All four gospels in the Bible recount a story of Jesus being brought to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, by Jewish leaders who accused Jesus of crimes and requested his execution. The story goes that Pilate had to do what the leaders asked but was not convinced Jesus was guilty of anything and decided to give him a chance at freedom. The Jewish holiday of Passover was happening and it was a tradition for Roman leaders to release a Jewish prisoner. Pilate offered a crowd of Jewish people the choice between freeing Jesus or a man named Barabbas (who is described as an insurrectionist against Rome and a murderer, not a thief). The Jewish leaders in the crowd turned them against Jesus and had them call for Barabbas to be released. Pilate is then said to wash his hands to symbolize the crowd is responsible for Jesus’ fate and not him.

Historically, there’s no evidence Romans ever released Jewish prisoners for Passover and Pilate himself is described as a ruthless tyrant who did not hesitate to execute Jewish people who did not recognize the authority of Caesar. There’s no chance he would have freed someone who killed Romans, nor would he have been forced to execute someone he didn’t want to execute because Jewish leaders requested it.

The Bible story was probably meant as an exaggeration of how much Jewish leaders didn’t like Jesus and his message and how people followed corrupt leaders over the actual son of God. The meme is pointing out people seem to have missed the point of the story and would do the same thing today.

Jesus was arrested by the Romans, at the behest of the Jewish leaders, for preaching that they (the Jewish leaders) were not preaching the Torah properly and being more popular than them.

The crowd was getting more and more angry but Pontius Pilot, the ruler of the precinct they were in, couldn’t find anything wrong with Jesus. He actually believed Jesus when he said that he was the Son of God. (Aside: there is discussion as to whether Pilot was a believer but let’s not dive into that.)

There was a tradition by the Romans to let go of a prisoner, kind of like a pardon. Pilot didn’t want to send Jesus, a peaceful man by his own judgement, to die. So he got Barrabas, a convicted thief, out of jail and presented both of them to the people to “vote” on which he should let go.

The crowd chose Barrabas.