Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 8.djvu/385

 ii s. vii. MAY 17, 1913.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

381

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAT 17, 1913.

CONTENTS. No. 177.

NOTES : The Barabbas Incident in the Gospels, 381 The Forged 'Speeches and Prayers' of the Regicides The Stone Circle on Meayll Hill, Isle of Man, 383 Ravens at the Tower Sanctus Bell at St. John's College, Cambridge George WhiteHeld's Schooldays, 384 Conquest Family " Snowdrop " in the 'N.E.D' Cardinal Newman and his Brothers, 385 -Grosvenor Chapel Misprint Taylor's 4 Holy Dying ' : Charles Lamb, 386.

OUERIES : William Crotch, Mus.Doc. John Moultrie Ewing of Ireland Shenstone's Epitaph Authors Wanted yEschylus on Homer, 887 Jane Austen's ' Lady Susan '" Skimmity-ride "Waking Bees at a Death Paget and Chester " Cloudsley Bush," Warwickshire Thomas Washington the Younger Samuel Harmar,

! 388 Longfellow's 'Courtship of Miles Standish': Copy- right Law "Brexen journeys "Robert Hall Curious Hunting Episode in Bucks The Title " Reverend Doctor" Table-Napkin-Job Charnock's Antecedents ' Critical Review,' 1756, 339.

REPLIES : Grillion's Club, 390 Duke of Newcastle at Marston Moor, 393 "Castle" in Shakespeare and Webster Christmas Rimers in Ulster " Si vis pacem, para bellum," 394 Died in his Coffin Benett of Baldock Salt-MinesTolling on Good Friday" A wyvern part- per-pale addressed," 395 Jarman Family St. Mary's, Scarborough Miss Scott, 396 Dr. Benamor Hosier Lane, West Smithfield Biographical Information Wanted Matthew Arnold's Poems " If not the rose," 397 Dancing on " Midsummer Night "The Assyrians and Fish as Religious Symbol Morland's Residence, 398.

NOTES ON BOOKS: The Oxford Dictionary ' Ls Origines Politiques des Guerres de Religion ' ' Book- Auction Records.'

Notices to Correspondents.

JEtofes.

THE BARABBAS INCIDENT IN THE GOSPELS.

SOME years since Dr. Frazer, in his celebrated work ' The Golden Bough ' (2nd ed., vol. iii. p. 153 ff.), made the suggestion that the liberation of a prisoner at the Passover may have been a Purim custom, borrowed from the Babylonian Sakaia, and transferred to the Paschal feast. Jesus he supposes to have suffered in the character of Haman, and Barabbas to have been liberated in that of Mordecai. There are certain difficulties in the latter supposition, as the learned Professor admits. He explains the name Barabbas as " Son of the Father " not in the usually accepted sense, Son of a Rabbi, but as a name of office, surviving from the primitive time when the king's son was sacrificed as a substitute for the king himself. But if so we should expect that Barabbas would be the victim, not

Jesus. In view of this and other objections, perhaps the following suggestion may be offered.

In some early Jewish document charges of illegitimacy and insurrection were made against Jesus. The first charge was at least earlier than the time of Celsus, who wrote in the middle of the second cen- tury. The omission of all reference to it in the canonical Gospels is easily intelligible. The latter charge, the only one which Pilate could entertain, they mention .{Luke xxiii. 2, 5 ; John xix. 12). In the existing Acts of Pilate, or Gospel of Nicodemus, however, the first charge made by the Jews, when confronted with Jesus before Pilate's tri- bunal, is that of illegitimacy. The state- ment has probably been taken over from the earlier heathen Acts of Pilate described by Eusebius as " full of blasphemy," and ordered to be taught in the schools by an edict of the Emperor Maximinus at the beginning of the fourth century which these later Acts were intended to refute and displace. In the existing Acts the charge is found in close connexion with the mention of Barabbas. In the majority of codices existing in the time of Origen, the " notable prisoner " is called Jesus Barabbas in Matt, xxvii. 17 ; originally doubtless in the preceding verse also, though there omitted in the Latin rendering of Origen in loc. These readings are found in several im- portant Greek MSS., in the Sinaitic, Syriac, and Armenian versions, and are accepted by eminent critical authorities.

The conclusions founded on these facts may be briefly stated thus : in an early Jewish source Jesus was described as the leader of an insurrection, and, in connexion with his patronymic (necessarily given in Roman legal procedure) Bar Abbas, or rather Bar Abdas, as the illegitimate son of a certain Abdas. An early Christian evangelist perhaps the same to whom is due the account of the guard at the sepulchre, in Matthew, where the Barabbas inci- dent is given most fully may have met the Jewish changes by admitting that a notable prisoner named Jesus Bar Abdas was condemned about the same time, but was liberated at the request of the Jews, while Jesus the Christ suffered. The Jewish traditions recorded by Celsus, and found in the Talmud and ' Toldoth leshu,' represent Jesus as having been the illegitimate son of a soldier (a Roman soldier in some of the texts) named Panther or Panthera ; and the Christian Fathers Cyril of Alex- andria, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus,