LONG READ ALERT @messiahette let me rattle you with this heretical piece.
The Gospel writers have Pilate resort to a “tradition” of releasing a prisoner to the crowd for Passover (Matt. 27:15, Mark 15:6, Luke 23:17, John 18:39), and offer them their choice of Jesus or Barabbas, a well known murderer and rebel. But what customary pardon is this? The Jews never had a custom of freeing prisoners on Passover (or any other day), and there is no evidence that the Romans had any such customary pardon either – not that Pilate would ever have offered to release a convicted murderer and anti-Roman insurrectionist even if there were such a custom! There have been many attempts to justify the historical veracity of this so-called “Privilegium Paschale.” Roman and Jewish records have been ransacked in the search for supporting evidence, but without success.
And why would anyone pick Barabbas over Jesus, anyway? Famed miracle healer and teacher, just acclaimed as king by the entire city a few days ago – or a notorious killer? Which one would you pick? If we believe the Gospels, it was the conniving chief priests who got the crowd to root for Jesus’ death (Matt. 27:20, Mark 15:11, Luke 23:23).
But the people loved Jesus (Luke 23:27-28) and despised those rich fat-cat priests who cooperated with the occupying enemy. So how could those hated Roman toadies not only talk the multitudes into choosing to free a murderer over their beloved Messiah, but actually whip them up into a frenzied mob howling for Jesus’ blood? (Matt. 27:22, 25; Mark 15:13-14; Luke 23:18,21,23; John 18:40). Remember, just 12 hours earlier they were so “very much afraid of public uproar if Jesus were to be arrested in the open” (Mark 14:2) that they had to seize him at night and illegally hold a secret trial in a private house. But apparently all it took to sway the fickle multitude was some spirited cheerleading. Why were they ever worried?
Could this Barabbas have had a following of his own that outvoted Jesus’ followers? Though Matthew only refers to Barabbas as a “notorious prisoner” (27:16), Mark and Luke say he was a rebel who had committed murder in an insurrection (Mark 15:7, Luke 23:19). This leads some to theorize Barabbas was chosen because he was a rebel hero, and the crowd was packed with Zealots. John seems to realize Pilate would never have agreed to release a killer with Roman blood on his hands, so he makes Barabbas a bandit (18:40) instead. Not to mention it would seem awfully contradictory to have the same crowd howling for Pilate to release an anti-Roman rebel to also yell “We have no king but Caesar!” (19:15).
But Barabbas was probably never a real person in the first place. Because the “tradition” Mark alludes to in his passion story is actually the Hebrew tradition of releasing not a man, but the scapegoat. It’s no coincidence that the name Barabbas means “Son of the Father.” (And in fact, in many Syriac manuscripts, we find Barabbas called Jesus Barabbas! Mark’s Gospel gives us two sons of the father; one carries the sins of Israel, murder and sedition, and is released unharmed into the “wilderness.” The other is sacrificed so that his blood will atone for the sins of Israel. This is identical to the Day of Atonement ritual found in the Old Testament: on that day, the high priest took two goats, killing one as a blood sacrifice to the Lord and releasing the other unharmed to carry away the people’s sins as a scapegoat (Leviticus 16: 5-10,15- 22). Richard Carrier has noted Mark’s setup so clearly duplicates the two goats tradition held every year in the Temple on Yom Kippur there can be no doubt that this is what Mark is doing: he is creating a fictional story that echoes the Jewish Day of Atonement ceremony.