It is common to suggest that the blame for Jesus' death has been passed from the
Romans, whom Christians thought it best not to offend, to the Jews. But scholars are finding
it increasingly difficult to produce a plausible reason that either Jewish or Roman authorities
should have wanted Jesus dead. Perhaps that is because neither of them did. The Romans may
as easily have been the secondary scapegoat used by early Christians to shift the blame from
themselves. And that should come as no surprise, the scapegoat game being what it is. Girard
remarks that "there is reason to believe that the wars described as 'foreign wars' in the mythic
narratives were in fact formerly civil strifes. There are many tales that tell of two warring
cities or nations, in principle independent of one another—Thebes and Argos, Rome and
Alba, Hellas and Troy—whose conflicts bring to the surface so many elements pertaining
directly to the sacrificial crisis and to its violent resolution that it is hard not to view these
stories as mythic elaborations of this same crisis, presented in terms of a 'fictive' foreign
threat."76 I suspect that the presence of Roman authority in the Passion is a mythic cover-up
of precisely this kind.
Romans, whom Christians thought it best not to offend, to the Jews. But scholars are finding
it increasingly difficult to produce a plausible reason that either Jewish or Roman authorities
should have wanted Jesus dead. Perhaps that is because neither of them did. The Romans may
as easily have been the secondary scapegoat used by early Christians to shift the blame from
themselves. And that should come as no surprise, the scapegoat game being what it is. Girard
remarks that "there is reason to believe that the wars described as 'foreign wars' in the mythic
narratives were in fact formerly civil strifes. There are many tales that tell of two warring
cities or nations, in principle independent of one another—Thebes and Argos, Rome and
Alba, Hellas and Troy—whose conflicts bring to the surface so many elements pertaining
directly to the sacrificial crisis and to its violent resolution that it is hard not to view these
stories as mythic elaborations of this same crisis, presented in terms of a 'fictive' foreign
threat."76 I suspect that the presence of Roman authority in the Passion is a mythic cover-up
of precisely this kind.
(Deconstructing Jesus, my bold, cursive original)
The implication is that Pilate was introduced by Judaizers against the Gentilizers (hence, as outcome of a real inner strife among Christians), to dirty them, also, of the responsability of the Death of Jesus.
Unfortunately, prof Price in that book seems to be totally unaware of the great article of Couchoud and Stahl about the true meaning of Barabbas. Despite of this regrettable ignorance, prof Price does a just remark:
The element that Jesus had been "delivered up out of envy" (Mark 15:10) also has Girardian resonances of mimetic desire. Suppose we try one of Girard's reversals and posit that in the earlier version the choice being made here was not which will live, but rather which will die.
Hence the crowd is angry against Pilate because the crowd wants to choose who to kill, not who to save.
If we add this just Price's remark to the thesis (already proved beyond any reasonable doubt by Couchoud) about Barabbas as a Judaizing parody of the Marcion's Christ, then we arrive very much near to the same conclusion of Jean Magne:
Y-a-t-il ironie dans le fait que les Juifs rejettent Jésus prétendu messie et réclament Jésus Barabbas, c'est-à-dire Jésus Fils du Père, que le sanhédrin a condamné comme blasphémateur? Le récit ne serait-il pas plutot la transposition d'une opposition à la messianisation, ou «christianisation» du Seigneur Jésus, Fils de Dieu, au sein du mouvment qui plus tard, à Antioche, prendra le nom de christianisme?
(my bold)
My translation:
Is there some irony in the fact that the Jews reject the Jesus so-called messiah and claim Jesus Barabbas, i.e. Jesus Son of the Father, whom the Sanhedrin has just condemned as a blasphemer? Would not the narrative rather be the transposition of an opposition to the messianization, or "Christianization" of the Lord Jesus, Son of God, in the movement that later on in Antioch will take the name of Christianity?
So we obtain: the crowd allegorizes an opposition to the identification of the victim to be killed with the Jewish Messiah. But the crowd is already per se a negative allegory invented by the gentilizers against the Judaizers. Hence, now, by introducing Barabbas as parody against Marcion, the Judaizers are making clumsily the crowd a negative allegory of the marcionites, but this latter operation is rather clumsy, since the Marcionites were not Jews in the real world.
Given the fact that the crowd allegorizes negatively the Judaizers in the original narrative (before the interpolation of Barabbas), what really does the crowd allegorize after the interpolation of Barabbas?
The crowd allegorizes merely the "Jews" of the previous narrative. Hence now these same "Jews", who in the original narrative wanted the death of the "Son of Father" (=a deity), after the interpolation of Barabbas they want the death of the "Jesus called Christ" (=a mortal Jewish Messiah).
So prof Price has seen very acutely that in the original narrative the crowd wants to claim for itself the choice of who has to die (not of who has to live). But not being there Barabbas in the original narrative, against whom the crowd wanted to claim the his own power to put to death the Son of Father?
Of course, against the only person who could prevent the crowd from the murder: Pilate.
And we know that in GPeter, Pilate appears but he is reluctant to kill Jesus "the Son of God". He shows the his reluctance even without appealing to Barabbas as extrema ratio to save Jesus.
Therefore the conclusion is:
- Pilate appeas in the original narrative
- the Jews want to kill Jesus the Son of God (=a deity, not the Jewish Messiah)
- Pilate is reluctant but he can't prevent them
- "Barabbas", docent Couchoud and Stahl, is a Judaizing parody of the Jesus Son of God who is the only victim in the original gospel