...Usually Albinus released a lot of malefactors...

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Giuseppe
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...Usually Albinus released a lot of malefactors...

Post by Giuseppe »

Intrigued by Doudna's hypothesis of a scribal error replacing 'Albinus' with 'Pilate', I have found a curious custom of Albinus remembering closely the Gospel Pilate: he is said to have released many prisonners 'for a personal consideration'.


Now it was that Festus succeeded Felix, as procurator, and made his business to correct those that made disturbances in the country. So he caught the greatest part of the robbers, and destroyed a great many of them. But then Albinus, who succeeded Festus, did not execute his office as the other had done; nor was there any sort of wickedness that could be named but he had a hand in it. Accordingly, he did not only, in his political capacity, steal and plunder every one’s substance, nor did he only burden the whole nation with taxes, but he permitted the relations of such as were in prison for robbery, and had been laid there, either by the senate of every city, or by the former procurators, to redeem them for money; and no body remained in the prisons, as a malefactor, but he who gave him nothing. At this time it was that the enterprises of the seditious at Jerusalem were very formidable; the principal men among them purchasing leave of Albinus to go on with their seditious practices; while that part of the people who delighted in disturbances joined themselves to such as had fellowship with Albinus; and every one of these wicked wretches was encompassed with his own band of robbers, while he himself, like an arch-robber, or a tyrant, made a figure among his company, and abused his authority over those about him in order to plunder those that lived quietly. The effect of which was this, that those who lost their goods were forced to hold their peace, when they had reason to shew great indignation at what they had suffered; but those who had escaped were forced to flatter him that deserved to be punished, out of the fear they were in of suffering equally with the others. Upon the whole, no body durst speak their minds, but tyranny was generally tolerated; and at this time were those seeds sown which brought the city to destruction.

(Josephus, War, II:272-276)

Could Albinus be the original 'Pilate' of the Gospel story, since he released the malefactor Barabbas in the place of Jesus ?
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