Barabbas, by Nobel prize winner Par Lagerkvist, was about the man who was to be crucified and Jesus took his place. It's told mainly in the POV of Barabbas, from when he witnessed Jesus' crucifixion until his own crucifixion many years later. We also see the POV from a few other people that Barabbas encounters. Barabbas is very curious about the young rabbi, Jesus, and asks a lot of questions of Jesus' followers. He is not a believer, but he says he wants to believe. A short book that made me think. ( )

A fictional account of Barabbas, the thief and probable murderer who was freed after Jesus Christ was condemned to be crucified, the brief novel, translated by one Alan Blair from the original Swedish into English, won its author the 1951 Nobel prize for literature. It's a powerful book about the search for life's meaning and the hatreds based on who you are rather than on what you've done. ( )

Pär Lagerkvist's "Barabbas," translated to English by Alan Blair, is truly epic, despite being short and concise. It is the imagined story of Barabbas, a criminal who was granted amnesty by Pontius Pilate instead of Jesus. As he ages, Barabbas never comes to terms with the guilt created by his amnesty because he is constantly confronted by early Christians who are ambivalent to him.

Barabbas travels between Jerusalem and the countryside, where he earns a living as a hunter and bandit. He may be a zealot as well, which led to the crowd demanding his amnesty, something that happens before the open of the book. Barabbas witnesses Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, an event that Barabbas is able to explain away. While living with a prostitute and spending time with "the Hare-Lipped Woman," a believer in Christ, Barabbas meets Peter, who confides that he feels guilty for not witnessing the resurrection and for denying Jesus. The book then jumps to Barabbas' hypothetical enslavement on Cyprus, where he is chained to a tall early Christian who eventually achieves partial abolition for Barabbas. Barabbas discovers more believers but he is never able to understand or realize their faith. In fact, he scorns them in the climax.

Lagerkvist's "Barabbas" is about a character, a man whose ideas are indefinable, like many of our ideas. He can't quite accept the proposition that Jesus is the Messiah, but he doesn't reject it outright either. He is not passive or indifferent, but curious. This turmoil and conflict drive the book.

As in "The Dwarf," Lagerkvist is scant on details. He doesn't need to describe the culture or architecture of Jerusalem or Rome to accomplish the narrative goal. "Barabbas" is neither proselytizing nor pedantic. It is immensely philosophical. Most readers, like myself I believe, will probably see their own inner struggle in Barabbas. ( )

The main focus of Barabbas is of course Barabbas himself, but ever since I put the book down over a month ago, I haven't stopped thinking about one particular side character, a small girl with a cleft lip.

Despite being a genuine, good-hearted person, the girl with the cleft lip was kicked out of her house by her mother at a very young age for being "cursed." She lived the rest of her life on the streets of Jerusalem. At one point she entered into a very one-sided relationship with Barabbas, who frequently took advantage of her desperate desire to be told by someone, anyone, just once, that they loved her, even if they didn't mean it. She once encountered Jesus, who she firmly believed could heal her.

"She might well have asked him to cure her of her deformity, but she didn't want to. It would have been easy for him to do so, but she didn't want to ask him. He helped those who really needed help; his were the very great deeds. She would not trouble him with so little."

Jesus then approached her and said to her, "You shall bear witness for me."

That was no easy task. After Jesus' death, the girl with the cleft lip attempted to speak at a gathering of a group of disciples, but because she was a little nervous and hard to understand, she made the men uncomfortable and they ignored her. She tried instead to preach to those who had been rejected by society in the same way she had. She spoke to lepers and cripples about the healing power of Christ, and how they, too, would be allowed to enter the house of the Lord. She was overheard by a local blind man, who reported her to the Sanhedrin. She was condemned to death, and she was stoned. Her last words were, "Lord, how can I witness for thee? Forgive me. forgive..."

I don't have a good answer for how to consider such a life. A life filled with unimaginable suffering, and at the end she was still convinced that she had done wrong, or hadn't done enough. Despite spending my entire life within the Church, I couldn't help but read her last words and think that, rather than asking the Lord for forgiveness, it should be the other way around. Jesus should be on his knees, begging to be forgiven for all the torment he put her through. And if that's my reaction, then what could we possibly expect from Barabbas?

This is a man who watched Jesus die on the cross for his sins, in a more direct way than any of the rest of us can claim. At the same time, he saw the purest human being he knew suffer the same fate, all because she believed in Jesus. How does a man in that position come to terms with it all?

Lagerkvist explores this question brilliantly. I won't say any more about it, but I'll be reading this book every Lenten season for the rest of my life. ( )

My kids love churches, but not having been brought up religiously, they don't understand any of the iconography. Trying to explain to a six-year-old why they all have statues of this beardy guy slowly dying on a stick has really brought home to me what a hideous and morbid idea Christianity is built on. I understand that some people find it very touching and beautiful, but I find it difficult to see it that way. Telling people that this man went through agony, and then died, on your behalf, whether you like it or not, is a heavy load to lay on someone and entails a serious amount of what I suppose psychologists would call guilt.

What's very clever about this book is that Pär Lagerkvist has found a way to examine this idea which works whether or not you believe in the metaphysics: Barabbas, the man acquitted in Jesus's place, is someone in whom the central myth of Christianity is literally true.

They spoke of his having died for them. That might be. But he really had died for Barabbas, no one could deny it!

So the reactions of Barabbas – relief, disbelief, morbid curiosity, survivor's guilt – become a kind of study in what Christian dogma might imply for the human mind. Barabbas can never quite bring himself to believe in Jesus as a divine figure, but, as he says in the novel's most famous passage: ‘I want to believe.’ That conflict is the essence of the book.

Barabbas is a great figure to expand upon, since in the source material he is both crucial and barely mentioned. The Bible gives very few details about him, though there's some suggestion in Luke that he took part in riots in Jerusalem. John, usually the most poetic of the gospels, is disappointingly brief: it simply says, ‘Barabbas was a bandit [λῃστής].’ This gives Lagerkvist great freedom to construct a suitably rough past for him, and the scope to imagine how this one act of being freed might have affected the rest of his life.

In some versions of the Biblical text, Barabbas's full name is ‘Jesus Barabbas’ (which would make sense of Pilate's question to the crowd in Luke – ‘Who would you have me free, [Jesus] Barabbas or the Jesus that is called Christ?’). This may reflect a later mythological tradition, but even so, it points to a deep sense in which the two are equated – indeed, there are serious Biblical scholars who believe that they are one and the same person. This duality is fully explored in Lagerkvist's story, which sees Barabbas go through similar ordeals and, for that matter, end up nailed in the same place.

His state of mind and his state of belief at that point are open to interpretation. It's a very incisive way of looking at the challenges and mysteries of such big topics as atonement, the crucifixtion, and faith – and one which goes to the heart of them in a way that theological texts generally do not. ( )

This is a book which rose in esteem, for me, upon a re-reading. The premise: Barabbas is saved by Jesus indirectly (chosen by the crowd to live and be released). He is haunted by Jesus and his followers but despite being one who was 'saved' he cannot bring himself to believe any of the stories of Jesus or believe the doctrines of Christianity. He is a man tortured, never at peace until he dies.

This is a book chronicling existential doubt. In Lagerkvist's re-telling there is no aspect of the crucifixion and resurrection that do not also have a naturalistic explanation. There is no faith-trump-card, even for eye-witnesses. Still faith and doubt co-mingle in Lagerkvist's pages.

( )

Read during Spring 2002

Par Lagerkvist is mostly unknown amongst Engilsh speakers, I only know him from my amazing European novels teacher in High School. Barrabas is the man who is pardoned in place of Jesus. How does he continue his life after this event? I could not put it down but it very enigmatic. It is not a Christian themed novel but otherwise very hard to describe. Just read it.

Awarded the 1951 Nobel Prize for Literature primarily for his poetry, Par Lagerkvist was also a dramatist, essayist and novelist.

Drawing from the well-known biblical story of the crucifixion, Lagerkvist envisions the criminal, Barabbas, in the aftermath of having been acquitted and Jesus crucified in his place. Barabbas becomes obsessed with wanting to understand why a man who is called the Messiah would choose suffering and crucifixion. Why does Golgotha, the site of Jesus’s crucifixion, become suddenly dark at the moment of his death? How is it possible that a man can be resurrected from the dead, his tomb found empty? What does his message of “love one another” mean? Why do some believe that Jesus is the Son of God?

Par Lagerkvist’s Barabbas is unable to find faith in the absence of understanding. He seems generally devoid of feelings for his fellow man, and fails to intervene on behalf of a girl with a hare-lip and a fellow captive to whom he is chained for years, both devout Christians who die for their faith. In the end, Barabbas’s quest for understanding grows into a desire to believe, but remains ambiguous as to whether or not it is fulfilled.

Lagerkvist’s writing is concise and skillfully descriptive, but for the most part, Barabbas’s struggle to find faith felt fairly predictable to me, and not particularly interesting. However, my enjoyment of this short novel was considerably enhanced by the occasional insertion of the unexpected, such as the following conversation between Barabbas and a man whom Jesus has raised from the dead, surprising in its inconsistency with Christian dogma regarding the after-life.

Barabbas sat opposite to him and was drawn to examine his face. It was sallow and seemed as hard as bone. The skin was completely parched. Barabbas had never thought a face could look like that and he had never seen anything so desolate. It was like a desert.

To the young man’s question the man replied that it was quite true that he had been dead and brought back to life by the rabbi from Galilee, their Master. He had lain in the grave for four days and nights, but his physical and mental powers were the same as before, nothing had altered as far as they were concerned. And because of this the Master had proved his power and glory and that he was the son of God. He spoke slowly in a monotone, looking at Barabbas the whole time with his pale, lack-lustre eyes.

...-The realm of the dead? Barabbas exclaimed, noticing that his voice trembled slightly. The realm of the dead?...What is it like there? You who have been there! Tell me what it’s like!

-What it’s like? The man said, looking at him questioningly. He clearly didn’t quite understand what the other meant.

-Yes! What is it? This thing you have experienced?

-I have experienced nothing, the man, answered, as though disapproving of the other’s violence. I have merely been dead. And death is nothing.

-Nothing?

-No. What should it be?

Barabbas stared at him.

-Do you mean you want me to tell you something about the realm of the dead? I cannot. The realm of the dead isn’t anything. It exists, but it isn’t anything.
Barabbas could only stare at him. The desolate face frightened him, but he could not tear his eyes away from it.

-No, the man said, looking past him with his empty gaze, the realm of the dead isn’t anything. But to those who have been there, nothing else is anything either.

-It is strange your asking such a thing, he went on. Why did you? They don’t usually.

And he told him that the brethren in Jerusalem often sent people there to be converted, and indeed many had been. In that way he served the Master and repaid something of his great debt for having been restored to life. Almost every day someone was brought by this young man or one of the others and he testified to his resurrection. But of the realm of the dead he never spoke. It was the first time anyone had wanted to hear about it.

Sparse and compelling, this is a tense read. The condition of the imagined Barabbas, who was released so that Jesus could be crucified, is one of doubt. Born of a rape, and a possible parricide, Barabbas spends the remainder of his life trying to understand the man killed in his stead. The Roman world is not really well realised but the book is a parable for modern man, anyway. Raised as a Lutheran, I'd call this a very Lutheran book, indeed! ( )

This story is about Barabbas, the man who was released from prison instead of releasing Jesus. Barabbas was the scapegoat. I never thought about what Barabbas may have thought and how his life may have been affected. This short tale gives us a look at the man Barabbas, the man acquitted. Pär Lagerkvist is a Swedish author. This book was added with the second edition. My guess is because he was Swedish and could represent that country. The story was written in 1951 and Mr Lagerkvist was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1951. I don’t think a book like this would be written today and it would never win the Nobel Prize. The author writes this story with historical accuracy especially about Roman rule. The first part takes the reader to the crucifixion and after that switches to the focus on Barabbas. At first Barabbas watches the crucifixion, then he tries to figure out the followers of Jesus. The Christians are not represented well. The author shows them at biased and unloving even though they talk about Jesus taught love. Then Barabbas finally disappears and we find him a slave in mind where he is chained to a man who is a Christian. The slaves have a metal necklace around their necks that identify them as slaves of the Roman government. Barabbas’s partner has ‘Christos Iesus’ on it. Barabbas has ‘Christos Iesus’ scratched unto the back of his metal. Later, when they are brought before the Governor, the partner tells the governor that he is a slave to Jesus, Barabbas tells the governor that he put it on his metal ‘because I want to believe’ but he doesn’t believe. His partner is crucified and Barabbas is released and made a personal slave of the governor and taken back to Rome upon the retirement of the governor. The author reportedly struggled with his own lack of faith. This book is about a crisis of belief. Barabbas feared the realm of the dead and the final pages finds Barabbas in the catacombs looking for the Christians and ends with the great fire of Rome. He is arrested and crucified as a martyr of a faith he doesn’t understand.
( )

4.5/5

It amuses me, sometimes, the way people judge books. They'll ban them for epithets, they'll ban them for sex, they'll ban them for witchcraft. More often than not, they'll ban them for raising uncomfortable questions in the minds of children who have not yet been conditioned to follow the proper path. Ignore, and if you cannot ignore, condemn until you can, and if you cannot condemn until you can. Eradicate.

You could ban this book for any of those reasons, much as you could ban the Bible. Either one poses much more danger than most literature that is deemed unsafe. For one has resulted in millenia of misguided atrocities and the other is, well. A glimpse of its birth, before all the context, before all the history, before all the rules. Of what could have resulted without it.

The New York Times and Time magazine both referred to it as a parable. I really have to wonder how seriously they took it. It's true that it's not that long, and has religions underpinnings. The 'conveying a truth, religious principle, moral lesson, or meaning' part, though. To put it succinctly, in comparison to this 'parable', nihilism seems vastly more definitive, even encouraging. At least there's an end goal with that.

I will admit to bias, seeing how I was raised Catholic without once grasping the concept behind it all. The question has always fascinated me, though. The meaning of existence. And what a broad field it is! Sophisticated existentialism, misinformed agnosticism, misinterpreted atheism. The hydra of faith. It's all very fascinating, really. To see what extensive lengths humanity has gone in its attempt to reconcile the matter of its wandering in the world. All the shields it has built up between it and the dark.

If this book doesn't make you question whatever shield you have chosen, I would be worried. It doesn't matter that this is framed within the context of one of many religions. It is a human story, subject to the facts of life, the whims of fate, and the maelstrom of the mind. Ultimately, it is cruel, and strange, and will not divulge its secrets, for the truth is that it has no secrets to divulge. What it has is a chain of events that could mean one thing, or another, unless perhaps you missed a lesson here, or heard something incorrectly there, and maybe that person really wasn't the right one you should have listened to, or it was that one happenstance that really messed things up, and if it wasn't for that one specific moment in time you'd know exactly what you were supposed to do, and how things were going to happen, and what it all meant.

Chitterings in the void.

You know what, go ahead and think that this is a parable. Settle on some kind of conclusion, at least, and get it out of your head. It's not conducive to living, this kind of talk. Banning is a bit much, but temperance. Yes. Temperance is a must. ( )

"I have no god", Barabbas answered at last...
"Why then do you bear this "Christos Iesus" carved on your disk?"
"Because I want to believe", Barabbas said..."

He wanted to believe. But he did not understand.

"Love one another" - that's what they said the message of the crucified man was. Love one another - now what could that mean to Barabbas's simple mind? What could love mean to Barabbas who had been hated even by his mother from the moment he drew his first breath? Who had never felt any emotional connection with another human being? No it was too much for Barabbas to understand.
He was unwittingly caught up in happenings well beyond his comprehension. He could not believe in the messiah that many others had faith in. At the same time, he never was able to shirk off his sense of guilt and spiritual torment. His inner struggle reminds me a lot of the whiskey priest. Both struggle with questions of faith, albeit of very different nature.

It was Barrabas's poor luck that his life be entwined so closely with that of the crucified man - perhaps even closer than the strongest of the believers. When Barabbas was allowed to live, the other had to die. One died among his friends and followers. Barabbas lived and died alone - utterly alone. One was said to have risen from the dead. Barabbas -while still breathing - found himself trapped in the realm of the dead. Barabbas carried a disk with the name "Christos Iesus" crossed out. And that was his cross to bear.

On one hand, Barabbas, having witnessed these events of possibly huge import, was unable to put the pieces together and make any sense out of it. On the other, there were followers who knew of the messiah only from hearsay, yet believed in him strongly enough to part with their lives in his name. From firm believers, to staunch dissenters, to skeptics, Lagerkvist has created the entire spectrum. Through this ensemble, Lagrekvist also explores the nature of faith. Some believe too readily, some others are too cautious. He also brings to fore how questions of faith and superstition could have political ramifications. There are multiple mentions of lepers and slaves eagerly awaiting the appearance of the messiah and giving them a better life. These people of the lower classes who have no other way of belying a life of drudgery, are willing to grab on to anything that gives them hope. The possibility of the lower classes gaining strength makes the government stir to curb people's beliefs. And amidst all this turbulence, stands Barabbas, dazed like a deer, attempting in vain to fight off the storm within himself.

Of course, this doesn't need to be read as a religious novel. I read this as a parable, as a story about a man's inner struggle. Lagrekvist achieves an impressive feat by telling the story from the naive and uncomprehending point of view of Barabbas. Even with such a narrow field of vision, he presents a story with multiple layers and a lot of depth. Barabbas's view will provide the readers with a lot to chew upon. It was only Barabbas who did not understand....


PS: The book also comes with a seal of approval from [a:André Gide|7617|André Gide|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1252553705p2/7617.jpg], if the name means anything to you. ( )

The story of Barabbas being unbeliever although he has witnessed the crucifixion eclipse that darkness that accompanied the crucifixion and was supposed to be a miracle and also t he resurrection of Jesus after he had been crucified and buried and his visit to , a man who lived through the resurrection process. All this doesnt prevent him from being a skeptic who cant believe that God could be crucified , and has his own doubts through his journey searching for answers……and peace for his soul and cure for his loneliness that he recognized at the end……in contrary to Sahak who is Faithful Believer and is willing to die for what he believe without witnessing the miracles that Barabbas has , this raise a question ,should faith be taken by mind as Barabbas who suffered the darkness of the soul or by heart like Sahak did and find his own peace… ……

i think Barabbas struggling to believe might have a reflection on Pär life ,his own trial to understand Jesus....... ( )

This is probably Lagerkvist's most famous book, although most people know the story from the film adaptation by Christopher Fry, directed by Richard Fleischer, and starring Anthony Quinn in the title role. To the side of the crowd as Jesus is crucified on Mount Golgotha stands Barabbas. Being a violent man, a brigand and a rebel, he cannot muster much respect for the resignation of the man who died in his place. While skeptical about the holiness of Jesus he is also fascinated by the sacrifice and he seeks out the different followers of Jesus trying to understand, but finds that their exalted views of Jesus do not match his down to earth observation of the man. More importantly, since he had not ever been the recipient of love, he finds that he is neither able to understand love nor to understand the Christian faith. Barabbas says that he "Wants to believe," but for Barabbas, like many skeptics before and since, understanding is a prerequisite for belief, so he is unable. During his life Pär Lagerkvist struggled with his lack of faith and this is a theme in many of his novels. In this story Barabbas too is a man who does not understand Jesus and does not know how to love him. The novel presents many Christians with some wrong concepts of the faith as negative examples, to bring out the message about how to love Jesus. While I enjoyed the book I think more highly of Lagerkvist's less well-known works, especially The Dwarf. ( )

This novel is a fictional account of what happens to the historical Barabbas, who was acquitted in stead of Jesus - we follow Barabbas from the time he is freed from his death sentence. He’s drawn to this mystical figure who is innocent yet who give up his life. He watches the crucifixion, he visit the grave, he talks to Lazarus, but all the time he has rational answers for the miracles.

He didn't remember ever having seen anyone like him before. Though it must have been because he came straight from the dungeon and his eyes were still unused to the glare. That is why at first glance the man seemed to be surrounded by a dazzling light.

His life is one big crisis of faith - he’s seeking, watching the Christians, analyzing their behavior, wanting to have the assurance of faith yet are unable to grasp it.

The swedish Nobel-prize winner Pär Lagerkvist draws a powerful portrait of the modern sceptic. Lagerkvist called himself "a believer without a belief, a religious atheist". It’s remarkable how honest this crisis of faith is portrayed in Barabbas. It’s not a relief, but a real dilemma - one that Lagerkvist knows all too well. ( )

431. Barabbas, by Per Lagerkvist translated by Alan Blair (read 9 May 1952) On May 8, 1952, I noted that I was reading this book and said of it: "Not bad." On May 9, 1952 I noted that I had finished the book and that Lagerkvist won the Nobel Prize in 1951. and commented thusly on the book: "It is the story of Barabbas, his life of rejection of Christianity and his end on the cross." ( )

In the introduction to this novel by Nobelist Lagerkvist, Andre Gide describes it as follows:

"Par Lagerkvist has shown the mysterious springs of an emerging conscience secretly tormented by the problem of Christ at a time when the Christian doctrine was still in the process of formation, when the dogma of the Resurrection still depended on the uncertain evidence of a few credulous witnesses who had not yet bridged the gap between superstition and faith."

Barabbas was the criminal who was to be crucified, but who was freed when Jesus Christ was crucified in his place. Immediately after his release, Barabbas follows Christ and witnesses his death. Days later he witnesses what could have been the Resurrection. For the rest of his life, Barabbas struggles between accepting Christianity and disbelief. He wants to believe, but finds he cannot. "Believe! How could he believe in that man he had seen hanging on a cross!"

Nevertheless, Barabbas feels an affinity with Christ, in the sense that he feels he has also been given a second life (or resurrection) when Christ was executed in his place:

"If a man is sentenced to death, then he's dead, and if he's let out and reprieved he's still dead, because that's what he has been and he's only risen again from the dead, and that's not the same as living and being like the rest of us."

This book is written in simple and spare prose. Although the book is set in a Christian context, it can be savored by believers, agnostics and atheists alike, as an incisive examination of one man's struggle to understand life. ( )

Barabbas is the criminal acquitted when Jesus Christ was condemned. He wears Christ's name on a disk around his neck, his own personal albatross, and struggles to find his place in society. Since he's had his religious experiences, he no longer wants to belong to the group of criminals and outcasts whom he previously was with, but of course the Christians don't want him either, holding him personally responsible for their savior's death.

He is also isolated by his hesitation and fluctuating faith - he cannot bring himself to say that he believes Jesus is the Christ, or to pray, but he desperately *wants* to believe. The minimalism, both in terms of writing and story, emphasize the emptiness of Barabbas's life in the face of the glory of God, and his uncertainty about the power of religion ( )

One of my very favorite novels. Its spare narrative inhabits Barabbas's point of view convincingly. Lagerkvist started with a challenging premise and succeeded. ( )