MARK 15:15 — KING JAMES VERSION 0
“And so Pilate, willing to content the people, released Barabbas unto them, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified.”
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified — the political capitulation: Pilate wants to satisfy the crowd. The wanting to satisfy (to hikanon poiēsai) is the language of political expediency. Jesus is flogged (the standard preliminary to crucifixion, using a flagellum with lead balls or bone fragments woven into the thongs) and handed over. The flogging is brutal enough that victims sometimes died from it before the crucifixion.
Church Fathers on Mark 15:15
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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