Who was Barabbas?

The short answer

Barabbas was a prisoner in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’s trial. Mark and Luke say he was held for an uprising and for murder. When Pilate offered to free one prisoner for the Passover, the crowd asked for Barabbas, and Jesus was crucified instead.

What the record says

Mark explains the custom and the man:

Now at the feast he used to release to them one prisoner, whomever they asked of him. There was one called Barabbas, bound with his fellow insurgents, men who in the insurrection had committed murder.

Mark 15:6 to 7

Matthew calls him “a notable prisoner” (Matthew 27:16). Luke says he was in prison “for a certain revolt in the city, and for murder” (Luke 23:19). John says only, “Now Barabbas was a robber” (John 18:40). The word John uses can also mean a bandit or a rebel.

Mark says who moved the crowd:

But the chief priests stirred up the multitude, that he should release Barabbas to them instead.

Mark 15:11

Pilate released Barabbas and handed Jesus over to be crucified (Mark 15:15). The Gospels never say what became of him.

How Third Day tells it

Third Day is a novel. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. In chapter seventeen, “The Governor,” Pilate tries the feast pardon. Barabbas stands on one side of the pavement, a man Rome took with blood on his hands. Yeshua stands on the other. The priests shout Barabbas’s name first. Pilate asks again, and the name comes louder. Then Pilate orders him released.

When the shackles came off, Barabbas rubbed both wrists and looked at Yeshua across the pavement. The Jericho road was still dried on his sleeves.

He doesn’t thank Pilate. In chapter eighteen, “The Hill,” the two thieves crucified beside Yeshua turn out to have been taken with Barabbas on the Jericho road, after a raid on a Roman pay cart. One asks where Barabbas is. A soldier tells him Barabbas already left.