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
Matthew 27:54 Matthew 27:54 Matthew 27:54 is the fifty-fourth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse follows immediately after the death of Jesus and describes the reaction of the Roman soldiers present. The original Koine Greek, according to Westcott and Hort, reads: In the King James Version of the Bible it is translated as: The modern World English Bible translates the passage as: For a collection of other versions see BibRef Matthew 27:54 This verse is based on , though the author of Matthew makes some modifications. Mention is added of the earthquake,