Pilate Released Barabbas. Really??

The implication–that Mark intends to make–is that Barabbas was an insurrectionist–but the wording suggests the evidence to that effect was flimsy and perhaps entirely circumstantial. Truthfully, there would have been very little information available to any of the gospel writers about this man, if he existed at all. So they have a lot of leeway in how they tell the story, and each tells it differently.

Mark’s Barabbas may not be guilty of anything much, which would explain why he was released. Matthew’s Barabbas is clearly guilty of many foul crimes, being a ‘notorious’ prisoner–but his crimes are not specified, because Matthew is writing shortly after the great insurrection, and is perhaps wary of suggesting that the Romans would have let such a man go.

The story of Pilate’s wife, which is found nowhere but in Matthew, is clearly his own embellishment, drawn perhaps from the legends of Calpurnia warning Caesar about her prophetic dream relating to his assassination, or similar legends. (It’s not like Christians were the only ones who mythologized real history).

I think it’s pretty clear that he finds Mark’s version of the story unsatisfactory for Matthew’s purposes. Barabbas needs to be very clearly a horrible undeserving person–in Mark, all we know of him is that he’s in prison with some people who committed insurrection and murder, but we don’t know he did anything like that. Matthew doesn’t want to get into the insurrection angle, because it’s right after a much worse insurrection.

It’s pretty strong evidence that Matthew came later.

Bren, I went to bible hub, and didn’t find one translation that used the phrase ‘fellow insurrectionists.’ Do you read ancient Greek? I sure as hell don’t.

Most translations I found are a mite ambiguous; a few say Barabbas was personally guilty of insurrection and murder, but I look at Wikipedia (Wikipedia pages relating to scholarly topics are usually pretty well sourced) and it says Mark and Luke say he was involved in a riot. The implication they make is that the riot was related to Jewish nationalism, but of course none of the gospel authors would really have known.

After a riot, lots of people would get arrested for just being in the vicinity of said riot, or knowing people connected to it. This is not to say Barabbas was innocent–or even that he existed at all. But it is undeniable that many were arrested after such incidents, and some would have been released, for a variety of reasons. The notion that Pilate (or his subordinates) never let anyone go is as nonsensical as the notion that he was a kind and merciful man forced to kill Jesus by those bloodthirsty Jews.

So let’s not worry about the innocence of Barabbas, which nobody at the time of the gospels being written would have had reliable info about–let’s look at the difference between Mark and Matthew.

Matthew’s account is heavily embellished (including a story about Pilate’s wife nobody else has), and makes no reference to anyone but Barabbas–he is a ‘notorious prisoner’, known to be guilty of terrible crimes, his guilt is not the least bit ambiguous, but no specifics are provided as to what he did.

This would indicate that perhaps Matthew was writing shortly after the much larger bloodier Jewish uprising (whatever Barabbas was involved in was little more than a civil disturbance, a fairly commonplace event during Passover), and he’s afraid to make any direct reference to that. He’s not making any friends among Roman pagans by saying Pilate let a murdering revolutionary go instead of the Prince of Peace. Mark was writing in quieter times, and was not concerned with Barabbas’ guilt or innocence, but with nobody understanding who Jesus really is. Barabbas isn’t important to him, but Matthew wants everyone to understand that the Jewish leaders intentionally had a criminal pardoned so Jesus would die.

As to Mark’s ’embellishments’, well I assume all accounts are embellished to some extent, because stories grow with the telling, but Mark’s gospel is shorter than Matthew’s, you yourself say he ‘edited’ Matthew, so your claims that his gospel is more embellished don’t hold up to scrutiny. And he doesn’t make up a psychic wife for Pilate.

This may take more than one post to clear up. I ask for your patience (and Bart’s).

The internet, useful as it surely can be, is not the answer to all questions. I have an unfair advantage, in that I work in a university library, and can (when properly motivated, and not too busy) make use of our rather large collection of biblical scholarship. Including a book containing three articles by Roger David Aus, the last of which is entitled “The Release of Barabbas Revisited,” which in my opinion comes up with a credible potential explanation for why the Barabbas story is in all four gospels, and why it is not remotely based on anything that happened at the time Jesus was crucified, but is rather drawn from an earlier event.

It’s an involved argument (thankfully well-written and not over-laden with scholar-ese, so within my limited power to comprehend).

Essentially, Aus is saying that when Mark wrote this part of his gospel, he was editing an earlier manuscript (see? you weren’t entirely wrong!), but not Matthew or Luke–a passion narrative we no longer have, by a Palestinian Jewish Christian, that was popular among literate Christians then, but is now lost, and composed in Aramaic. (a language we can reasonably assume Mark knew, since he includes Aramaic phrases in his own gospel, and explains their meaning to his readers).

(Aus, like most scholars, believes Mark wrote the earliest surviving gospel, but drew upon earlier written sources as part of his research preparatory to writing it.)

My first objective was to try and clarify the language Mark uses regarding Barabbas. Aus is very clear that Mark is the most ambiguous about Barabbas’ guilt, and “at least here in Mark it is not expressly stated that Barabbas himself committed murder(s).” Luke does state this clearly. John (the least historical of the gospels) refers to him in language that could be read either as ‘revolutionary’ or ‘bandit.’ Matthew refers to him as a ‘prominent prisoner’, which Aus suggests is because the original source (which Matthew might also have read) was related to a prominent Jew involved in a much earlier uprising, but not himself a murderer.

Luke and John were probably not familiar with this lost narrative, but the story of Barabbas was popular among Christians when the four gospels were written, so all include it. (continued next post)

Obviously neither of us is an expert here. You would have told me if you knew Greek. I respect your devotion to this cause of yours, that we both know is not going to change the scholarly consensus that Mark came first. I wouldn’t be much of an Irishman if I didn’t appreciate a good bit of contumely.

However, you are somewhat careless with regards to your use of the word ’embellishment.’ All embellishments are not created equal.

Mark likes to explain why the people he’s writing about did something–not adding to the story, so much as fleshing it out–his explanations may differ from those of other gospel authors, they may come from sources he’s using, or be his own opinion, but when you take away these interpretations, and compare them to Matthew and Luke, it’s pretty clear they’re drawing for the most part on his version of the story.

That is on a different order from doing what Matthew does in this story, which is to give Pilate a wife who has a prophetic dream, who is not mentioned in any of the other accounts, and who wouldn’t have been mentioned in the source Mark drew upon to write his version of the Barabbas incident. This is a pagan story, equivalent to Calpurnia warning Caesar of her prophetic dream.

Matthew is bothered by the poor motivation Pilate has for wanting to free Jesus. In the original story this all hypothetically came from it makes sense, because Archelaus had a somewhat tenuous grip on power, and needed to conciliate the populace in Jerusalem who wanted these men freed for an act of symbolic rebellion against his father, Herod the Great.

Pilate was in no such danger. So why would this notoriously ruthless pagan governor behave this way? Because pagans have a superstitious belief in prophetic dreams. Matthew writing a story pagan converts to Christianity would understand, and not at all concerned with what Jews thought of it.

This embellishment does change the story. Doesn’t prove Matthew invented it (he would have had other sources as well). But why would Mark edit it out, if he’s just copying Matthew? Mark likes to write about why people do things. The reason is that he never read Matthew, never heard of this story, because he was writing at a time when the Matthew gospel did not exist. Q.E.D.