[Oe List ...] 4/07/11, Spong: Examining the Story of the Cross, Part V; Barabbas – Another Interpretive Figure

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Examining the Story of the Cross, Part V; Barabbas – Another Interpretive Figure
In Mark’s original story of the Passion of Jesus, he introduces for the first time in any written Christian record the figure of Barabbas.  In this story we are told two things:  First, it was a Roman custom to release a prisoner at the feast of the Passover, one whose freedom the people desired.  Second, the Roman authorities were holding a prisoner whose name was Barabbas, who had been part of an insurrection in which a murder had been carried out.  In occupied Judah an insurrection might be an act of terror against the oppressive rule of Rome where Roman soldiers and Jews who collaborated with the Romans were regarded as targets for death.  It does not have quite the same meaning that we might have in our society when a person is designated a murderer. In Mark’s narrative, nonetheless, the crowd asks to have Barabbas not Jesus released to them.  When Pilate asked what then should he do with Jesus of Nazareth, the response of the crowd was “Crucify him! Crucify him!
The first hint I had that this story might be something other than history came when I decided to research this supposed custom of the Romans freeing a prisoner at the Passover.  I could find no reference to such a custom anywhere in either in Roman records or Jewish records.  This Marcan narrative appears to be the only place where such a “custom” was mentioned.  One-time customs are always a bit suspicious.
Next I looked at the name ‘Barabbas.’  I am not fluent in either Hebrew or Aramaic, but I do know the meaning of many Hebrew and Aramaic words.  Barabbas contains the familiar term for God – Abba.  It was the name Jesus, somewhat uniquely, was said to use for God.  It is a name that has an intimate, deeply personal connotation about it.  So the last half of Barabbas’ name turns out to be nothing less than the word for God.  Turning then to the first part of the name we discover that “bar” is also a familiar Jewish word.  It means “son.”  Jesus says to Peter at Caesarea Philippi, “Blessed are you Simon, bar Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed these things to you.”  Bar-Jonah means son of Jonah.  The name “Bartimaeus,” in the account of the restoring of sight to Bartimaeus, means the son of Timaeus. So the name Barabbas literally means “son of God.”  So Mark was telling us in his story of the passion of Jesus that at the time of the crucifixion, there were two figures, not just one, about whom the “son of God” claim was being made,  one was Jesus and the other was Barabbas, so the intrigue builds.  As this passion drama played out one son of God, namely Jesus, was killed, while the other son of God, Barabbas, was set free.  With this distinction now clearly worked out, my mind began to roam over the Jewish liturgical terrain against which I now was beginning to understand that the story of the crucifixion was written, and new possibilities began to open that a literal reading of these texts would never be imagined.  Let me develop a few of these possibilities.
Jesus was called in the early days of the Christian movement “The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”  In Jewish worship tradition, two holy days required the sacrifice of an animal, normally a lamb.  One was Passover where the blood of the paschal lamb was placed on the doorposts of Jewish homes in order to repel the power of death.   We have already observed in this series on the passion of Jesus the way in which the Passover shaped the story of the cross.  There was, however, another Jewish holy day in which another animal, again normally a lamb, was sacrificed for the sins of the people.  It was called Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement, which came on the tenth day of the Jewish month of Tishri, which would place it in October in our calendar.  It is that liturgical observance that I want to examine in this study.
In the traditional observance of Yom Kippur, two animals are brought to the High Priest.  They could be lambs or goats, but as the tradition developed it tended to be one of each.  These animals in this liturgy represented what human beings yearned to be. The people felt a need to come into to God’s presence, but considered themselves unworthy to do so.  So they developed a liturgical act which employed a symbol of the perfection they felt they lacked. That is why this lamb had to be physically perfect, with no scratches, scars or broken bones, and since the lamb was thought to live below the level of human freedom and could not, therefore, choose to do evil, it was also assumed to be morally perfect.  So on the Day of Atonement the people came to God through the symbol of the perfect Lamb of God.
As this liturgical act developed the first of these animals was taken by the High Priest and slaughtered as a sacrifice.  Then armed with the blood of the perfect Lamb of God, the High Priest would enter the part of the Temple known as the Holy of Holies, where God was believed to dwell.  The throne of God inside the Holy of Holies was called the Mercy Seat.  The High Priest would proceed to smear the blood of this lamb onto the Mercy Seat.  The understanding was that sinful people could now come into the presence of God “through the blood of the Lamb of God.”  Atonement was achieved at least liturgically and estrangement was overcome.
Next, the other animal, normally a goat, was brought to the High Priest.  Bowing over the goat with his hands on the goat’s horns, the High Priest would begin to confess the sins of the people.  The symbolism here was that all of the sins of the people came out of the people and landed on the head and back of the goat, making the goat the “sin bearer,” thus leaving the people sinless and again at one with God.  Then as the bearer of the people’s sins, the goat was thought to be so evil and unworthy of continued life that the gathered worshipers pronounced curses on it and called for its death.  The goat, however, was not put to death, but was set free and driven into the wilderness taking the sins of the people with it.  The goat was called the “scapegoat” in the Bible because it had to pay the price and suffer the affliction due to others for their sins.
So in the Yom Kippur liturgy there were two animals representing the deepest aspirations of the human race for oneness with God.  One was killed and its blood placed between God and sinful human lives.  One was set free, carrying with it the sins of the people.  Is it possible that in Mark’s original story of the crucifixion that he wrote into his narrative quite deliberately the symbols of Yom Kippur and used them to interpret the death of Jesus?  In Mark’s passion story two people called the son of God are present, Jesus of Nazareth and the fictional Barabbas.  As such they matched the two animals of Yom Kippur in that one was sacrificed and the other set free.  The blood of the first was said to be the means whereby sinful people could have their sins covered by passing through the blood of the lamb of God.  The other animal by being set free became the sin bearer, who carried the sins of the people away.
Both aspects of Yom Kippur were seen by Mark to be part of the meaning of Jesus.  The story line he is following seems to suggest this.  In the Yom Kippur liturgy the sin bearer was cursed by the people and they called for its death.  Is this not reflected in Mark’s story when Jesus is condemned to die and is made to hear the curses of the people and the calls: “Crucify him, Crucify him!
If that analysis rings true, it would be one more indication that Mark, who wrote this first version of the crucifixion in the eighth decade of the Christian era knew that he was not writing history and it never occurred to him that anyone would ever read these words literally.  He was interpreting the death of Jesus under the recognized symbols of Jewish worship.  Jewish people attending the synagogue would recognize what he was doing and would hear and understand his words as Mark intended them to be heard and understood.  Passover clearly was used to interpret the death of Jesus while Yom Kippur provided the background to the symbolic language which the gospel writer employed. Barabbas was thus a symbol not a person.
This interpretive process worked well so long as most of the Christian readers of the gospels were Jewish and were thus familiar with Jewish liturgy.  By the middle of the second century of the Common Era, however, the Christian Church had become predominantly Gentile.  They did not know, understand or even care to learn about the Jewish symbols of worship.  When Gentiles began to read the gospels they assumed that Mark was writing literal history. Over the centuries, their literalized understandings of the story of the cross were expressed in their hymns, creeds, doctrines, art and particularly in the” Stations of the Cross.”  Without a Jewish background they knew of no other way to read them.  With the advent of critical biblical scholarship in the early years of the 19th century, doubts began to be raised about their literal and historical accuracy.  That was when creeds and faith began to wobble.  How, people wondered, does the death of Jesus free us from our sins today?  Is that not the claim that literal reading Christians still try to make? Does not this assertion, however, transform God into a punishing ogre, the ultimate child abuser who kills the divine son in order to forgive our sins?  Does this make logical sense?  Armed with this new insight we can now look anew at all of the symbols in the crucifixion story. Was there really darkness at noon on the day of the crucifixion?  Did the veil in the Temple really split from top to bottom between the holy place and the Holy of Holies when Jesus died? Did Jesus really quote from Psalm 22 from the cross?
Literalizing the story destroys the meaning of every detail.  If one is not able to believe these literalized symbols, the only alternative here is to give up the story altogether.  So mindless fundamentalism and secular humanism become the only two possibilities.  What a shallow treatment of this magnificent Jewish portrait this is.  The Passion story is much more than that.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online here.





Question & Answer
Jonnie Wilson from the University Christian Church in San Diego, California, writes:
Question:
We appreciate that you don’t want to throw out the Bible, but rather to “rescue it” and focus on its message of love. Do you think there will ever be a day when the Bible will include not only the Old Testament and the New Testament, but also the “Newest Testament” that might reflect modern Christian thought?
Answer:
Dear Jonnie, 

Given what I know about church decision making processes, I think the answer to your question is a simple “no.” I do not see how an ecclesiastical body could be constituted to make this happen in any official way given the state of institutional Christianity today. Some individuals might be able to accomplish this task for themselves, but I do not believe institutional forms of Christianity ever will. 

The intention of your question, however, can be met in other ways and I think it not only will, but it must. The Bible, as presently constituted, makes the assumption that God no longer speaks through people in this world and has not done so since II Peter, the last written book that was added to the Canon of Scripture about 135 CE. 

Included in our sacred text at this moment are no voices of women, no voices of people of color and no voices from the last 2000 years of Christian history. Surely a book suffering from those limitations cannot be called in any literal sense “The Word of God” unless you assume that the word of the Lord can only be found in males (who are generally thought of as white although they are actually middle eastern), and that they all lived between 1000 BCE and 135 CE! Surely God is not so limited, nor has God been on a sabbatical for the last 2000 years! 

So why can we not supplement our scriptures with other voices? We can call these readings in church: “The Contemporary Lesson” or something similar. Among the things I would like to be considered for inclusion in such a practice are: 

1. The letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr. 

2. Some of the writings from recognized female religious leaders through the ages like Hildegard of Bingen in the early 12th century and Julian of Norwich in the late 14th century. More contemporary female voices might include Mary Seton from the 17th century and Dorothy Day from the 20th century. Contemporary female leaders of great and even daring insight might include Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels. 

3. Some of the voices of the Third World like Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Oscar Romero and Leonardo Boff would bring to “scripture” a very different accent. 

4. Frontier voices that moved Christianity in new directions might include such shaping theologians as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Teilhard de Chardin, John A. T. Robinson, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Kung, Paul Tillich and John Elbridge Hines. 

I am sure this list could be expanded endlessly and everyone would probably come up with different names. Your letter might free the imaginations of my readers to form the list of those whose work has been “the word of God “ to them, for that is what I have done and that is how scripture is always determined. 

We could then keep the Bible as it is as our historic text, but add to its message in a supplementary way from the richness of our religious history. 

I would also like to encourage churches to stop ending the Sunday service reading of scripture with some version of the liturgical phrase “This is the Word of the Lord.” There are some passages in the Bible that no one should ever attribute to God (see I Samuel 15:1-2, for example), but we can still hear God speaking through the Bible and surely a living God would also speak through other voices in history. So perhaps we should end the reading of scripture as the Anglican prayer book of New Zealand suggests: “Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” 

Thank you for your question. 

~John Shelby Spong





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