Note 24 — Chapter II · THE CENTRAL MYTH

Thus the most distinguished critic of the biographical school has no account to give of a second salient item in the record which, being entirely non-supernatural, must be held to have been inserted for some strong reason. It in fact closely involves the whole myth-theory. Barabbas was in all probability a regular figure in Semitic popular religion; and the name connects documentarily with that of Jesus. The reading “Jesus Barabbas,” in Mt. xxvii, 16, as we have noted,24 was long the accepted one in the ancient Church; and its entrance and its disappearance are alike significant. It is obviously probable that such a name as “Jesus the Son of the Father” (= Bar-Abbas25), applied to a murderer, would give an amount of offence to early Christian readers which would naturally lead in time to its elimination from the current text.26 But on that view there is no explanation of its entrance. Such a stumbling-block could not have been set up without a compulsive reason.