Jesus is
crucified on
Mount Golgotha. To the side of the crowd stands Barabbas. A violent man, a
brigand, and a rebel, he cannot muster much respect for the
resignation of the Man who died in his place. He is skeptical about the Holiness of Jesus, but he is also fascinated by His sacrifice. He seeks out different
followers of Jesus in trying to understand Him, but finds that their exalted views of Jesus do not match his down-to-earth observation of Him. More important, since Barabbas has never been the recipient of love (the cornerstone of the
Christian faith), he finds that he is unable to understand love and, hence, unable to understand the Christian faith. He says that he "wants to believe," but for Barabbas, understanding is a prerequisite for belief, so he is unable to. Enslaved, shackled to another man named Sahak, and condemned to work in the notoriously life-shortening and infernal
copper mines of
Ancient Rome, Barabbas has an extraordinary crisis of
faith, the exact nature of which is elucidated in the final portion of the novel. Barabbas's ultimate loyalties lie with the opaque, remorseless void that fed and surrounded his former life, manifested in the darkness of the night of his execution, which he surrenders himself to with his final breath. ==Reception==