Barabbas

Barabbas, in the New Testament, a prisoner mentioned in all four Gospels who was chosen by the crowd, over Jesus Christ, to be released by Pontius Pilate in a customary pardon before the feast of Passover.

In Matthew 27:16 Barabbas is called a “notorious prisoner.” In Mark 15:7, echoed in Luke 23:19, he was “in prison with the rebels who had committed murder during the insurrection” against the occupying Roman forces. John 18:40 describes him as a bandit.

The name Barabbas appears nowhere else in the New Testament, nor do any of the Gospels give any information about his previous or subsequent life. The name may be an Aramaic patronymic meaning “son of the father” (bar abba) or “son of the teacher” (bar rabban), indicating perhaps that his father was a Jewish leader. According to the early biblical scholar Origen and other commentators, the full name of Barabbas may have been Jesus Barabbas, since Jesus was a common first name. If so, the crowd was presented with a choice between two persons with the same name.

Historically, the release of Barabbas at the crowd’s behest, and their subsequent demands to crucify Jesus, have been used to justify anti-Semitism. Many have placed blame for Christ’s death on the Jews, commonly citing Matthew 27:25, in which the crowd shouts, “His blood be on us and on our children!” However, numerous modern Christian scholars and leaders, including Pope Benedict XVI, have explicitly denounced this position, claiming that the crowd on that fateful day consisted of Jewish Temple authorities and Barabbas’s supporters, not of the entire Jewish people. They have also maintained that, in the light of the New Testament as a whole, the crowd can be understood as comprising all of humanity and Jesus’ blood as effecting reconciliation between humanity and God, not as crying out for retribution.

Pär Lagerkvist’s 1950 novel Barabbas explores the inner life of the biblical figure after his release.