But the Passover amnesty is a magnificent solution, since, for Mark, it symbolically sums up the events of the preceding decades. The people were asked to choose between a bandit or Jesus. They chose the bandit. They chose the leadership of the violent revolutionary over the pacific Jesus, and thereby, for Mark, came the war of 66 C.E. against Rome. The Barabbas incident is true as process even if it never actually happened as event.
