1. Introduction
As literary tools, real or imaginary characters are often used to define and build story plots. The author’s intent is depicted through the skillful creation and deployment of the characters. Beside theological study, the bible can also be read as a form of literature with many genres. In this aspect, all biblical characters can be understood as literary tools, which bible authors employed for achieving certain purposes within their texts.
In this paper, we will examine a biblical character named Barabbas in the context of the Synoptic Gospels. P. Winter described the Barabbas’s Episode as the most enigmatical of all parts of Jesus’ trial in the Gospels. Indeed, to prove Winter’s point, Barabbas was the insurrectionist whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem instead of the innocent Jesus by the unison cries from the ‘crowd’ (ochlos), also translated as ‘the Jews’ or ‘the multitude’. Some questions are raised. Why did the crowd choose him instead of other criminals, e.g. the two robbers who were crucified together with Jesus? What was so peculiar about him? What were the gospel authors’ intentions in using this character? Could there be a hidden agenda within the texts?
The above questions will all be tackled in this paper, which are divided into four main sections. The first section will touch on the historicity of the events mentioned in the Barabbas Narrative. The second section will examine the Barabbas character in greater detail, particularly, his name, crimes and release. The third section will focus on literary criticism of the Barabbas Narrative in the Synoptic Gospels. The final section will summarize and offer a proposition that the Gospel authors’ intent for the Barabbas Narrative is really to put the Jews on trial for Christ’s death.
2. Main Body
2.1 Examining from Historicity
Firstly, we want to examine the Barabbas Narrative from the historicity of the events mentioned in the text. The Synoptic Gospels stated that there was a custom at Passover during which the Roman governor would release a prisoner of the crowd's choice. Luke 23:17 was not present in the earliest manuscripts and might be a later addition to conform to the rest of the Gospels. The repetition of this custom was shown by the imperfect use of apolyein (“used to release”) in Mark 15:6, (“usually did”) in Mark 15:8 and the verb eiōthein (“to be accustomed”) in Matt 27:15.
During the reign of Pontius Pilate, however, there was no record of this Passover custom. Moreover, this kind act was questionable because it was more lenient than the usual Roman administration style. Some pointed to the perception of Pontius Pilate as having no respect for Jewish religious and national customs. Never would this cruel governor ever accede to the release of a ‘notorious’ insurrectionist. However, other historians took the exact opposite view, arguing that Pilate showed careful regard to customs in order to avoid revolts in an unruly province, and this might be an example of Pilate creating an ‘ad hoc’ tradition in order to avoid a possibly explosive situation. Meier had described Pilate as a skillful master of pragmatic politics in his time where major disturbances and bloodshed in Judea were brought to a minimal.
Besides the dubious Passover custom, the insurrection mentioned in Mark 15:7 and Luke 23:19 would have been known by the pioneer Palestinian Jewish Christians as they read the Barabbas Narrative. However no such political revolt was recorded, not even by historians such as Josephus, during the time usually associated with Jesus’ crucifixion, ca. 30CE. Some had reconciled this issue by saying that the Gospel authors adopted an apologetic stance, in order to protect their infant communities against Roman reprisal.
2.2 Examining from Barabbas Character
Secondly, we want to examine the Barabbas Narrative from the character himself, in particular, his name, crimes and release as recorded in the synoptic gospels. Literally, Bar-abbas means ‘son of the father’. Some early Syriac manuscripts of Matthew recorded Barabbas as ‘Jesus Barabbas’ in Matthew 27:17, which translated to ‘Jesus, son of the Father’. The fact that the name of Barabbas was preserved in the tradition while the names of the two crucified lēstai (robbers) with Jesus did not, could imply that he was indeed a very prominent troublemaker at that time.
Barabbas or bar-abbas could also be a surname but it was not common in any other Hebrew text. Some scholars have speculated that Jesus was known as ‘bar-Abba’, due to his custom of addressing God as father or ‘Abba’ in prayer, as well as referring to God as Abba in his preaching. In the Gospels, however, Jesus rarely referred to himself as the ‘son of God’ and never referred to himself as the ‘son of the father’. The alternative possibility was that the name ‘Jesus’ was unintentionally inserted twice before Barabbas' name in Matthew 27:16-17. This was unlikely, especially since Barabbas was mentioned first in each verse. Most modern translations of the New Testament do not contain ‘Jesus’ as part of the Barabbas’ name.
Maccoby have averred that when the Jewish crowd clamored before Pontius Pilate to free ‘Bar Abba’, they could have meant Jesus. The argument given states that Anti-Semitic element in the Christian church altered the narrative to make it appear that the demand was for the freedom of somebody else named ‘Barabbas’, thus shifting the blame for the Crucifixion towards the Jews and away from the Romans.
Looking at the crimes of Barabbas, Mark and Luke had referred to him as one involved in a stasis, a riot (Mark 15:7; Luke 23:19). He was described as a notorious prisoner (Matthew 27:16), an insurrectionist (Mark 15:7, Luke 23:19) and a murderer (Mark 15:7, Luke 23:19). 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) mentioned that he had committed murder in an insurrection. Robert Eisenman has discussed the sicarii and the ongoing revolt of Jews against foreign presence in Judea. Many historians, however, maintained that the Sicarii only arose in the 40's or 50's of the 1st Century after Jesus' execution.
Regarding the peculiar choice of Barabbas’ release, Cheney stated that Pilate acquiesced the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus to satisfy the crowd (Mark 15:15), to stop a riot (Matt. 27:24) and to silence the people’s pleas for Jesus’ death (Luke 23:18-25). Other views maintained that Pontius Pilate, encouraged by the antipathy of the temple priesthood, considered Jesus as a threat to the Roman state, and thus, released Barabbas instead of Jesus.
Faced with similar charges, Barabbas, guilty as pronounced , was released, whereas Jesus, innocent from false accusations , was condemned to death. Looking further into the texts, the three questions posted by Pilate in Mark (vv. 15:9, 11, 14), the three declarations of Jesus’ innocence in Luke (vv. 23:4, 14, 22) and the dream of Pilate’s wife and his washing of hands in Matthew (vv. 27:19, 24), showed that the gospels authors believed that the drive to kill Jesus was primarily the responsibility of the Jewish leaders though the execution was by the Romans. Beck mentioned that Pilate’s hand washing and his wife’s dream could be local traditions which were added to the main narrative to lessen Romans’ responsibility. They reflected a trying period where the Jews persecuted the Palestinian Jewish Christians and when it was important for them to avoid Romans’ suspicion.
Also, Barabbas’ release illustrated the irony of the pardon and condemnation of the similar crimes of insurrection, both at the same time. It downplayed the penalty of murder in two ways. The first was through the release of a real murderer, Barabbas, and the second was through the murder of an innocent person, Jesus.
2.3 Examining from Literary Criticism
Thirdly, we want to examine the Barabbas Narrative from a literary criticism perspective. As mentioned earlier, this Barabbas scene presented a dramatic contrast between the guilty and the innocent. It was not alien to the Jews since the condemning of the innocent and letting the guilty go free was a Judaic motif. From Matthew 27:17, the neat pattern of ‘Jesus Barabbas or Jesus who is called Messiah’ could reflect a copyist’s dramatic touch to heighten the parallelism of the two figures whom Pilate faced. Therefore, the entire Barabbas Narrative could be read like a parable to compare the true and false ‘son of the father’. Using the reader-response theory, the contrast between Barabbas and Jesus were meant to draw the readers of the Gospels into the narrative so that they must decide whose revolution was truly from the Father - the violent insurgency of Barabbas, or the challenging Gospel of Jesus.
As literary tool, Barabbas could be a totally fictional character to relate the story of a huge injustice wrought against a supremely just One. In the gospel of Mark, the author needed someone for his plot purposes to give testimony at the end that Jesus was indeed the Son of God. In the same fictitious light, Aus had argued that the Barabbas Narrative was basically a Christian composition drawing many similarities from an earlier major insurrection in Jerusalem in 4 BCE. He also illustrated that the pro-Roman sentiment among the Palestinian Jewish Christians could be due to the favorable deeds of Vitellius, a Roman governor, notably the transfer of the custody of the high priest’s special garments back to the priests at a Passover festival in Jerusalem in 36 CE. He maintained that the positive character of Vitellius had been transferred back to Pilate in the Barabbas Narrative.
Scholars like Cohn, Rigg, Maccoby and S.L. Davies interpreted the Barabbas Narrative to state that there was only one Jesus who stood at the Roman’s trial. Barabbas was not another person but an aspect of Jesus’ identity, e.g. under a religious charge Jesus was called ‘Barabbas’, the son of the Father, and under a political charge he was called the king of the Jews. Eventually, Pilate dismissed the religious charge or ‘Barabbas’ but sentenced Jesus on the political one. These arguments, however, do not stand under critical analysis because the creation of a nonexistent person was too early in the Gospel tradition, and moreover, Jesus rarely spoke of God as his father or called himself the son of God.
2.4 Summary and Proposition
At this juncture, the paper has covered the historicity, the character examination and the literary criticism of the Barabbas Narrative in the context of the Synoptic Gospels. As much as they have provided new insights, they have equally highlighted new questions on the authenticity of the texts. First of all, there was no recorded source of the custom of releasing a prisoner chosen by the people, nor was there any recorded record of an insurrection during Jesus’ time. Pontius Pilate, as historians had recorded, could not have possibly gave in to the cries of the ‘crowd’ or otherwise translated as ‘the Jews’. Next, the name of Barabbas, which literally means ‘son of the father’, was impossibly odd. The many crimes committed by Barabbas were also ‘too coincidentally’ similar to the false accusations thrown at Jesus. Ironically, these crimes were pardoned and Barabbas released, whereas the innocent Jesus was convicted and sentenced to crucifixion. Lastly, most literary criticism asserts that this particular plot was an invention of the early Church, devised in order to exhibit a simple rhetorical antithesis between the good Jesus and the bad one, so that the Jews could be shown for evermore to have rejected his authentic, good counterpart.
Approaching from the reader-response’s perspective, I will now offer another proposition that there is indeed another secondary trial within the Barabbas Narrative. This trial aims to convict the Jews for shedding innocent’s blood of Jesus. The narrative begins by drawing all its readers to the familiar court setting in front of Pilate, the governor. Then it starts to introduce all the different characters that are necessary in a typical court hearing. The ‘defendant’ is ‘the crowd’ or ‘the Jews’, in particular, their religious leaders on multiple charges of slander, giving false testimonies and murder. The ‘plaintiff’ or ‘prosecutor’ is the team of synoptic gospel authors whose purposes are to convince the court through their consistent narration and to convict the ‘defendant’ of his murder crime. The ‘defendant attorney’ is formed by the collective voices of the chief priests and the elders, who formulated the accusations against Jesus. They must prove to the court that Jesus had indeed committed the crimes that led to a death sentence. The witnesses are the council of three formed by Pilate himself, his wife and Herod. They have, consistently, maintained the innocence of Jesus through their personal testimonies. Finally, the responsibility of the ‘judge’ or ‘jury’ is bestowed onto the readers themselves so that they can make an independent verdict on whether the ‘defendant’ is guilty of Jesus’ death.
The character Barabbas, therefore, is used in the narrative as a marker to advance the court’s hearing. From the initial accusations to the illogical choice of Barabbas’ release, the defendant attorney is portrayed as self-centered and holds little regard for justice. Moreover, the notorious list of crimes attributed to Barabbas provides a sharp contrast to the false accusations of Jesus by the chief priest and elders. This should be noted as strong evidence by the judge. Repeatedly, the witnesses have shown many evidences that Jesus was indeed innocent and call for a just verdict to be passed. The mass cries of the defendant overrule the rightful judgment and caused an innocent person, Jesus, to be crucified. As an added twist, the defendant in Matthew was heard to make a self-confession on the charge of causing Jesus’ death by saying, “Let his blood be on us and on our children!” Ultimately, the reader-response’s intent of this Barabbas Narrative is that the readers, who now act as the judge, will be challenged to make their own assessment on whether the ‘defendant’ is guilty of Jesus’ death.
3. Conclusion
Notwithstanding the authenticity issue, Aug explained that the Barabbas Narrative has special social significance to the Palestinian Jewish Christians when it transferred the main responsibility of Jesus’ death from the Romans back to the Jews. Firstly, they could use this narrative to better establish their self-identity apart from Judaism. Secondly, it was advantageous for them to lean towards Rome, the occupying military power in Palestine and ruler of the world then.
The main exegesis of the Barabbas Narrative often evolves around Pontius Pilate and the Jews, shifting the blame of Jesus’ death from one party to another. Primarily, Pontius Pilate should be held responsible because only he alone, as the governor, could pronounce a death sentence at that time. The Jews, however, should also bear the fault because they had instigated the crucifixion to take place. But perhaps, we should not be quick to point our fingers at others. From a theological perspective, all of us are guilty of his death because of our sins. This is mentioned in the bible when it says that Jesus came and died for our sins so that whoever believes in him shall not perished but have eternal life. In that case, we have all taken part in the crucifixion of Jesus, and like Barabbas, our many sins are forgiven simply because he had bore our sins to himself.
In future, when we study the Barabbas Narrative or any other narrative within the biblical texts, we can, for a change, employ some literary criticism techniques such as the reader-response theory to them, so that we, as readers, can be made active and be directly involved in the plots. Surely, if there is any original reader-response purpose from the bible authors, it will only be more apparent to us when we assume the intended role and give our own response in the context of the narrative.
References
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Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Vol. I. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1991.
Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Vol. 3. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1991.
Sloyan, Gerard Stephen. The Crucifixion of Jesus: History, Myth, Faith. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995.
Winter, Paul. On the trial of Jesus. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1974.
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