By George M. Docherty
In the Gospels Barabbas appears to be a very secondary figure in the vast drama of the Passion and Death of Jesus.
Only the motley crowd call out his name.
Matthew (27:17-21) describes him as "a man of some notoriety."
Mark (15:11) and
Luke (23:18) go a little further, indicating he was among the rebels who had committed murder in the uprising against Rome.
John (18:40) calls him a "Bandit."
We have sufficient information to deduce that he was known to the crowd, possibly a local hero, a member of the Resistance Movement against the crushing authority of Rome.
The name "Barabbas" means "son of the Rabbi." A preacher's kid! What could not be written about this? How the son of a devout home should end up condemned to the gallows!
What is not conjecture is that, while Jesus was being tried before Pontius Pilate, Barabbas with others lay chained in a condemned cell, fearful that every creak of footstep, every turn of a key might be the guard arrived to take them out to be executed by the most painful form of public execution known in human history.
One thinks of Dickens' Fagan awaiting the trump of doom "cowering upon a stone bed; thinking of the past, beard torn and twisted into knots, eyes shining with a terrible light, the unwashed face cracked with fever. The clock chiming ... at eight he would be the only mourner at his own funeral."
The key turns in the lock. The Roman guard barks out the name: "Barabbas." There was little time for good-byes to his companions in death; that door led to darkness and the end.
By contrast, one recalls Bonhoeffer's last words as he left his prison cell for humiliation and death: "This is the beginning of a new life for me."
To his surprise, Barabbas is led into the judgment hall where Pilate sits amidst the symbols and pageantry of mighty Rome. A centurion steps forward and reads from a parchment, in legal gobbledygook, totally incomprehensible to the bewildered prisoner.
"One, Barabbas! By special ordinance of the Law of Israel and in concert with the practice of clemency of Imperial Rome, this clemency is now extended to you; is affirmed by the Sanhedrin and is hereby approved by his excellency Pontius Pilate, Procurator Magnissimus under the exalted Emperior Tiberius."
The shackles are taken from wrists and ankles. Roughly pushed out of the way, Barabbas staggers down the marble stairs, along the pavement and through the clanging gate into shimmering sunshine of that early springtime. The gate clangs behind him. People pass him by in the street, suspecting his unsteady gait is due to celebration of the Holy Season of Passovertide.
He breathes into his lungs the fresh air for the first time in an eon of time, in contrast to the sweaty humidity of the cell with its reek of urine and human sweat. He looks up at the gleaming tower of the Temple. He jumps for joy, shouting and screaming, a schoolboy again-like Dickens' Scrooge on that Christmas morning he thought he had missed.
