" In fact, he and others instead see the gospel as a condemnation of the Jews who chose insurrection. Mark saw the choice between Barabbas and Jesus, as it was told and not necessarily as it happened, as one that symbolized the dramatic fate awaiting Jerusalem.

In Greek, the technical term for such a rebel bandit is lestes, and that is exactly what Barabbas is called. He was a bandit, a rebel, an insurgent, a freedom fighter - depending always, of course, on your point-of-view." (Crossan, 143.)

He continues to relate the story of Pilate's choice, one of either Barabbas or Jesus, to not the hatred of the Jews but instead to the historical realities of the day, those from which the Markan author was distinctly temporally separated.

But Mark was written soon after the terrible consummation of the First Roman-Jewish War in 70 C.E., when Jerusalem and its Temple...
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