Barabbas Barabbas Barabbas (; "Bar ʾAbbaʾ", literally "son of the father") is a figure mentioned in the New Testament of the Bible, in which he is an insurrectionary held by the Roman governor at the same time as Jesus, and whom Pontius Pilate freed at the Passover feast in Jerusalem, while keeping Jesus as a prisoner. According to all four canonical gospels there was a prevailing Passover custom in Jerusalem that allowed or required Pilate, the "" or governor of Judea, to commute one prisoner's death sentence by popular acclaim, and the "crowd" ("ochlos"), "the Jews" and "the multitude" in some
Pontius Pilate Rome, but Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, also finds nothing treasonable in Jesus' actions. In the Gospel of John, Pilate states "I find no guilt in Him [Jesus]," and he asks the Jews if Jesus should be released from custody. Scholars have long debated how to interpret Pilate's portrayal in the sources. The wider significance and context of the Pilate Stone, an artifact discovered in 1961 and bearing a partially preserved inscription that names Pontius Pilate and his title, is similarly debated by scholars. One of the few pieces of physical, archaeological evidence that confirms the existence of Pilate