(13 votes, average: 4.69 out of 5)
Loading...Is it true that at Jesus’ trial, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate tried to get him off the hook by offering to let him loose, according to his annual custom, but that the Jewish crowd insist that he release to them Barabbas instead, a serious criminal?
[[RECALL, in case you haven’t been reading each of the posts in this thread: I’ve been trying to show how experts in the phenomenon of “memory” can help us reflect on the Gospel traditions about Jesus. Memory is a much wider and more expansive phenomenon than most people imagine. Memories involve what we’ve done, what we’ve experienced, what we’ve learned, what we’ve heard, and what we simply recall about the past whether we ourselves experienced it and whether our recollections are just personal or collectively shared by a broader swath of our community (e.g., our “memories” of the Clinton presidency or of the Civil War) .
When seen in this broader sense, the Gospels contain some “historically true” memories of Jesus but also some distorted or fake memories. In the current thread of posts I’ve been discussing key passages of the Passion narratives of the Gospels. All these are taken from my book that discusses such things in large, Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016).]]
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The Barabbas Episode
As I earlier indicated, Mark’s Gospel indicates that it was Pilate’s custom to release a prisoner guilty of a capital crime to the Jewish crowd in honor of the Passover festival. He asks if they would like him to release Jesus, but they urge him to release for them Barabbas instead, a man in prison for committing murder during an insurrection. Pilate appears to feel that his hand is forced, and so he sets Barabbas free but orders Jesus to be crucified (Mark 15:6-15).
This Barabbas episode was firmly set in the early Christian memory of Jesus’ trial – it is found, with variations, in all four of the Gospels (Matthew 27:15-23; Luke 23:17-23; John 18:39-40). I do not see how it can be historically right, however; it appears to be a distorted memory.
For starters,
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Could the simplest and most logical answer be that these two Jesuses were the same Jesus? The “son of the father” surname cannot be a coincidence (nor can be the story that neither ended up dead). And this fits the Distorted Memory theory. For 30 years people talked about Jesus “Son of the Father” being put forward for crucifixion and then … not dead, until the legend grew into two people?
One big problem is that Pilate would not have been releasing *anyone*!
I am curious as to why historians paint Pilate as a particularly violent and brutal governor, given that we have, as you pointed out, only two sources for information about him. Philo and Josephus would not have been particularly kind to Pilate in their writings, so how much can we believe them? It would seem that any Roman governor who instituted policies or actions designed to keep the overall peace (as was expected of them) using the resources available to them, would have been viewed in a very negative light by Jews. Is there really evidence that Pilate was as brutal as he is often depicted?
They both tell stories, they are independent of each other, they both had grounds for knowing, and they both portray him as being an exceptionally bad specimen.
But – Josephus has no first-hand information about Pilate at the time he was governor because he wasn’t born yet. So he is recounting secondhand information, likely garnered from anti-Roman Jews who might have painted a biased picture of Pilate. And while Philo is a contemporary of Pilate, his focus was on how Pilate refused to remove offensive emblems from Jerusalem until ordered to do so from Rome. So, it would seem that both of these men had reason to produce biased accounts of Pilate.
Anyway, my question is, to what extent do historians consider the potential biases of writers like Philo and Josephus in evaluating their accounts for historicity?
It’s long been a major consideratoin among scholars; there is a lot of scholarship on the issue, involving such things as Josephus’s pro-Roman tendencies that affect his presentations, his opposition to certain Jews and jewish groups (especially apocalyptic thinkers and zealots, his efforts to express Jewish views in terms Roman pagans could understand, etc.
Josephus recounts that Pilate was recalled to Rome due to his cruelty to the Samaritans. Are there any independent accounts of Pilate’s recall to Rome that attest to his general awfulness?
The only early sources on Pilate are Josephus and Philo. Normally their credibility is doubted only when there are clear indications that their biases have gotten in the way of their reporting.
I believe that the Coptic Christians of Egypt regard Pontius Pilate as a saint.
So, the gospels are all anti-Jewish. The book Revelation even more so. What does this mean for historic research on the New Testament texts which apparently are coloured by anti-Jewish sentiments. How can we separate facts from ideology?
The first step is to identify the ideology and then to see how it is manifest in the accounts. Any clearly ideologically driven account is naturally suspect (though not necessarily discounted just on that basis). More important, any sources/stories/sayings that work *against* the ideology are more probably histoircal.
Is there any evidence anywhere that anyone was named Barabbas? It looks so made up it’s ridiculous!
Not that I know of.
The implausibility of the Barabbas story seems hugely important to historical study of the resurrection. Mark is the earliest and seemingly most reliable Gospel. If Mark’s Passion narrative includes unbelievable tales such as the Barabbas release, why should we believe Mark’s other Passion claims – like the (highly atypical) tomb burial by Joseph of Arimathea? A summary of the case against the tomb burial should make note of the Barabbas legend reducing Mark’s credibility in my opinion: https://exnikhilo.substack.com/p/was-jesus-buried-in-a-tomb
Dr. Ehrman, Matt. and Luke have what look like clear legends e.g. in the birth narratives. But for Mark is there any other story in his Gospel that is similarly impeaching of Mark’s credibility? Is Barabbas the biggest egg on Mark’s face? (Suspending judgment on the resurrection and miracles for the purpose of this question – question is about Mark’s background credibility for assessing his miraculous claims)
I’d say lots and lots of stories in Mark are historically problematic. E.g., 13,000 or so people following Jesus when he feeds them with a few loaves. Who are these people? is this plausible? Or the Triumphal Entry. etc.
These issues bring up the question of how such stories could fly, have any power to convince, among people who actually resided in the immediate area, or who had parents who actually resided in that area, when the supposed trial took place. Surely, there would be accurate memories of Pilate floating around. And anyone with an accurate memory, you’d think, would reject the gospel stories. I wonder how many people would be in a position to say, nah, that didn’t happen? Not enough? Or is it the case that the gospel stories gained currency among people who never resided in that area, who were completely ignorant of actual events? And the accurate memories were simply snuffed out by the fictions in circulation.
These are the kinds of issues I deal with at length in my book. We don’t know if these stories were floating around in Jerusalem soon after jesus’ death, but it seems completely unlikely to me. We first learn of them forty years later in Greek speaking areas hundreds of miles away from people who didn’t know Jesus and weren’t there….
Interesting that Justin Martyr, ca. 150 CE was convinced that all the important matters of Jesus’ trial were written down in an Acts of Pilate kept on file somewhere in the Imperial Archives in Rome. I wonder how he got that idea? Made it up, or was it a bit of “urban legend” passed down by word of mouth as part of oral apologetics? “… and that’s the story of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. Don’t believe it? Well, I’ve been told on good authority that it’s all recorded in the Acts of Pilate kept in Rome! My friend Antoninus’s cousin’s wife’s uncle was a scribe in the imperial archives and has seen them!”
I don’t think he made it up himself. He heard it as a rumor. You start getting that kind of thing about then. Tertullian has a good ‘un like it too. I give a translation of the various Pilate documents (legendary/forged) that have survived in my book The Other Gospels. Maybe I should give some of them on the blog….
Prof Ehrman: What are the chances that Peter went to ROme to become the “1st Pope” (as Catholics would have us believe) or the Bishop of Rome? I see no corroborating evidence of such an event.
What are your thoughts? Thank you, ALC
That’s the age-old view, but I don’t think it can be historical. I deal with it in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdaleine. For one thing, our first reference to the church in Rome of any kind is Paul’s letter to the Romans where he greets over 20 people that he knows there (even though he’s never been yet!) and doesn’t mention Peter. The congregation is almost predominantly gentile. Nothing puts Peter in the city of Rome until the early second century, some decades after his death, and nothing makes him the founder of the church until decades after that.
I have always wondered about this Barabbas character. I wonder if it even appeared in the original gospels at all. As Bart has mentioned a number of times in his writings, the earliest Gospel that is more or less in tact is a Gospel of Mark from around 180 CE. Could this have been just another way of Christians adding evil deed after evil deed an attributing them all to the Jews as a way of creating separation from their Jewish roots. This idea that the Jewish leadership would actually say: ‘Give us Jesus and crucify hims…his blood be upon us. is a horrific tale/accusation against the entire Jewish leadership. Why would they say ‘his blood be upon us…’ if they really believed he was a phony.
Long story short: all this anti Semitic stuff–while it may have originally been intended to simply separate the Christians from their Jewish roots undoubtedly played a major part in the Jews hate that lead to mid evil pogroms and ultimately to Dachau, Buchenwald and Treblinka.
I think Mark is usually dated to around 70 CE (180 CE or so is when the Gospels are all called by their now common names for the first time)
The truth of the Gospels is not in the accuracy of the recorded narratives; the “baby” is found in underlying allegory. Most of the Gospels is fantasy, yet with it a richer story is revealed than would otherwise be.
Pilate wanted to release “Jesus” because he saw that he had done nothing wrong. He gave the wild crowd of Jews the option of Jesus or Barabbas a criminal. They demanded he release Barabbas, but only Jews would understand the significance of this. Jesus calls himself the “Son of man”, Barabbas in Hebrew translates to “Son of God” (Bar+Abbas (son of Father). The Jews thus demanded God be released, not the impostor. But in the gospels Jesus never refers to himself as the “Son of man”, it is referenced in the Old Testament and is anything from a worthless man to a prophet, an imperfect Son of Adam. The Church, to protect their theology added “Jesus identifying as himself in 3rd person.” Without this change, the theology falls apart. And it is myth regardless; Jesus was not crucified, an imperfect “Son of man” named Simon of Cyrene (the Zealot) was. In this regard the Gospels are indeed accurate. Intentional distortions!
It’s fortunate for apologists that ethnic slurs stand on the ignorant, irrational premise of collective guilt, because the claim that Jews “preferred to kill rather than revere the one God had sent to them” resets the threshold for stupidity! 🙄
This allegation requires Caiaphas & Co. to have *known* that Jesus was “the one God had sent to them” before making their (insane) decision. But if they actually believed he was the Messiah — God’s conquering champion come to destroy the forces of evil and establish His good kingdom on earth — repudiating Jesus would have been suicidal!
In ignorance there is, of course, no villainy. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
But if Jewish leadership acted in full knowledge and with malice aforethought against God’s “Anointed One”? 😱 Well, it’s a good thing it was only their foreskins Yahweh demanded, because that would have taken some mighty big testicles! I’d guess that even the most venal, self-serving Temple leaders had to know that “Your Arms Too Short to Box with God.”
Did the gospel authors manage to matriculate from the Greek Academy without ever taking a single class in logic or argumentation?
It makes no sense to characterize Pilate/ the Romans as believing that Jesus had committed no crime. They arrested him! Further, they arrested him because his popularity among the Jews represented a threat to Roman authority. Why in this case would Pilate have Jesus arrested (that part makes sense) but then offer to free him at the behest of the very people whose devotion to Jesus the Romans feared? And then, when Jesus’s followers did not set him free, the Romans (who did not think he did anything wrong) crucified him in a way that is represented as extraordinarily cruel – more so than your run-of-the-mill crucifixion. The entire story is a series of contradictory and illogical events.
For the Romans Jesus actually had “committed no crime.” Nor did they arrest him. The Temple guards did. In the dead of night. While he was praying. By himself. In an isolated spot outside the city.
The Sanhedrin then immediately put him on trial (by then the wee hours) for committing the religious offense of blasphemy — a charge of no moment whatsoever to Rome.
It was Temple authorities who took Jesus into custody and handed him over to the Roman procurator, alleging that he had proclaimed himself the Messiah (which they, no doubt, graciously explained amounted to naming himself “King of the Jews.”)
Whatever popularity a Galilean peasant rabbi had among the Jews in Jerusalem during Passover (probably negligible) was only a threat to Temple, not Roman, authority. But lacking the legal wherewithal to eliminate him, they brought Jesus to Pilate, characterizing him as the ringleader of an insurrectionist movement. That charge very much *would* concern the occupation force.
It appears, however, that Pilate initially balked. Surely nobody’s fool, he undoubtedly saw through this charade and didn’t appreciate being made a cat’s paw by Caiaphas & Co., who were merely seeking to rid themselves of an embarrassing but harmless (and pacifist!) gadfly.
In fact it may have been Pilate’s skepticism of the Jewish aristocracy that inspired the “Barabbas” legend.
That the Roman procurator joined in Passover festivities by offering clemency to a condemned prisoner is ridiculous. That such beneficence extended to releasing a violent insurrectionist is downright ludicrous.
But the fact that the anecdote is preserved in all FOUR gospels — including in *every* version specific mention of the name “Barabbas” — strongly supports Prof. Ehrman’s observation about the (always tricky) phenomenon of memory, compounded here by the distorting lens of 4-6 decades of oral transmission.
A suspicious Pilate probably DID offer a choice: “Jesus the Messiah” or “Jesus Barabbas”? But not to the Jewish officials. Rather, it was to Jesus, himself, asking: “Do you claim to be the “King of the Jews” or the “Son of the Father”?
After Jesus refused to even dignify the question, Pilate (in John’s account) actually pressed: “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you and power to crucify you?”
When Jesus retorted, “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above,” Pilate famously “washed his hands” of Jesus, sealing his fate.
In response to exnikhilo question about Mark’s burial story, I have always wondered since the discovery of Jehohanan the only crucified Jewish body among thousands crucified according to various ancient sources to be discovered in a tomb if any scholar has ever hypothesized about the possibility that Jehohanan could be the unresurrected body of Jesus Christ.
This would fit nicely with the early Pagan critique that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera by Miriam the hair dresser. If this was really true, it might explain why Jehohanan was given a burial.
Scenario: Pantera, now verifiably living in Germany in Circa 30
CE west of the Rhine River after his defeat at the Teutoburg forest, hears that his ne’er do well son is running amuck in Judea, and still having some feelings for Miriam, contacts Pilate by courier and says something like: Well if you have to crucify the boy please give the body to the family. You know these Jews are funny about this burial stuff. It sounds pretty plausible to me!
Now that will get the devout lurkers on the blog going won’t it?
No, not really. There were many hundreds of people crucified around this time (thousands?) and both Jesus and Jehohanan were common names of Jews. Nothing connects the two, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason to think they’re related at all.
I like Spong’s take on this story where he explains how this story sets up Jesus and Barabbas in the roles of the sacrificial (perfect) lamb and the scape goat for Passover. I know Spong does not have a popular take on Matthew’s extension of Mark’s stories being a Christian overlay on the Jewish holy days, but, in this case, the use of Barabbas (and his name) does fit well!
Concerning Josephus: I saw a history channel documentary saying that he was totally in error about Masada. He claims that the Romans laid siege to Masada and the Jews all committed suicide. This documentary says that recent archeology shows evidence of a pitched battle and a torching of the enclave by the Romans. What say you Prof. Bart?
They actually found the lots on which the names of the suicide pact were discovered.
As a tangential question to the comment made by TimOBrien:
I had read somewhere that the Jewish authorities could execute Jews themselves for such non revolutionary crimes as murder, rape or theft. I can’t remember just where I read this or I would quote the source. According to this source, the Jewish authorities could use stoning or flaying to carry out the execution.
the author of what I had read made the point that if Jesus was crucified–no matter what the actual circumstances were–that the Romans were the ones that would have had to carry it out and that they would not do this lightly for simple crimes such as murder or rape that the Jews could have handled themselves.
In the opinion of scholars who know the details of Jews/Roman leadership/puppet governments is this true? What say you Prof. Bart?
There’s no real evidence for this view. The only “Jewish” executions we know of from the period are not “official” but mob-actions.
Josephus writes that the Essenes claimed the right to “punish capitally” anyone who blasphemed God or Moses. I don’t know it they ever actually did so, but given the isolation of the Qumran community, it just might be possible.
, I know you still beleive that jesus was Crucified although not a christian any more and not relying on that for salvation ( 1 corinthians 15:12-16
so you are not bound by faith to beleive jesus was crucified
after reading your article a few years back called ” did they crucify the wrong Guy” and Now Reading This Aricle i ask my self is there a corner of your heart that you dont be;leive that Jesus was saved from death. I know you dont beleive in the supernatural but as christian you did beleive that” With god everything is possible”. Don’t you think that the Jesus Barabbas story , barabass the Insurgent being freed by by Pilate and jesus ansd innocent man was an Act of God. A miracle as you mentioned in the treatise of the great seth and the apocalypse of Peter that Jesus was standing there watching someone else getting crucified. ( continued on next part)
thank
Jamal
No, there’s no historical evidence to suggest that Jesus survived his death.
Could that Not have been a Miracle of God that he according these books were walking through crowd and nobody recognised him. is there not possiblitiy since everything is possible with god, that You beleived for so many hears being devout christian that god with his mighty power in the last moments, especially reading that pilate said he found Jesus innocent and washed his hands from it. jesus barabass bit the dust or simon of cyrene bit the dust
Thanks
jamal
Historians look at historical evidence rather than divine intervention when trying to understand our sources.
In reply to Danko: I knew I had read that idea somewhere (Jews having right to execute for blasphemy.) It would only make sense that the Romans wouldn’t have wanted to get involved in Jewish religious disputes that didn’t directly involve a threat to their own power and dominance. Why would they care if some guy drunk on the regions’ wine ran into the sanctuary and swore at the Rabbi or tore the curtain. If the Jews could contain him themselves and could handle the situation–one less Roman to blame if the guy as supporters. As in the old testament: stoning and flaying would be a quicker and somewhat more merciful method than crucifixion where one hangs for hours or days.
There is an argument that the Romans reserved capital punishment to themselves, but given how thinly they were spread, especially in a remote province like Judaea, I doubt they cared all that much or could do much about it if they did. The gospels even claim that Herod Antipas had John the Baptist executed, after all. Also, in Acts 7, the people accuse Stephen of blasphemy; the high priest offers Stephen a chance to defend himself, but what he says so enrages his listeners that they stone him to death on the spot. Acts doesn’t have any mention of Roman interference or disapproval.
All Torah methods of execution were intended to be as quick as possible, unlike crucifixion, in which agony and disgrace were part of the punishment.