Most historians believe Josephus was himself a Pharisee, and it’s not like he could conduct public opinion polls, so that’s a bit of a stretch.  There were multiple factions in Palestine, and most Jews probably weren’t that strongly affiliated with any of them.  

You could be right that Jesus didn’t do that well in Jerusalem (Bart would agree), but then why was he treated as such a big problem by both the temple priesthood (who don’t like the Pharisees either) and the Romans (who don’t know the difference)?  Can’t have it both ways.  If he’s got little support, he’s just another street corner prophet ranting at the Passover.  Very few of them got crucified.  Why did Jesus get so much attention?  

Again, it’s the temple priesthood doing this, according to the gospels–Caiaphas isn’t a Pharisee.  And he’s not a rabble rouser–his job is to keep the rabble down.  If he whips up a mob, Pilate can have his head on a platter quicker than you can say John the Baptist.

The doctrine of multiple attestation, in and of itself, isn’t adequate to establish the probability of something.  All four gospels have Jesus rising from the dead.  We don’t abandon skepticism just because miracles aren’t involved.  And frankly, for Pilate to argue for not crucifying somebody might be a bigger miracle than the resurrection.  You quote Josephus as an authority on what the common people believed (which was not really his area of expertise) but what say you to this?

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Doesn’t sound like the kind who caves to pressure, does he?  To Pilate, the only good Jew was either compliant or dead.  It was effective in the short term, but it came back to bite him–well after Jesus was gone.  

Your comment about Judas is puzzling.  Pilate doesn’t repent of his actions–he washes his hands of them (it was never about him being guilty, according to Matthew, but rather a superstitious dread of supernatural consequences).  He alone had the authority to crucify someone, and it was an authority he guarded closely, so why just hand it over to a mob?  

The Judas story is mainly there, yet again, to set up the temple priesthood and its entourage as the Worst People Ever.  Even the man who betrayed Jesus is better than them.  There is no thematic connection to Pilate and Barabbas.  The gospel writers are all stringing together various stories that were created afterwards, to fill the huge gaps in the collective memory of early Christianity as to what happened after Jesus was arrested.  

Mark portrays Barabbas as an insurrectionist because his source for the Barabbas story did.  Matthew used Mark as a source, liked the story, thought it needed fixing.  Luke used Mark as a source as well.  You don’t agree, which is fine, just like the people who don’t agree the earth is round.  

We can argue about John, but so much of John is clearly ahistorical (or borrowed from alternative sources, like the Pericope Adulterae) that it’s pointless to bring him up except for purposes of comparison.

Again, who would even have this information?  Nobody, because the followers of Jesus were in hiding, and never witnessed any of this.  The mob is composed (we’re told) of people who hate Jesus and his followers, so it’s not like they’re going to be interviewed later on.  

It’s a fabricated story.  Perhaps not intended as a hoax–rather as an allegory (that Mark would appreciate, without necessarily knowing it wasn’t meant literally) about how nobody knew who Jesus was.  And because Mark used it, it entered the canon.  Because Mark was the first gospel to gain a wide enough audience to survive.  

Seriously, the merciful Pilate just does not hold water.  I have made that argument myself on the main blog, but am forced to concede–it doesn’t add up.  He wouldn’t have feared the temple flunkies and their handful of hangers-on.  He wouldn’t have felt any compunction about killing anyone who said Rome’s days were numbered.  If he thought Jesus was insane–maybe.  But there’s no indication of that anywhere in the gospels.  

Rebuked, but not dismissed, and Pilate’s behavior continued after that rebuke, until he was finally removed for it, years after Jesus’ death.  It doesn’t match up at all.  Nor was Pilate rebuked for NOT crucifying someone.  Nor does it make sense that Caiaphas (who was likewise removed from power, around the same time as Pilate) would risk Pilate’s wrath by creating a mob to clamor for the blood of someone Pilate would happily kill without any such compulsion–he didn’t care if you’d committed crimes or not, as his behavior before and after Tiberius’ rebuke clearly demonstrates–if you were in any way less than obedient to Rome, that was to him a crime, and Tiberius would heartily agree.  

Jesus is saying Rome will cease to exist in a very short time.  That’s a lot less than obedient.  But this is assuming Pilate ever spoke to Jesus at all, and how would early Christians even know if he did, or what was said, and why is there no mention of a translator, which would be needed, since they had no common tongue to converse in?  Where is this dialogue coming from?  Who preserved it for posterity?    

Barabbas is a ‘notorious prisoner’ because Matthew distrusts Mark’s account (in this case, correctly, since there had been no insurrection), but likes the story, wants to include it.  So he tweaks it.  Waffles on what Barabbas was charged with, and gives Pilate a motive (that you admit is fictional) for his puzzling reluctance to do what he was himself notorious for doing.  There was no custom of the Roman governor freeing prisoners at Passover.  And freeing anyone guilty of a serious crime would get Pilate in more trouble than not crucifying somebody the Sanhedrin had legally condemned.  

Nor do we have any record of anybody named Barabbas, outside the gospels–it wasn’t a name that people used.  You can come up with different explanations for it (and many have), but the one that never works is “There was somebody named Barabbas who was in prison for a serious crime, and he was released instead of Jesus.”   

Matthew sees the problems in Mark’s account, but doesn’t know the reasons for them.  He is all in favor of portraying the temple priests as perfidious, so he fixes the story, tries to make it more credible.  He is the one editing Mark, not the other way around.  No way Mark’s account would come from him reading Matthew.  Makes no sense.  But makes perfect sense when you assume Matthew was reading Mark.  

Your problem is that you have a pre-determined conclusion you will not deviate from, and you warp all the evidence to match up with it.  That invariably leads to faulty conclusions.  If you can never change your mind, you aren’t studying history–you’re making it up to suit yourself.  

Until quite recently I believed there was something to the Barabbas story–now I’m forced to conclude the evidence just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny–in that there isn’t any.  None.  Zippo.  Just the four gospel accounts, which are there because of an earlier account that (like many stories in the gospels) isn’t factual in nature, and possibly was never intended to be taken as such.  These are not chronicles–they are religious stories, often but not always based on factual events.  

But nobody KNEW the factual events of Jesus’ so-called trial, which was really just a brief interrogation by the Sanhedrin, followed by a conviction, followed by summary execution on the authority of the Roman governor.  This was the accepted procedure, agreed-upon by both sides, and there is no reason to believe there was any deviation from it.  

But to early Christians, this was unacceptable–a story unfitting to Jesus’ enormous significance–so they seized upon the Barabbas story–to minimize Pilate’s guilt (since an increasing number of Christians were pagan converts) and maximize Jewish guilt (since most Jews would never convert and there was increasing hostility and lack of understanding between them and Christians).  

It began with a family feud between Jews who believed Jesus was Messiah and the great majority of their fellow Jews who would never accept this.  But once gentiles became the majority among Christians, it turned into a reason to hate Jews just for being Jews.  And this is the most tragic legacy of Jesus, which would have filled him with horror had he known.