This article examines two topics that emerge from N. T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of the Gospel: Paul the Shammaite-zealot and the ‘great narrative’ of an Israel in exile, waiting for something. The perspective adopted is that of a historian, for whom the fundamental question is whether Wright's accounts approximate plausible reality two thousand years ago. With respect to the first topic, analysis of source material on the Pharisees in the pre-70 period renders Wright's association of Paul with the rabbinic ‘House of Shammai’ and zealotry doubtful in every part. Similar issues arise in relation to the second topic, where Wright's proposal is supported by a kind of proof-texting, without methodical concern for the nature, context, coherence, themes, rhetoric or meaning of texts in situ.

This article examines the textual arguments offered for and against the reading Jesus Barabbas in Matthew 27.16–17. While siding with the position that the longer reading, Jesus Barabbas, stood in the original text of Matthew's Gospel, this article argues against the tendency of scholars to deduce from the longer reading that a historical figure called ‘Jesus’ with the patronymic ‘Barabbas’ was released by Pilate, and that this man's name was suppressed by Christian tradition out of reverence for the name Jesus.