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

RIGG: BARABBAS
455
It is no wonder that the details of the actual trial were confused.
Origen again meant what he said when he pointed out
that the Gospels do not always contain pure history and that
there are inserted and interwoven things which cannot be admitted
historically but which may be accepted in a spiritual
meaning (De principiis IV. ii, 9: ed. Koetschau, 321-2).
How then, in conclusion, account for the difference between
the story in my thesis and that bequeathed to us in the Gospels?
There survived a vaguely understood yet certainly held memory
(why otherwise create such a story?) of the dismissal at the time
of the trial of one Jesus Barabbas and an increasingly vivid
recollection of the trial leading to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
In the earlier stages there may even have survived a memory of
the two phases of the trial. What was originally, probably almost
unique at the time, a Galilean patronymic, i. e., Barabba,134
became confusingly another person - obviously it was a convenient
confusion. This process would have been aided by the
fact that Barabba had become a common personal name among
the Jews. The process would have become definitely formed
before Origen expunged Jesus before Barabbas (it is hard to
believe that he would have deliberately done so had any memory
survived of the real background) and thereafter Barabbas surely
became a separate person - even though he was still tagged
with an unnecessary 6 Xey6/Levos.I35 The notion of the "custom"
was, of course, an understandable creation to get rid of him,
based on procuratorial usage. This Barabbas was the distinctly
Jewish Jesus - ultimately the source, probably, of the revolutionary
remembrances mistakenly (?) attributed to him. And
possibly he is hidden in the otherwise baffling emphasis in the
surviving Gospels of the Son and the Father. Part of this
vicarious Barabbas was, therefore, in a sense deliberate and thus
appears forced, sometimes, to us - especially if we are statistically
minded. It was Jesus, the Christ of the great Passion
story, that was vividly remembered and on whom the Gentiles
134 For the significance of Galilee, cf. W. Bauer, "Jesus der Galilaer" (Festg.
Ad. Jiilicher [Tibingen, 1927] 16-34) and Graetz, Geschichte III. 1, 281 ff.
135 Note that 'Jesus, the so-called Barabbas,' is what Pilate actually said.