MARK 15:11 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“But the chief priests moved the people, that he should rather release Barabbas unto them.”
But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead — the crowd's change of request from Jesus to Barabbas is engineered by the chief priests. The same crowd whose presence had protected Jesus all week is now mobilized by the very leaders who feared them (Mark 11:18, 12:12, 14:1–2). The crowd manipulation is the chief priests' political masterstroke.
Church Fathers on Mark 15:11
Pilate furnished many opportunities for releasing Jesus, in the first place contrasting a robber with the Just One.
Which indeed he was accustomed to do, to obtain favour with the people, and above all, on the feast day, when the people of the whole province of the Jews flocked to Jerusalem. And that the wickedness of the Jews might appear the greater, the enormity of the sin of the robber, whom they preferred to Christ, is next described.
No one can feel it a difficulty that Matthew is silent as to their asking some one to be released unto them, which Mark here mentions; for it is a thing of no consequence that one should mention a thing which another leaves out.
Read all 10 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain
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