Barabas, the central character of The Jew of Malta, shares his name with prominent New Testament figure Barabbas, featured in all four of the Gospels (the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). After his capture and imprisonment, Jesus and his fellow captives—including a man named Barabbas, a known murderer—were brought before a crowd of people in Jerusalem. Pontius Pilate informs the crowd that they can, as is customary, choose one prisoner to free. The crowd chooses Barabbas over Jesus, giving the murderer his freedom rather than see Jesus go unpunished for his radical preaching. Barrabas is not simply a murderer; he is a murderer who acquires his freedom unjustly, without repenting, and in place of the son of God.
The similarities between Marlowe's Barabas and his biblical namesake are multifaceted: both men are murderers, yes—but they also escape punishment for their crimes through the sacrifice of innocents. Barabas evades capture after he poisons an entire nunnery by murdering one of the friars who suspects him, subsequently pinning his murder on another innocent friar.
Biblical allusion is central to The Jew of Malta. Barabas, in particular, will frequently reference important biblical characters or themes in order to provide moral justification for his actions. These references begin innocuously enough but soon become dissonant with Barabas's actions, which continuously fail to reflect the moral virtue he preaches. In Act 1, Scene 1, Barabas references the biblical figure of Abram from the Old Testament, thereby using God's promise of Jewish prosperity to justify greed:
Thus trowls our fortune in by land and sea,
And thus are we on every side enriched:
These are the blessings promised to the Jews,
And herein was old Abram's happiness:
What more may Heaven do for earthly man
Than thus to pour out plenty in their laps,
Ripping the bowels of the earth for them,
Making the seas their servants, and the winds
To drive their substance with successful blasts?
Abram, or Abraham, was one of the first great patriarchs of the Jewish people. Through him, God promised the establishment of a new prosperous nation, through which Abram's progeny (called his "seed") would inherit the land. Barabas sees his wealth and prosperity as a reflection of God's promise to Abram; any attempt to take Barabas's wealth is, within this paradigm, an attempt to undermine God's plan for the Jewish people. Furthermore, Barabas seems to believe that any action he takes to maintain his wealth, no matter how dastardly, is morally justified and righteous.
At the end of a long soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 1, Barabas compares himself and Abigail to King Agamemnon of Mycenae and his daughter, Iphigeneia (abbreviated as Iphigen by Marlowe in this passage):
I have no charge, nor many children,
But one sole daughter, whom I hold as dear
As Agamemnon did his Iphigen:
And all I have is hers.
Agamemnon and Iphigeneia are prominent tragic figures in Greek mythology: the king is best known for sacrificing his daughter to the goddess Artemis in exchange for the safe passage of his naval fleet to Troy, with the intent to besiege the city. In the above passage, Marlowe combines simile and allusion for the purpose of foreshadowing Abigail's fate. Though Barabas compliments his daughter in this passage, seemingly pleased at the prospect of her inheriting his wealth, he later murders her as punishment for joining a nunnery and leaving Judaism. She is a casualty on his quest for revenge; much like Iphigeneia, her death is imagined by her father as a necessary sacrifice for the greater good of the mission.
Marlowe is not alone in his allusion: many Greek plays reference Iphigeneia as a tragic figure, including the Electra of Sophocles. This passage therefore also serves the larger purpose of placing The Jew of Malta solidly in the tragedy genre, establishing its place within a lineage of similar works.
At the end of Act 1, Scene 1, the other Jews who reside in Malta inform Barabas that Turkish warships have arrived in Malta. While the other Jewish people fear trouble, Barabas reacts with a certain measure of equanimity, asserting boldly that he will guard his wealth from any invading force. During this assertion, Barabas alludes to a passage in Latin from the Roman comedy Andria:
Howe'er the world go, I'll make sure for one,
And seek in time to intercept the worst,
Warily guarding that which I ha' got.
Ego mihimet sum semper proximus.
Why, let em' enter, let em' take the town.
Andria, first penned by the Greek playwright Menander, underwent several adaptations, the first by Afro-Roman playwright Terence. Between 1517 and 1520, Niccolò Machiavelli published a translation of Andria, his first foray into drama publication and comedy writing. The passage Barabas quotes, or rather misquotes—it should say Proximus sum egomet mihi—translates as, "I am closest to myself." Barabas is thus revealing his untrustworthy nature, particularly when it comes to material wealth. He can trust only himself to protect his interests, a belief not unconnected to Machiavellianism. This reference to one of Machiavelli's early works serves to further connect Barabas to said philosopher's ideology.
At the end of Act 1, Don Lodowick and Don Mathias discuss Abigail, whose recent admittance into the nunnery—a ploy on the part of Barabas—has shocked Don Mathias profusely. In conversation, Mathias metaphorically presents Abigail as a flower:
A fair young maid, scarce fourteen years of age,
The sweetest flower in Cytherea's field,
Cropt from the pleasures of the fruitful earth,
And strangely metamorphosed nun.
Abigail's comparison to a flower, as well as the location of said flower, are details intended to emphasize her beauty and youthful bloom. Cytherea—or Cythera—is a Greek island that was thought to be the birthplace of Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty. This comparison is heavily steeped in cliché: indeed, it is incredibly common to see women compared to flowers or goddesses in both poetry and prose written by men. This metaphor is so stereotypical that it is arguably rather objectifiying—Mathias and Lodowick both perceive Abigail more as a projection of their own wants and hopes than as a real person with agency. Abigail's father views her similarly, using her as a pawn in his game of revenge and subsequently murdering her when she exhibits agency by defying him and joining the nunnery.
Immediately after running into Lodowick, in the third scene of Act 2, Barabas begins to scheme, set on making Lodowick a pawn in a revenge scheme against Ferneze. In an aside, Barabas reveals his true character and intent, using an allusion in the process:
Now I will show myself
To have more of the serpent than the dove;
That is — more knave than fool.
In this self-characterization, Barabas alludes to Old Testament scripture, referencing doves and snakes. Traditionally, God is symbolized by or takes the form of a dove: for example, after flooding the earth, God sends a dove carrying an olive branch to Noah as a sign that the flood is over. Doves represent hope, purity, and promise. Snakes, on the other hand, are notorious representatives of evil and sinfulness: Satan himself takes the form of a snake in Genesis; it is in this form that he speaks to Eve, tempting her to partake of the forbidden fruit, an act that leads to her and Adam's banishment from the Garden of Eden. By aligning himself with the snake instead of the dove, Barabas is claiming to be more cunning and dastardly than he is holy or innocent. In other words, he identifies more with devilish symbolism than with godly symbolism.
Upon learning of Abigail's choice to join the nunnery in Act III, Barabas curses her, using a combined simile and allusion to compare their situation to that of Cain and his father Adam:
Ne'er shall she live to inherit aught of mine,
Be blest of me, nor come within my gates,
But perish underneath my bitter curse,
Like Cain by Adam for his brother's death.
The betrayal Barabas feels and exhibits in this passage is palpable: for a man so obsessed with his wealth and legacy, disinheriting Abigail may be the most extreme condemnation Barabas could enact—short of murder, which, of course, he perpetrates later on. Feeling the sorrow of familial betrayal, Barabas invokes yet another biblical passage, this time referencing the story of Cain and Abel. Yet again, Barabas inscribes his circumstances onto scripture but fails to grasp how dissimilar this situation is from his point of comparison. In Genesis, Cain is condemned by his father, Adam, for murdering his brother, Abel. Barabas effectively places himself in Adam's situation, likening Abigail to Cain for her choice to abandon him and join the nunnery. In reality, Abigail made this choice because of her father's quest for revenge, in the course of which he used her as a tool to manipulate two men into killing one another. Therefore, Barabas is the murderer in this scenario, not Abigail.
At the end of Act III, Scene 4, Barabas makes the fateful decision to not only poison his daughter, but an entire nunnery. In an attempt to justify this monstrous action, Barabas compares his daughter to a fiend from hell, using allusion to conjure up an image of the Underworld:
In few, the blood of Hydra, Lerna's bane:
The juice of hebon, and the Cocytus' breath,
And all the poisons of the Stygian pool
Break from the fiery kingdom; and in this
Vomit your venom and invenom her
That like a fiend hath left her father thus.
Barabas alludes heavily to several figures from Greek mythology in this passage: Hydra (a giant snake-like monster with nine heads, which was rumored to have lived in the marshes of Lerna, near Argos); Cocytus (the river of lamentation in the underworld and one of the five rivers surrounding Hades); and the "poisons of the Stygian pool" (this refers to the river Styx, the river separating Hades from the mortal realm). In Barabas's mind, his daughter has abandoned him and deserves the worst that hell has to offer. She is no longer a loved one, as evidenced by the fact that Barabas uses a simile to compare her to a "fiend." Barabas constructs this elaborate series of allusions and similes to characterize his daughter in this way and, in doing so, he effectively tries to justify murdering her.
