I have read a report about the name Barabbas.
The conclusions were that:
1 Barabbas doesn’t mean son of the father, instead, it is a patronimic or an other nickname
2 The name Jesus followed by Barabbas in mt. 27:16, 17 can be found in some versions of the greek bible. It is reported in the Novum Testamentum Graece in brakkets because it is not considered true for certain. It could be caused by a copier’s mistake
3 It is possible that there was no mistake, but the name Jesus followed by Barabbas wasn’t uncommon in palestine and wasn’t a problem for eastern christians who knew the jewish culture
4 Later, other christians, who didn’t know jewish culture well, had the word jesus removed from barabbas as a form of respect towards Jesus Christ.
It can be found on internet at this address:
digilander.libero.it/Hard_Rain/Barabba.pdf
It is written in Italian so I’ll post the translation of the some of the most relevant parts of this report (“Note relative al nome Barabba”) and the original quotation from the Novum Testamentum Graece (
nestle-aland.com/en/read-na28-online/text/bibeltext/lesen/stelle/50/270001/279999/):
16εἶχον δὲ τότε δέσμιον ἐπίσημον λεγόμενον Ἰησοῦν] Βαραββᾶν ([Jesus] Barabbas).
17συνηγμένων οὖν αὐτῶν εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ὁ Πιλᾶτος• τίνα θέλετε ἀπολύσω ὑμῖν, Ἰησοῦν τὸν] Βαραββᾶν ([Jesus the] Barabbas) ἢ Ἰησοῦν τὸν λεγόμενον χριστόν;
P 11
the term bar Abba, בר אבא, is so common in Jewish literature that anyone who meets it immediately think of a patronymic, not tied to God as Father, but to a person’s name. Bar Abba understood as a child of God, called “Father” as a title or proper name, is in fact an expression totally unknown in Judaism. It is possible to call God Abba, but never would anybody call someone a “son of the Father” and even “son of God”.
P 13, footnote 49
It is allowed to invoke God in Aramaic as “abba” in the first person, as in the case of Jesus, although the use is limited.
P 13, footnote 49
In Judaism we do not have cases of use of the word of “abba” as the title of God
P17
If there is no literary attestation that “bar Abba” or derived forms may mean son of the Father in the honorific sense of “son of God”, even in terms of simple Aramaic grammar this solution is to be discarded.
P 18
if you wanted to say “Son of the Father” in Aramaic you should say: בריה דאבא (berè deAbba), or “son-of-his Father,” an expression that provides a greek word transliteration incompatible with Barabbas / n. Moreover, this expression is never understood in the sense of “son of God”, but as the son of the rabbi, the teacher.
P11
In the Talmud Abba is a name of a person and bar Abba is a patronymic , in the Seder has Dorot are cited dozens of rabbis who are called Abba , we also have mention of a Yeshua bar Abba , of course this is not purely and simply identified with Barabbas in the gospel ( whose name was Jesus , according to some manuscripts of Matthew’s Gospel ), but it illustrates how the combination in Aramaic of Jesus with patronymic bar Abba is certainly not a fact that gave anybody some sort of perplexity.
P 18
It is possible, if not likely, that both Mark and Matthew have meant reporting what was not a patronymic form, which could only correspond to the "son of Abba " , but a nickname, a nom de guerre of who in effect is defined as brigand , a bandit who was in prison .
P 72
Barabbas can be interpreted as a patronymic (son of Abba), or as a nickname (in a similar way to bar Kokhba), this gives us an interpretation of this character consistent with the Jewish culture and the environment.
P 9-10
It is possible, on the one hand, that the lesson Jesus Barabbas originated from an accident in the manuscript transmission but it is also possible that the lesson is genuine and has survived only in codes of “Palestinian” tradition and in Origen because the expression did not cause any inconvenience or theological embarrassment to an audience of Palestinian geographical origin and mentality, as opposed to other geographic regions where censorship began to operate very soon.
P 72
it is possible to conjecture that the name “Jesus” suffixed to Barabbas was known in the Palestinian traditions and were part of the older editions of the Gospel of Matthew; it was later censured for deference to Jesus Christ and the tradition was lost
