond, Pontius Pilate in History and Interpretation, Cambridge: CUP, 1998, 199-200.

[18] J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 126.

[19] See Jesus Remembered, pp. 125-36, 173-254. On orality, see also ‘Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition,’ NTS 49 (2003):139-75.

[20] See J. Gnilka, ‘Prozeß’, 12-13; C. Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (New York: Orbis, 1988) 369-71; H. K. Bond, Caiaphas: Judge of Jesus and Friend of Rome? (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004)

[21] On the heavy use of scriptural allusion elsewhere in the Passion Narrative, see D. J. Moo, The Old Testament in the Gospel Passion Narratives (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1983) and J.Marcus, ‘The Old Testament in the Death of Jesus: The Role of Scripture in the Passion Narratives’ in The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity (eds. J. T. Carroll and J. B. Green. Massachussets: Hendrickson, 1995) 205-233. Neither list any parallels for these sections in Mark.

[22] A. Y. Collins, Mark: A Commentary (Hermeneia. Fortress: 2007) 721 and A. Borrell, The Good News of Peter’s Denial (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998). The most famous practitioner of this, of course, was Plutarch in his Lives.

[23] G. W. H. Lampe, ‘St Peter’s Denial,’ BJRL 55 (1973):346-68, especially 352-54, argues that the three-fold question here echoes that of the Christian martyrs of Pliny, Ep. 10.96.3 and Mart. Polyc. 9-10.

[24] See for example War 1.204, 311, 2.253-4, 585. On the use of l

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