The prisoner released instead of Jesus. The name is Aramaic bar-abba, SON OF THE FATHER, and Matthew does not translate it although he translates Emmanuel and Golgotha when he wants a name heard. Matthew calls him ‘notorious’, Mark and Luke connect him with an insurrection and a killing, and John calls him a lēstēs, a bandit — the word this Gospel uses of the two men crucified beside Jesus. ⚠ A number of manuscripts, and the Nestle-Aland text, give his full name as JESUS Barabbas, so that Pilate’s question offers a choice between two men called Jesus. Origen, in the third century, records that he found the name in copies and argued it should not stand, since no sinner is called Jesus — which attests both the reading’s antiquity and the exact reverence that would remove it. ⚠ The Passover amnesty Matthew describes is not attested outside the Gospels, and Roman practice elsewhere offers only partial parallels; the library records that rather than assuming it either way.