Barabbas is due to die for his sins, and he deserves to. Yet without doing anything to merit mercy, he discovers that Jesus is going to die instead. Having awoken on Friday morning expecting ...

Take one notorious example in Matthew 27.16-17: is it to be Barabbas, or Jesus Barabbas? Barabbas has the forename Jesus only in Codex Koridethi and a few other ancient New Testament manuscripts: just ...

In the New Testament of the Bible, Barabbas is a prisoner who was chosen by the crowd over Jesus to be released by Pontius ...

How long, O Lord, how long until we see thy face ... Pilate asks the Jews which one he should release—Barabbas or Jesus. Stirred up by the chief priests and the elders, the crowd bays for ...

And this time, it came down to a vote. Pilate presented a choice between two candidates: “Jesus who is called the Messiah” and Barabbas, a known criminal and murderer who tried to save his ...

The Gospel writers are actually trying to communicate here (as also with the Barabbas episode in Mark 15:6-14) that Jesus was mistakenly crucified as a violent zealot against the Roman occupiers ...

Regarding the juxtaposition of Jesus and Barabbas and the theological significance of the choice placed before the crowd, I have already written in some detail in Part One of this book (pp.

even when given a choice to free Jesus or Barabbas, followed by Jesus carrying the cross and being hung on it to die.