Barabbas

In the Christian narrative of the Passion of Jesus, Barabbas, according to some texts Jesus bar-Abbas [cite web
title=Bible Gateway The Message, Matthew 27:15-18
url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=27&verse=15&version=65&context=verse] , (Aramaic: בר-אבא, "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 ( [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2027:15-26;&version=72; 27:15-26] ), Mark ( [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%2015:6-15;&version=72; 15:6-15] ), Luke ( [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2023:13-25;&version=72; 23:13–25] ), and the more divergent accounts in John ( [http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%2018:38-%2019:16;&version=72; 18:38-19:16] ) 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 [Matthew 27:25.] 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 "lēstēs", "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 scholarsWho|date=July 2007 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.

The "sicarii" and the ongoing revolt of Jews against foreign presence in Judea have been discussed by Robert Eisenman; [Eisenman, "James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls"] however, many historians maintain that the "sicarii" only arose in the 40s or 50s of the first century — after Jesus' execution.Brown, Raymond E. (1994)."The Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels v.1" pp. 688-92. New York: Doubleday/The Anchor Bible Reference Library. ISBN 0-385-49448-3<; Meier, John P. (2001). , v. 3, p. 210. New York: Doubleday/The Anchor Bible Reference Library. ISBN 0-385-46993-4 (v.3).]

Various authors contend Barabbas's crime would translate today as terrorism. [cite book
title=The Bible in Time: An exploration of 130 passages providing an overview of the Bible as a whole
first=Stephen H.
last=Travis
year=2004
publisher=Clements Publishing
id=ISBN 1894667476
pages=200] [cite book
title=Jesus on Trial
first=James Montgomery
last=Boice
coauthors=Philip Graham Ryken
year=2002
publisher=Crossway Books
id=ISBN 1581344015
pages=79] [cite book
title=To Love and Be Loved by Jesus
first=Alfred A.
last=McBride
coauthors=Virginia C. Holmgren, O. Praem
year=1998
publisher=Our Sunday Visitor Publishing
id=ISBN 087973356X
pages=113] 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. [cite web
title=Bible Gateway Contemporary English Version, Matthew 27:16
url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=47&chapter=27&verse=16&version=46&context=verse] [cite web
title=Bible Gateway Contemporary English Version, John 18:40
url=http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=18&verse=40&version=46&context=verse]

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. ["Death of the Messiah: From Gethsemane to the Grave: A Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels v.1." pp 793-95. New York: Doubleday/The Anchor Bible Reference Library. ISBN 0-385-49448-3.] 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. [ cite web |url=http://www.bc.edu/sites/c21online/tutorials/deathofjesus/commentaries/roman/reconstruction.html |title=Death of Jesus |publisher=Boston College: Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College |author=Philip A. Cunningham, Executive Director]

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. [Ibid. "The Death of the Messiah": pp. 799-800] 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." [Ibid. "The Death of the Messiah" p.812] 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.

Maccoby does not explain why such a shifting of blame would be necessary prior to Constantine's Edict of Tolerance which legalized Christianity. Additionally, critics point to the book of Revelation and several of the Apostle Paul's letters which contain criticisms of Roman culture and Roman government; moments that seem counter-productive if there was an attempt by the early Christian community to placate Roman authority by casting the blame for the crucifixion on the Jews.

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 &mdash; 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 different interpretation is that the story derives from the Jewish crowd (many of whom may have been among those who had hailed Jesus as a king perhaps less than a week earlier) calling out for the freedom of the man who referred to the Jewish God as "father" and referred to himself as "son-of the father" (bar-Abba in Aramaic) &mdash; namely, Jesus himself. Pilate refused their pleas (and likely would have been disciplined by his superiors in Rome, if he did not punish both insurrectionists and those who claimed to be king of the Jews). Later, when people who did not understand Aramaic retold the story, they still included the petition for freedom, but bar-Abbas became a separate person - incidentally thus making the Romans less culpable, and the Jews more so.

Further interpretations along these same lines raise questions about how much difference there was between Jesus and an insurrectionist. In the gospels, shortly after being hailed as a king by the Jews, Jesus caused a commotion in the Jewish temple by overturning tables and swinging a lash (mentioned only in John) at people. Soon afterwards and just shortly before his arrest, the gospels have Jesus telling his apostles to sell their cloaks and buy swords(Luke 22:36) &mdash; and at least one sword turns up in the hands of Peter (named only in John) in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Arthur Drews, a German Hegelian philosopher, in his books "Christ Myth" (1924) and "Legend of Peter" (1924), argued that first century Christianity was a social ethical movement which needed no founder to explain its rise. A long standing feature of the Semitic world was an annual sacrifice of a "Son of the Father" &mdash; Barabbas, originally called Jesus Barabbas. Of course, in the Hebrew Bible and in Judaism in general, human sacrifice is strongly condemned. Because of this and many other aspects of Drews research, including the discrediting of Christianity in favor of a national Germanic religion (around the same time as the rise of the Nazi party), most of Drews research and views are held as suspect by the academic community, though he remains a significant source among some of those who argue that Jesus was a mythical creation as opposed to an historical figure.

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. [cite book |last=Whitehouse |first=Mary |title=The Mystery Of Barabbas:Exploring the Origins of a Pagan Religion |location=United Kingdom |publisher=Ask Why Publications |isbn=0-9521913-1-8] . [cite book |last=Magee |first=Michael |title=The Hidden Jesus |location=United Kingdom |publisher=Ask Why Publications |isbn=0-9521913-2-6]

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 [ [http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Jesus_and_Barabbas.html Jesus and Barabbas ] ] . 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 [ [http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Jesus_and_Barabbas.html Jesus and Barabbas ] ] . However, this theory too is rejected by mainstream scholars. [Ibid. "The Death of the Messiah" pp.811-14]

See also

* Biblical criticism
* Historicity of Jesus
* Textual criticism

References

External links

* [http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=2974 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.
* [http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0480Barabbas.php#Barabbas More on the interpretation that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person]
* [http://www.gospel-mysteries.net/barabbas.html Why Barabbas Was Released Instead of Jesus]