[lbo-talk] BarAbbas (was Re: Ruy Teixiera on what the recall portends for Repugs in CA in 2004)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

Shane Mage 
> 
> Crucial to the "Barabbas" myth is the fact that the name Bar Abbas
> means nothing else but "Son of the Father."  This is also how Jesus
> described himself.  Moreover, a variant teading in one of the
> Gospels refers to "Jesus Barabbas."  The figures of Barabbas and
> Judas Iscariot were used by the Pauline compilers as the mainstays
> in their blood-libel of the Jews as "deicides."  But enough filtered
> through their censorship to give clear evidence that Judas did
> nothing except what Jesus had charged him to do, and that the
> "Barabbas" whose release was demanded by the Jews was Jesus
> himself (see "Revolution in Judea" by Hyam Maccoby, and his
> articles "BARABBAS" and "JUDAS ISCARIOT" in Collier's Encyclopedia).
> 

OK, the Barabas parable may not be historically accurate.  But that does
not undermine the point I was making about the conventional attributes
of power  and weakness and people's reactions to those attributes.  

Wojtek