On Wed, Sep 22, 2010 at 10:58 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:
> "Paulist Christians, by a trick of orthography"? Paul wrote ca. 55-65CE,
> and the stories you refer to come not from Paul or his circle but from the
> gospels, written down at a minimum a decade - and more likely a generation -
> later.
>
> The Wikipedia article is not bad on the subject: <
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas>.
>
> The one undoubted and important point (noted in MacCulloch's recent and
> encyclopedic "Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years") is that Jesus
> of Nazareth is described in the gospels as referring perhaps uniquely in the
> time to YHWH as "abba" = "daddy."
>
> The story of the substitution is repeated in the Synoptic gospels and in
> the fourth gospel as well as in various extra-canonical literature. The
> reference to "the Jews" as demanding responsibility is found uniquely in
> Matthew, the Christian gospel most concerned with disputing the heritage of
> the religion of ancient Israel with the Pharisee party, already engaged in
> reconstituting Judaism in the wake of the destruction of the public
> religion. The point of Matthews' gospel is to show that "Christians are
> better Jews than rabbis (Pharisees)."
>
> I see now how you could argue that in a different way that's what Paul was
> on about, too. But there's little warrant to say "that 'Jesus' and 'Bar
> Abbas' were one and the same person." What historical sources we have,
> Christian and non-Christian, make it clear that the Roman occupation
> government executed Jesus; they apparently reserved the right of capital
> punishment in Judea, as in other colonies.
>
>
>
> On 9/22/10 9:17 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>
>>
>> On Sep 22, 2010, at 7:58 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>> There's no evidence for that, and - given the subsequent relations
>>> between the Christian movement [founded by a Roman police agent] and the
>>> Roman authorities - it's highly unlikely.
>>> On 9/22/10 3:52 PM, Shane Mage wrote:
>>>
>>>> ...The historical fact is that "Jesus" and "Bar Abbas" were one and the
>>>> same person. Jesus, a notable rebel, had no legitimate father to give him a
>>>> patronymic and so called himself son of the father...
>>>>
>>>
>> So "Jesus Son of the Father" and "Jesus Bar Abbas" don't refer to the
>> same person? Perhaps I can convince you, and anyone reading this, by this
>> simple exercise: (remembering always that Bar{son} and Abbas{father} are
>> pronounced as two separate words, like you would pronounce Bar Kochba, Ben
>> Gurion, or Bin Laden) read in a loud voice these two scriptural statements:
>>
>> The Jews exclaimed "free Bar Abbas"
>> The Jews exclaimed "free Barabbas"
>>
>> So now you hear in your own voice how the Paulist Christians, by a trick
>> of orthography, turned the Jewish demand that Jesus be freed into something
>> that persuaded their dupes down the millennia that the Jews demanded His
>> crucifixion!
>>
>> And so created the blood libel of deicide, the emotional basis for the
>> Holocaust and all the pogroms down the millennia that adumbrated it.
>>
>> Shane Mage
>> "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319