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 27:58 not impossible. Keener notes that proper burials were not just part of Jewish tradition. Greco-Roman literature of the period has several examples of noble heroes taking great risks to ensure a proper burial. Matthew 27:58 Matthew 27:58 is the fifty-eighth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. This verse describes Joseph of Arimathea meeting with Pontius Pilate to secure the burial of Jesus. 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