Reply #20: Barabbas Had a Mandate - Supported by Chief Priests

[NAO]

That's two (2) four word slogans. The Christians will know what you are talking about, and it will piss them off for sure.

It's a Biblical reference of an interesting precedent of the crowds choosing the bad guy.

At the trial of Jesus as reported in the Gospels, there came a time when Pilate was to honor a custom of pardoning and releasing a prisoner on death row. Pilate was feeling uncomfortable about executing Jesus, whom he saw as an innocent man. So he dredged up the most despicable criminal he could find - a well known murderer named Barabbas. Then he asked the crowds who they would like to have released - Jesus or Barabbas. The crowds choose to release Barabbas.

That story is an interesting enough implication of the stupidity of crowds, but it does not end there. It turns out the crowds made their choice at the direction of the 'Chief Priests' and 'Elders' - the religious leaders of the time - who had ‘stirred them up to choose Barabbas’!

Imagine that, religious leaders stirring up people to select a known criminal and causing them to give him a mandate for his re-elec…er, release. Wonders never cease!

Mark 6:6-9
6. Now it was the custom at the Feast to release a prisoner whom the people requested.
7. A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising.
8. The crowd came up and asked Pilate to do for them what he usually did.
9. "Do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews?" asked Pilate,
10. knowing it was out of envy that the chief priests had handed Jesus over to him.
11. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.