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Bar AbbaBar abba is Aramaic for "Son of the Father". Hyam Maccoby and some other scholars have averred that Jesus was known by this name or title, because of his custom of addressing God as 'Abba' in prayer, and referring to God as Abba in his preaching. It follows that when the Jewish crowd clamored before Pontius Pilate to "free Bar Abba" it was Jesus that they meant. Anti-Semitic elements in the Christian church, the argument goes, altered the narrative to make it appear that the demand was for the freedom of somebody else (a brigand or insurrectionist) named "Barabbas". This was, the theory goes, part of the tendency to shift the blame for the Crucifixion towards the Jews and away from the Romans. Benjamin Urrutia, a modern scholar, contends that Rabbi Yeshua Bar Abba was the historical Jesus of Nazareth and was the leader of the successful nonviolent Jewish resistance to Pilate's attempt to place Roman Eagles - symbols of the worship of Jupiter - on Jerusalem's Temple Hill. This episode is found in Josephus, who does not say who the leader of this resistance was, but does state immediately afterwards that Pontius Pilate had Jesus crucified. History records no Roman custom of giving the crowd a choice of which prisoner to release (though there may have been a Jewish custom of executing only one person per day). If this is so, then the origin of the Barabbas story must come from elsewhere. One interpretation is that the story derives from the Jewish crowd (many of whom may have been among those who had hailed Jesus as a king perhaps less than a week earlier) calling out for the freedom of the man who (somewhat unusually for that era) referred to God as "father" and referred to himself as "son-of the father" (bar-Abba in Aramaic) — namely, Jesus himself. (Early versions of the story even give the full name of Barabbas as Jesus Barabbas.) Herod refused their pleas (and likely would have been disciplined by his superiors in Rome, if he did not punish both insurrectionists and those who claimed to be king of the Jews). Later, when people who did not understand Aramaic retold the story, they still included the petition for freedom, but bar-Abbas became a separate person - incidentally thus making the Romans less culpable, and the Jews moreso. Further interpretations along these same lines raise questions about how much difference there was between Jesus and an insurrectionist. In the gospels, shortly after being hailed as a king by the Jews, Jesus caused a commotion in the Jewish temple by overturning tables and swinging a lash at people. Soon afterwards and just shortly before his arrest, the gospels have Jesus telling his apostles to sell their cloaks and buy swords — and at least one sword turns up in the hands of Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane. Pilate would be reprimanded for releasing even a peaceful man who had others calling anyone but Caesar the "king of the Jews", no less one whose methods appeared to include violence. Another interpretation, using modern Reader Response theory, suggests no petition for the release of Barabbas need ever have happened at all, and that the contrast between Barabbas and Jesus is a parable meant to draw the reader (or hearer) of the gospel into the narrative so that they must choose whose revolution, the violent insurgency of Barabbas or the challenging gospel of Jesus, is truly from the Father. The story of Barabbas has especial social significance, because it has frequently been used to justify anti-Semitism. See also External links *More on the interpretation that Jesus and Barabbas were the same person
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