Referenced Articles 3 - The Life of Jesus

Comparing the Trial of Jesus in John and Mark                          68

Pilate Released Barabbas, Really?                                                70

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Comparing the Trial of Jesus in John and Mark

1. John has a meeting of the Sanhedrin more than a week before the Passover.

Mark has a meeting of the Sanhedrin during the Passover holiday. 

2. John does NOT have Jesus present during the meeting of the Sanhedrin.

Mark does have Jesus present at the meeting of the Sanhedrin

3. John says the meeting of the Sanhedrin is to deal with the catastrophic Roman threat to the Jewish nation because of Jesus’ growing popularity.

Mark says they met to find testimony to allow them to put Jesus to death because he was a troublemaker who violated Jewish law and challenged Jewish authorities.

4. John’s Sanhedrin called no witnesses and conducted no trial.

Mark’s Sanhedrin called witnesses and conducted a trial.

5. John makes no claim that false witnesses made charges against Jesus.

Mark says that many false witnesses came forward.

6. The Sanhedrin in John found no blasphemy or other serious violation of Jewish law.

Mark’s Sanhedrin found Jesus guilty of blasphemy.

7. John says Jesus was brought to the house of Annas after his arrest.  Annas 

was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was the actual serving high priest at the time.  NO tribunal was present.

Mark says Jesus was brought to an unidentified high priest  and a Sanhedrin had already been called into action.

8. John says Annas asked Jesus about his teachings but did not specifically ask if Jesus was the Messiah.

Mark DID ask if Jesus was the Son of the Blessed One (whatever that means).

9. John says Jesus did not answer the question about his teachings. 

Mark says Jesus did claim to be “the son of the Blessed One.”

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10.John does not show the high priest reacting angrily to Jesus’ answer. 

Mark showed the high priest reacting angrily and tearing his clothes in outrage in response to what Jesus said.

11. John says after Jesus replied “surely you know what I said” a guard thought it rude and slapped Jesus.

Mark said after Jesus answered the high priest, council members mocked him, spit on him, blindfolded him, hit him, and asked him who hit him.  Afterwards Jewish guards beat Jesus.

12.John says after meeting with Annas, Jesus was taken to Caiaphas and brought to Pilate.

Mark says Jesus was before a “high priest(s),” then appeared at a second trial of some sort, and was THEN taken to Pilate.

13. John describes no trial in front of Caiaphas. 

Mark describes a full trial in front of Caiaphas. 

14. John says that Pilate told the Jewish authorities to take Jesus and try him under their own law.

Mark Has no such directive.

15. John has said that the Jewish authorities wouldn’t conduct a trial against Jesus because they had a law against putting anyone to death (presumably because trials were forbidden during the high holidays). 

Mark has the Jewish authorities conduct a trial that imposed a death sentence.

16. John says the first thing Pilate asked Jesus when Jesus was brought before him was what were the charges. 

Mark says that when authorities brought Jesus before Pilate, the first thing the governor did was ask Jesus if he was king of the Jews.

17. In John the response to Pilate by the priests about the charges was no specific charges, just that he was a criminal.

Mark says the priests accused him of many things.      

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Pilate Released Barabbas, Really? 

By Dr. Bart Ehrman (April 30, 2022)

I recently received the following question which deals with an issue I had long puzzled over.  It involves the episode in the Gospels where Pilate offers to release a prisoner to the crowds at Passover, hoping they will choose Jesus.  But instead, they choose a Jewish insurrectionist and murderer, Barabbas.  Could that have happened?

Here’s the Question and my Response:  Did Pilate Release Barabbas?

QUESTION:  Pilate condemns Jesus to execution for treason against Rome. Pilate gives the Jewish crowds the option of releasing Jesus or a Jewish insurgent, Barabbas (15:6–15).   I did a quick search to see if this was an attested practice in the Roman Empire and couldn't find any relevant information.  So, I have two questions:  Do you think this detail is accurate?  Is there any evidence that Roman officials actually freed condemned prisoners at certain local festival times?

RESPONSE:  This was an issue I worked on while writing my book Jesus Before the Gospels.  After doing my research I came to a definite conclusion, that I state rather strongly (!).  Here is what I say about the matter there:

My Thoughts About Pilate and Barabbas

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 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. 

Let’s Explore the Evidence – Who Did Pontius Pilate Release Instead of Jesus

For starters, what evidence is there that Pilate ever released a prisoner to the Jewish crowd because they wanted him to do so, or because he wanted to behave kindly toward them during their festival?

Apart from the Gospels, there is none at all.  

In part that is because we do not have a huge number of sources for the governorship of Pilate over Judea, just some highly negative remarks in the writings of a Jewish intellectual of his day, Philo of Alexandria, and a couple of stories in the writings of the Jewish historian, Josephus.

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These are enough, though, to show us the basic character of Pilate, his attitude to the Jews that he ruled, and his basic approach to Jewish sensitivities.  The short story is that he was a brutal, ruthless ruler with no concerns at all for what the people he governed thought about him or his policies.  He was violent, mean-spirited, and hard-headed.   He used his soldiers as thugs to beat the people into submission, and he ruled Judea with an iron fist.

Pilate Wasn’t a Good Guy

Is Pilate the sort of person who would kindly accede to the requests of his Jewish subjects in light of their religious sensitivities?   In fact, he was just the opposite kind of person.  Not only do we have no record of him releasing prisoners to them once a year, or ever.  Knowing what we know about him, it seems completely implausible.   I should point out that we don’t have any evidence of any Roman governor, anywhere, in any of the provinces, having any such policy.

And thinking about the alleged facts of the case for a second, how could there be such a policy?  Barabbas in this account is not just a murderer, he is an insurrectionist.  If he was involved with an insurrection, that means he engaged in an armed attempt to overthrow Roman rule.

If he murdered during the insurrection, he almost certainly would have murdered a Roman soldier or someone who collaborated with the Romans.   Are we supposed to believe that the ruthless, iron-fisted Pilate would release a dangerous enemy of the state because the Jewish crowd would have liked him to do so?   What did Romans do with insurrectionists?  Did they set them free so they could engage in more armed guerilla warfare?  Would any ruling authority do this?  Of course not.  Would the Romans?  Actually, we know what they did with insurrectionists.  They crucified them.

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Did Pilate Release Barabbas? It’s a Distorted Memory

I don’t think the Barabbas episode can be a historical recollection of what really happened.  It’s a distorted memory.  But where did such an incredible story come from?

We need to remember what I stressed earlier, that these accounts of Jesus’ trial repeatedly emphasize that Pilate was the innocent party.  It was those awful Jews who were responsible for Jesus’ death.  For the Christian storytellers, in killing Jesus, the Jews killed their own messiah.  That’s how wicked and foolish they were.  They preferred to kill rather than revere the one God had sent to them.   That is one key to understanding the Barabbas episode.  The Jews preferred a violent, murdering, insurrectionist to the Son of God.

Did Barabbas Even Exist?

There is even more to it than that.   We have no evidence outside these Gospel accounts that any such person as Barabbas existed.   It is interesting to think about the name of this apparently non-existent person.

In Aramaic, the language of Palestine, the name Bar-abbas literally means “son of the father.”   And so, in a very poignant way, the story of the release of Barabbas is a story about which kind of “son of the father” the Jewish people preferred.  Do they prefer the one who is a political insurgent, who believed that the solution to Israel’s problems was a violent overthrow of the ruling authorities?  Or do they prefer the loving “Son of the Father” who was willing to give his life for others?   In these Christian recollections, the Jewish people preferred the murdering insurrectionist to the self-sacrificing savior.

Please Note

It is interesting to note that in some manuscripts of Matthew’s account of the Barabbas episode there is an important addition.  In these manuscripts – which may well represent what the Gospel writer originally wrote – Barabbas is actually named “Jesus Barabbas.”  Now the contrast is even more explicit: which kind of Jesus do the Jews want?  Which Jesus, the son of the Father, is to be preferred?

In this account, of course, the Jews are remembered as preferring the wrong one.  But for the Gospel writers, that’s because the Jews are always doing the wrong thing and always opposing the true ways of God.

More on Pilate:

According to the Biblical Archeology Society, “early Christians saw Pilate in a very different way. Augustine hailed Pilate as a convert. Eventually, certain churches, including the Greek Orthodox and Coptic faiths, named Pilate and his wife saints. And when Pilate first shows up in Christian art in the mid-fourth century, he is juxtaposed with Abraham, Daniel and other great believers.”

The ancient historian Eusebius supports this claim by saying Pilate converted after seeing the many wonders that occurred after Jesus’ death, even reporting it to Tiberius.

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