Giuseppe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 09, 2018 10:44 pm
Ulan wrote: ↑Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:46 pm
If we leave this Barabbas/Barrabas controversy alone for a moment (I can see points for both explanations), how does the specific mention of the insurrection in gMark figure into this hypothesis?
About the specificity of the insurrection, I have talked
here as of a trace of a previous proto-Marcionite Gospel (what Bultmann said that preceded the synoptical tradition: a kind of proto-John) where Jesus is killed during the insurrection happened during the festival (since the people wanted to proclaim him king against the his real desire).
There you write:
Giuseppe wrote:Now, since Barabbas is the Son of Father of the Gnostics, it seems that "Mark" is saying that the revolt of the people, in any previous gospel where Jesus the Son of the Father is captured and crucified as king of Israel by the Jews, was really a revolt of a mere robber and not of the real Jesus called king of the Jews.
You do it yet again: you call Barabbas a robber when the gospel did not.
For me, this would rather point at Barabbas/Barrabas being a stand-in for the Jewish idea of the warrior messiah. This, together with the allusion to Yom Kippur...
In the his article, Couchoud gives a good criticism against the hypothesis of a midrash from Leviticus 16.
Ben C. Smith wrote:
Furthermore, Giuseppe keeps quoting Couchoud as saying:
One ridiculed this name in the Aramaic form of Bar-Abbas. This son-of-Father who treats the old prophets as robbers and brigands, himself is treated as a brigand. .... As for Jesus Bar-Abbas, the brigand, he was not at all crucified.
The point is to link Barabbas to John 10.8: ""All who came before me are thieves and brigands, but the sheep did not hear them." Yet
is Barabbas a brigand? Mark connects him with murderers and insurrectionists:
Mark 15.7: 7 And the man named Barabbas had been imprisoned with the insurrectionists [τῶν στασιαστῶν] who had committed murder [φόνον πεποιήκεισαν] in the insurrection [τῇ στάσει].
The men crucified with Jesus he calls "two brigands" (δύο λῃστάς), but not Barabbas.
That is a distinction without a real difference. It is not necessary for Couchoud's case.
You are correct that it is not necessary for Couchoud's case, because Couchoud's case is pure speculation (as are most/all hypotheses about Barabbas). But you are obviously, intractably incorrect about it being a distinction without a difference. Insurrectionists are not the same as brigands. That is a real difference. In order to make the thesis work, you have to resort to calling Barabbas a brigand where the gospels did not. You are doing more work to make the thesis viable than the evangelists did, and that is not a good sign. That he
was called a "brigand" (or some synonym, which "insurrectionist" is not) in an earlier version cannot, of course, be disproven; nor, however, can it be proven.
The entire notion, then, remains at the level of pure speculation. That is not to say that it is necessarily wrong. But it
is to say that, as usual, you have overplayed your hand, turning possibilities into probabilities and probabilities into certainties.
What escapes your attention is the strangest contradiction of all (second only to the matthean reading of 'Jesus Bar-abbas') noted by Couchoud:
Giuseppe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 09, 2018 9:22 am
Pilate could crucify both, Barabbas and Jesus.
Instead, the precise point of the evangelist is that
only one was the crucified.
The reading 'Bar-Abbas ' is able to explain this enigma.
Not 'Bar-Rabbas'.
I am not arguing for any particular reading (Barabbas or Barrabbas). Therefore this "strangest contradiction of all" means nothing to me as yet. The name
may just be a name and nothing more. Or it may have hidden meaning. I simply do not know yet, and
neither do you.
Because that is what the Jewish people chose, of course! The path of insurrection instead of the path of the spiritual messiah. This may be part of your problem: you do not adequately understand the alternative hypotheses. Never mind asking why Pilate releases one instead of crucifying both: a good part of the messianist interpretation absolutely
depends upon the people releasing the one symbolizing the path of insurrection against Rome.
By the your Zealot hypothesis, Ulan, you may explain the favor of the people towards the Zealot Barabbas, but not the choice of Pilate of making the freedom of the one the death of the other.
If Barabbas symbolizes the path of insurrection, then
of course Pilate has to release him; to crucify him is to put an end to insurrection, and we know (as did Mark) that this did not happen. But Pilate does not release him willingly: the (probably entirely fictional) custom of releasing a prisoner at Passover forces his hand, and it is the people who choose.
I am not, by the way, defending the messianic interpretation
per se. My only point is that it has
at least as much explanatory power as Couchoud's idea. Heck, one of my favorite exegetes, Roger David Aus, gives the whole Barabbas thing two separate and very thorough treatments, and I find neither of them much if any more persuasive than the various possibilities we have discussed in this forum.