The Custom of Releasing a Prisoner at the Feast (Mark 15:6; Matt
27:15; John 18:39a)
If the Lucan Pilate calls together the chief priests, rulers, and
people, and the Johannine Pilate goes outside the praetorium to speak to the
already gathered “Jews,” in Mark 15:8, the crowd now comes up to add its
presence to the whole Sanhedrin (15:1) before Pilate. Matt 27:17, with a
reflexive use of the passive of synagein,
has “when they had gathered together,” without specifying the “they“—the
pronoun would include “all the chief priests and the elders of the people” from
27:1, 12, as well as “the crowd(s)” of 27:15, 20. Matt’s synagein gives a more official tone to those present than Mark’s anabas (“having come up”); but for the
latter there is an interesting textual variant in the Koine tradition and the
OSsin: anaboēsas (“having
screamed/cried out”), related to epiboēsis
(“acclamation”). Colin (Villes 14)
accepts this reading as part of his thesis that the verdict in the Roman trial
was by acclamation of the crowd/people (§31, D3c above); copyists would have
misunderstood this rare verbal form and substituted anabas. Matt’s “gathered,” however, means that he read a verb of
motion in Mark, not a verb of calling out. Probably the copyist’s change went
in the other direction, i.e., removing “having come up” because it contradicted
the picture in Luke and John where the addressees were already present.
Mark explicitly and Matt implicitly give as the purpose of the coming
up or gathering of the crowd(s) before Pilate the custom of releasing a
prisoner at a/the feast. John 18:39a also mentions the custom. But before we
discuss this custom, let us note that Luke 23:17, which refers to it, is absent
from the best textual witnesses to Luke (P75, Codices Vaticanus,
Alexandrinus, Sahidic). Some scholars who think that the custom mentioned in
Mark 15:6–8 is a secondary addition by Mark to an original tradition that
lacked it (Dibelius, “Herodes”) evaluate Luke 23 without v. 17 as closer to
that original tradition. Others doubt that Luke had special access to such an
original tradition and explain his text (without v. 17) as a deliberate
shortening of Mark to facilitate the storyline. The opposite approach is to
affirm 23:17, “But he had the obligation to
release one person to them at a/the
feast,” to have been originally written by Luke (despite its weaker, Koine
attestation) and to have been omitted by a copyist’s error as his eye skipped
from the anagkēn de that began v. 17
to the anekragon de beginning v. 18.
To the more common thesis that v. 17 is a copyist’s insertion in imitation of
Mark and Matt (because all the words I have italicized are in those two
Gospels) an objection is raised that neither of them speaks of an “obligation”
(anagkē), something an imitative
copyist would not have introduced. Recognizing the difficulty of settling the
issue, although I shall follow the majority view that 23:17 is a copyist’s
addition, I will not speculate about Luke’s reason for omitting all reference
to the custom. His silence cannot with surety be used as an argument that he
thought the custom incredible (see p. 819 below).
In the three Gospels that mention the custom of release there is a
combination of agreements and disagreements. John attaches the custom
specifically to Passover; but Mark/Matt (and Luke 23:17) use kata heortēn anarthrously, which could
mean “at a feast” (every or any: kata
as a distributive). The same expression, however, in Josephus (War 1.11.6; #229) means “at the feast.”
Now, in the last instance of heortē
(“feast”) in each Synoptic (Mark 14:1–2; Matt 26:2, 5; Luke 22:1) the reference
has been to Passover. Thus it seems likely that Mark/Matt refer to every year’s
occurrence of the feast, i.e.,
Passover, and thus implicitly agree with John. No evangelist, however,
necessarily places the release on Passover day itself.
To describe the habitual character of the custom, Mark 15:6 employs
the imperfect of apolyein (“used to
release”); and in 15:8 the Koine ms. variant has “as he always used to do for them.” Matt 27:15 uses the verb eiōthein (“to be accustomed”); John
18:39a has the noun synētheia
(“custom”). The dubious Luke 23:17 hardens it to an obligation. Mark (along
with Luke 23:17) indicates that this is Pilate’s custom. In speaking more
generally of “the governor,” Matt 27:15 is not necessarily describing every
governor’s custom, since he equates Pilate with the governor in 27:2 and
27:13–14. On the other hand, the “You have a custom” in John 18:39a makes it a
custom of “the Jews.” All the Gospels agree that the content of the custom is
to release one person or prisoner—one whom they requested (Mark: paraiteisthai), or willed (Matt: thelein), or desired (John: boulein).
The release is “to you” (= for you) in Mark, Matt, and John. The crowd
constituted by the Jewish or Jerusalem populace is the main agent in choosing
the one to be released. In John (and in Luke 23:17) the chief priests are part
of the choosing group, whereas in Mark/Matt the chief priests have to lobby the
crowd(s).
By way of summary, then, the Gospels agree on a festal custom attached
to Passover (explicitly in John, implicitly in Mark/Matt) whereby a prisoner
was released whom the Jewish crowds chose. The major disagreement is whether it
was a custom of Pilate the governor or a Jewish custom recognized by Pilate. (Raymond
E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah–From Gethsemane to the Grave: A
Commentary on the Passion Narratives in the Four Gospels, 2 vols. [The
Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994],
1:793-95)
