“And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder in the insurrection.”
A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising — Barabbas (son of the father — bar Abba) is a murderous insurrectionist, the very thing Jesus was accused of being without evidence. The detail that he was in prison with insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising places him in the category of genuine political revolutionary violence.
Church Fathers on Mark 15:7
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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