Note 16 — Chapter XVI · THE TRIAL CRUX

Last of all, the item of Barabbas, one of the elaborate irrelevancies which leap to the eye in a narrative so destitute of essentials, turns out to carry a curious corroboration to the myth-theory. This is not the place to develop the probable kinship of the Barabbas of the Gospels with the (misspelt) Karabbas16 of Philo; but we may note the probable reason for the introduction of the name into the myth. As the story stands, it serves merely to heighten the guilt of the Jews, making them in mass save the life of a murderer rather than that of the divine Saviour. The whole story is plainly unhistorical: “neither these details nor those which follow,” remarks M. Loisy (after noting the “extremely vague indications under an appearance of precision” in regard to the antecedents of Barabbas), “seem discussible from the point of view of history.”17 In point of fact, Pilate is made to release an ostensible ringleader of “men who in the insurrection [unspecified] had committed murder,” thus making his action doubly inconceivable. Why was such an item introduced at all?