All of that is speculation since we have no way of knowing what actually happened. The only thing we know for certain is that a lot of people back then wrote a lot of bat shit lunacy.

And Reverend David Rice gets no credit despite handing either Jefferson or Madison well over a million dollars to fund the damn thing.

You weren’t kidding…

I looked everywhere and scoured the Dark Web and managed to only find this after great struggle:

There exist several versions of this figure’s name in gospel manuscripts, most commonly simply Biblical Greek: Bαραββᾶς, romanized: Barabbās without a first name. However the variations (Biblical Greek: Ἰησοῦς Bαῤῥαββᾶν, romanized: Iēsoûs Bar-rhabbân, Biblical Greek: Ἰησοῦς Bαραββᾶς, romanized: Iēsoûs Barabbâs, Biblical Greek: Ἰησοῦς Bαῤῥαββᾶς, romanized: Iēsoûs Bar-rhabbâs) found in different manuscripts of the Matthew 27:16–17 give this figure the first name “Jesus”, making his full name “Jesus Barabbas” or “Jesus Bar-rhabban”, and giving him the same first, given name as Jesus.[b] The Codex Koridethi seems to emphasise Bar-rhabban as composed of two elements in line with a patronymic Aramaic name.[17][18] These versions, featuring the first name “Jesus” are considered original by a number of modern scholars.[19][20] Origen seems to refer to this passage of Matthew in claiming that it must be a corruption, as no sinful man ever bore the name “Jesus” and argues for its exclusion from the text.[21] He however does not account for the high priest Biblical Greek: Ἰάσων, romanized: Iásōn from 2 Maccabees 4:13, whose name seems to transliterate the same Aramaic name into Greek, as well as other bearers of the name Jesus mentioned by Josephus.[17] It is possible that scribes when copying the passage, driven by a reasoning similar to that of Origen, removed this first name “Jesus” from the text to avoid dishonor to the name of the Jesus whom they considered the Messiah.[22]

Etymology

Of the two larger categories in which transmitted versions of this name fall Biblical Greek: Bαῤῥαββᾶν, romanized: Bar-rhabbân, seems to represent Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: בּר רַבָּן, romanized: Bar Rabbān, lit. ‘Son of our Rabbi/Master’, while Biblical Greek: Bαραββᾶς, romanized: Barabbâs appears to derive ultimately from Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: בּר אַבָּא , romanized: Bar ʾAbbā lit. ‘Son of ʾAbbā/[the] father’, a patronymic Aramaic name.[17] However, ʾAbbā has been found as a personal name in a 1st-century burial at Giv’at ha-Mivtar. Additionally it appears fairly often as a personal name in the Gemara section of the Talmud, a Jewish text dating from AD 200–400.[23]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barabbas#Name

I’m not too sure where I first picked up the idea, for some reason I think it may have been one of the videos on the Useful Charts YouTube channel, but in general it all kind of fits together to me, and I of course kind of put my own little bit of spin into it myself. Unfortunately I don’t have exact sources to cite directly to where I first heard this theory put together.

For starters you can go to the Bible itself with Mathew 27:16-17

16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”

I misspoke in my earlier comment, and I edited it accordingly, the language would have been Aramaic, which is what most scholars agree is the language Jesus mostly spoke, although it is a pretty closely related language to Hebrew. I speak neither Hebrew nor Aramaic so I kind of just have to take it on faith that some of the people I’ve seen discussing this online have some idea what they’re talking about. You can kind of piece it together from some common bits of Hebrew “bar mitzvah” literally translates to something like “son of the commandments” and I believe in modern Hebrew, the word for father in “av” with “aba” being commonly used in some places/cultures.

There’s also some that would say it comes from “bar rabban” (may be misspelling that) meaning “son of the teacher” instead of father, which you can compare to “Rabbi”

This comes from an era when people didn’t really have official last names, depending on who you asked, Jesus could have been known by quite a few different names, Jesus the carpenter, Jesus son of Joseph/mary, the son of God, the teacher, the guy from Nazareth, the religious weirdo, the insurrectionist, of the house of David, etc.

I believe in modern Hebrew “ben” is more often used as the “son of” prefix. And those sort of patronymic names are pretty common in semitic languages, in Arabic you’ve probably heard a few people with “bin” in their name. It’s basically the same idea as Irish/Scottish names that begin with mc/Mac/O’, or names that end in “son”

As for Barabbas having been involved in an insurrection, going back to the bible we have Mark 15:7

A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising.

Israel experienced more than a few different Jewish uprisings/revolts/riots/insurrections/whatever name you wanted to call it. They weren’t exactly happy to be under Roman rule, and there were always a bunch of different political or religious movements trying to do something about it and usually not having much success. It’s not unlikely that Jesus is sort of a composite of several different folks making trouble for the Romans.

I’m no scholar, my knowledge on this doesn’t really go a whole lot deeper than what I’ve said here, and I can’t say how widespread this particular little conspiracy theory is in academic circles, I won’t say that I’m totally sold on it myself, I’m very open to someone else saying differently, but it’s something to consider, and it looks like a hell of a coincidence to just be a coincidence to me