Horace Abram Rigg, Jr. Source: Journal of Biblical ... - YoYo.pl

RIGG: BARABBAS
445
What was the procurator's competence? One aspect of the
surviving trial accounts is certainly most impressive. After the
initial question (it may have been what Jn 18 35 recalls: rl
erolra;as;- namely, what is the case founded on?), on three
specific occasions he turns the case back to the Jews.?1I Note:
each time it is clearly on the ground that the case is not really
within his competence. The parallel in Acts 18 14-15 here is
most illuminating.T10 The procurators were in a difficult position
and more and more had to decide cases on their own discretionary
jurisdiction without reference to normal court procedure.103
Very early the provincial governors assumed wide discretionary
powers which at the same time obviously imposed on them
made temptingly possible. But what actually did &irovetv mean? Note
that its Semitic equivalent is IDo (where it is also used even of death: Menach.
109b; cf. Ber. 17a, and Targum ad Cant. 1 7). When it is used in approximately
legal setting (on the basis of guilt, for example) it means to dismiss - or
free of charges: see Levy, Neuhebr. u. Chald. Wirterbuch, ed. Fleischer, and
M. Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, etc. (New York-London, 1926)
s. v. There is nowhere any sense of this free, deliberate release -as the
Gospels imply, and the translations often make arbitrarily certain. Nor
need the Greek be any different. E. A. Sophocles, Greek Lexicon of the Roman
and Byzantine Periods (Boston, 1870), gives no other usage! The word is
often used in the N. T. (see Bruder, Concordantiae, s. v.). In Acts, for example,
not once is it translated as "release"; thus Cadbury-Lake, Beginnings IV;
cf. Thayer, Lexicon s. v. The Josephan usages bear this out; see Thackeray,
Lexicon, s. v. In the papyri one perhaps "releases" slaves but the general
meaning falls in the sense of legally dismissing charges or a case--sometimes
(as also for the Semitic) actually meaning acquittal: see Preisigke,
Worterbuch, and, for the classical usage, Liddell-Scott-Jones (1940), s. v. (cf.
A. Neander, Life of Jesus Christ [London, 1871] 459 and Husband, op. cit.
241 ff.).
101 Jn 18 30 (see Bernard, ad loc.) might have provoked him into a wary
mood at the outset (cf. Husband, op. cit. 245-55).
102 Not least Gallio's &ivXo/ias; for which, in addition to Cadbury-Lake,
Beginnings IV, 228, see Schiller, TWNT s. v. &cXwo. There are similar usages
in Josephus, e. g. De Bello Iud. IV. 3 (ed. Thackeray [Loeb] 259); cf. Thayer,
Lexicon, s. v.
I03 The evidence is convincing now in this respect: see E. Levy, "Statute
and Judge in Roman Criminal Law" (Bullettino dell'Istituto di Diritto Romano
45, N. S. 4 [1938] 401 ff.) and cf. T. Mommsen, "Der Religionsfrevel nach
rom. Recht" (Historische Zeitschrift N. S. 28 [1890] 389-429) and Neumann,
Pauly-Wissowa, s. v. 'Coercitio.'