Barabbas

In the Christian story of the passion of Jesus , Barabbas (Aramaic Bar-abbâ, "son of the father"), actually Jesus bar-Abbas, was the insurrectionary murderer whom Pontius Pilate freed at the end of the Passover feast in Jerusalem. The Jews (and other inhabitants of the city?) were offered a choice of whether to have Barabbas or Christ released from Roman custody, according to the Gospels of Matthew (27:16), Mark (15:7), Luke (23:18 - 19), and John (18:40).

Barabbas himself was most likely a member of the sicarii, a militant Jewish movement that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force, for Mark (15:7) mentions that he had committed murder in an insurrection. The penalty for his crime was death by crucifixion, but according to the Gospels there was a prevailing custom in Jerusalem that allowed Pilate, the praefectus or governor of Judaea, to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim. The crowd ("the multitude") chose Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified.

The story of Barabbas has especial social significance, because it has frequently been used to justify anti-Semitism.

"Jesus Barabbas"

Some early texts of Matthew present Barabbas' name twice as Jesus bar Abbas. According to the United Bible Societies' text, Matthew 27:17 reads: "...whom will ye that I release unto you? Jesus Barabbas [Greek: Iesous ton Barabbas] or Jesus which is called Christ [Greek: Iesous ton legomenon Christon]?"

Several early manuscripts of Matthew, including manuscripts in the Caesarean group of texts , the Sinaitic Palimpsest , the Palestinian Syriac lectionaries and some of the manuscripts used by Origen in the 3rd century, support the fact that Barabbas' name was originally Jesus Barabbas, and some modern New Testament translations reflect this. Origen deliberately rejected the reading in the manuscript he was working with, and left out "Iesous" deliberately, for reverential considerations, certainly a strongly motivated omission. Early editors did not want the name Jesus associated with anyone who was a sinner. Mark's parallels between the two men, each a "Jesus, son of the Father," constructing a parable, may also have been considered overplayed.

The alternative possibility, that "Jesus" was unintentionally inserted twice before Barabbas' name, in verses 16 and 17, is unlikely, especially since Barabbas is mentioned first in each verse (thus, dittography is ruled out). Further, the addition of "called the Christ" to Jesus' name (Iesous ton legomenon Christon) in verse 17 makes better sense if Barabbas is also called "Jesus" (Iesous ton Barabbas). Otherwise, a mere "Jesus" would have been sufficient to distinguish the two.

Historicity

There is no evidence independent of Mark that it was ever the custom at feasts for the Romans to release a prisoner requested by the Jews. No other such release is recorded, even as a passing mention, nor does such a Passover custom appear in the Old Testament. Conversely, Pontius Pilate's historic disregard for Jewish sensibilities and Jewish custom is well documented. From an imperial perspective, such a practice would make no sense, and releasing a prisoner accused of murdering soldiers would certainly undercut morale.

Were Barabbas and Jesus the same person?

Bar abba is Aramaic for "Son of the Father". Jesus was somewhat unusual among rabbis in referring to God as "father". Jesus referred to himself as "son of God" several times, and thus "bar-Abbâs" could actually be a reference to Jesus himself as "son of the father". "Bar-Abbâs" could also be a polite way to refer to a boy whose father's name was not known.

History records no Roman custom of giving the crowd a choice of which prisoner to release (though there may have been a Jewish custom of executing only one person per day). If this is so, then the origin of the Barabbas story must come from elsewhere.

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.

A less purposely anti-Semitic 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 (somewhat unusually for that era) referred to God as "father" and referred to himself as "son-of the father" (bar-Abba in Aramaic) — namely, Jesus himself. (Early versions of the story even give the full name of Barabbas as Jesus Barabbas.) 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 at people. Soon afterwards and just shortly before his arrest, the gospels have Jesus telling his apostles to sell their cloaks and buy swords — and at least one sword turns up in the hands of Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane. Pilate would be reprimanded for releasing even a peaceful man who had others calling anyone but Caesar the "king of the Jews", no less one whose methods appeared to include violence. It needs to be pointed out that only John mentions the lash. It is absent from all other Gospel accounts. Again, it is only John who names Peter as the wielder of a sword in the Garden of Gethsemane. The other Gospels say it was a disciple, who is unnamed. Since John is not very reliable as a surce of historical data, the points unique to him need to be taken with a grain of salt. Arthur Drew , a German Hegalian 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" — Barabbas, originally called Jesus Barabbas. This may account for the myth that a historical person, Jesus, actually lived. Of course, in the Hebrew Bible, and in Judaism in general, human sacrifice is strongly condemned, so Drew's theory seems to be nothing more than an anti-Semitic fantasy with no basis in reality.

A possible parable?

This "practice" of releasing a prisoner is said by some analysts to be 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.

Another 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.

A critical analysis of possibly fictive elements in Mark's series of ironic parallels, and a comparison with Homer's contest between the beggars for the approval of the suitors in the Odyssey, is laid out in detail in Dennis R. MacDonald, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark[1].

Modern fiction

Barabbas was the title of a 1962 film expanding on the career of Barabbas; it starred Anthony Quinn as Barabbas, with Silvana Mangano, Katy Jurado, Arthur Kennedy, Harry Andrews, Ernest Borgnine, Vittorio Gassman, and Jack Palance, and was distributed by Columbia Pictures. The film, conceived as a grand Roman epic, was based on the Nobel-Prize winning novel Barabbas (1950) by Pär Lagerkvist. Barabbas was also the title of a 1893 book by Marie Corelli. The film version was directed by Richard Fleischer and shot in Rome under the supervision of producer Dino De Laurentiis. It included many spectacular scenes including a battle of gladiators in a Cinecittà mock-up of the Colosseum, and a final crucifixion shot during a real eclipse of the sun. The music score, by Mario Nascimbene , contained a stark experimental component -- what the composer himself called 'new sounds', in order to demonstrate the eclipse as a supernatural event in the Judean age (see liner notes of CD of original soundtracks of Alexander the Great and Barabbas, music composed, orchestrated and conducted by Mario Nascimbene).

External links

• More on the interpretation that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person
• The Absurd Life: Jesus & Barabbas