Book 5, lines 245-260

[Previous: lines 200-244]

Pilate does not want to execute Jesus, but the crowd insist upon it.

Forte illis Barabas populo, patribusque diebus       [245]
invisus, quo non scelere usquam immanior alter,
iandudum in vinclis poenam expectabat acerbam.
Nulla fugae spes prorsus, ei via nulla salutis.
Huic igitur praeses vellent ne, an parcere Christo
scitatur, sperans ita tandem evadere posse.               [250]
Illi autem victique odiis, caecique furore
exolvi Barabam poscunt, veniamque precantur
uni omnes, Christumque absumi funere tendunt,
atque obstant summa studiis rectoris opum vi.
Ille autem loris caedi, virgisque salignis                    [255]
divinum mandat (visu lacrimabile) corpus.
“Fors,” ait, “innocui potero hac extinxe cruoris
arte sitim; sic immitis miserebitur hostis,
et lacerum totos cernentes comminus artus
ipsi ultro satiati animos, a morte reducent.”               [260]

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There was a man called Barabbas, hated by                 [245]
the people for his many and most monstrous crimes.
He languished in chains, waiting punishment.
with no hope of escape, no way to safety.
The governor offered to spare him, or Christ,
hoping to avoid having to pass judgment.                     [250]
But the crowd was swamped with hatred, blind rage.
They called for Barabbas to be pardoned
with one voice, and for Christ to be put to death,
vehemently opposing the rector’s wishes.

He was bound and beaten with rods of willow               [255]
his divine body (a sight to make you weep) cut.
“Perhaps,” he said, “this will quench their thirst for
innocent blood; and they may pity him
seeing at close quarters his body punished:
sated, they may rescind their calls for death.”                [260]

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Matthew 27:16 refers to Barabbas as a ‘notorious prisoner’; Mark 15:7 and Luke 23:19 give us a little more detail, saying that he had been involved in a στάσις (stasis, a riot), where John 18:40 calls him a λῃστής (lēstēs, ‘bandit’). According to Robert Eisenman, this is ‘the word Josephus always employs when talking about Revolutionaries ... [likely] sicarii, members of a militant Jewish movement that sought to overthrow the Roman occupiers of their land by force’[Eisenman, James the Brother of Jesus (Penguin 1998), 177]. Mark and Matthew claim that there was a Roman custom that at special festivals the Roman governor would release a prisoner of the crowd's choice; although the idea that a Roman ruler would blithely release a revolutionary dedicated to overthrowing Roman rule just because a crowd demanded it strains credulity beyond snapping point. Vida follows John who claims that the custom was an ancient Jewish one specifically linked to passover, which is (a) not true and (b) makes it even less likely Pilate would act upon it, surely. Matthew's notorious blood-curse line (not present in any other Gospel) is also, surely, ahistorical

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying "I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves." And all the people answered, "His blood be on us and on our children!" (Greek: Τὸ αἷμα αὐτοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ τέκνα ἡμῶν) [Matthew 27:24–25]

Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, rightly says that the line has been made ‘the tool of the most corrupt and murderous misreading of the passion stories that has disfigured the Church's record ... it can only make the contemporary Christian think of all the centuries in which Jewish guilt formed so significant a part of Christian self-understanding, and of the nightmare which was made possible by this in the twentieth century.’

The name ‘Barabbas’ (bar Abbas, ‘son of The Father’) is interesting. Some early manuscripts of Matthew 27:16–17 give the full name of Barabbas as Yeshua bar Abbas, which is to say: ‘Jesus Barabbas’. Early church father Origen was so troubled by this that he excised the first name: it was impossible a low criminal could have had such a holy name, so ‘Jesus’ must have been inserted into the text by a heretic. On the other hand, some scholars suggest that ‘Jesus bar Abbas’ is not only Jesus's true name, but that Jesus and Barabbas are the same person. According to H. A. Rigg

Jesus was brought to trial before Pilate twice, first as Jesus Barabbas (i.e., Jesus, Son of the Father) and later as Jesus called Christos (i.e., the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah (masiah), or ‘King of Israel’—rendered ‘King of the Jews’ in Mark 15:9 and John 18:39), a title which in Jesus' day belonged to royalty, not divinity. Jesus as Barabbas (Son of the Father) at the first trial was guilty of no crime under Roman law and was discharged, but Jesus as the Christ (the Messiah, the Davidic king who was to liberate Israel) at the second trial was quite different, for that was the political crime of treason, which was within Pilate's competence and responsibility to try. Thus, there was not involved any custom of releasing a prisoner at the Passover, but rather a case of one individual having been charged twice. [Rigg ‘Barabbas’, Journal of Biblical Literature 64 (1945) 444-47]

Head of the post: Barabbas, is a 1961 religious epic, directed by Richard Fleischer, starring Anthony Quinn as Barabbas, features Silvana Mangano, Katy Jurado, Arthur Kennedy, Harry Andrews, Ernest Borgnine, Vittorio Gassman, and Jack Palance. It was based on Nobel Prize-winning Pär Lagerkvist's 1950 novel of the same title; in it, Barabbas returns to his criminal ways, is captured again by the Romans, cannot be exectued since he has already been pardoned and so is sent to work in the sulphur mines. There he befriends a Christian and converts. He ends up a gladiator in Rome and, after the city burns and Nero blames the Christians, is crucified with many others. The final crucifixion scene was filmed on 15 February 1961 during an actual total eclipse of the sun.