(Since there seemed to be seemed to be some confusion about whether Extremist or I, writing under the nom de plume Out of the Mainstream, had written this piece or that, from now on, I will preface each of my posts with the letters OOTM.)
So, without further ado…
OOTM
What was Judas’ motivation for aiding the Romans and turning in the Lord and Savior? According to the recently translated Gospel of Judas, Judas’ motivation was not money or Satan, but rather, Judas turned him in at the Lord’s own request.
For 2,000 years Judas has been reviled for betraying Jesus. Now a newly translated ancient document seeks to tell his side of the story. The “Gospel of Judas” tells a far different tale from the four gospels in the New Testament. It portrays Judas as a favored disciple who was given special knowledge by Jesus - and who turned him in at Jesus’ request.
I have always been puzzled by the Judas Iscariot story. First, I am confused by the fact that Matthew 10 and Mark 3 only mention one Judas as one of the Lord’s twelve disciples, while Luke mentions two: Judas Iscariot and Judas son of James. Luke fails to mention Thaddeus, the person chosen by Mark and Matthew to replace Judas son of James among the twelve.
Why are the lists different? Is Thaddeus really Judas son of James? If so, why did Luke change his name; or why didn’t Matthew and Mark change his name? Are they really different people?
Another thing that has always bothered me about the Judas story is that we have demonized him for doing what someone had to do. If my understanding of the Christian narrative is correct, the Lord had to die, lest our sins be forever uncleansed.
If that is true, why do we demonize, rather than venerate Judas Iscariot? I think the answer to this question may have a great deal to do with the difference between Thaddeus and Judas son of James. What is the relationship between Judas, Jude, and Judah; specifically, I wonder if Judas is a take off of Judah, as I believe it to be. If so, could changing his name to Thaddeus be an attempt to do away with all connections to the Jews who take their name from Judah?
While I doubt the veracity of the newly translated Gospel of Judas (not for any particular reason), I do hope some of the discussion generated by the discovery and translation of this ancient document will be aimed in the direction of some of my questions.
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If you are interested in having some resolution to your questions (and I do mean only some resolution), you might check out the following book:
Robert H. Stein, “The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction,” Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1987.
As one who grew up hearing all four Gospels harmonized into one comprehensive narrative, these were questions I had too. Fortunately I had to read this book for an undergraduate class with Dr. Paul Pollard at Harding University.
Those who seek to harmonize the gospels into one narrative do so in an effort to try and maintain integrity and accuracy in the Bible. Obviously, I do not believe one needs to harmonize four books together to maintain truth, authority, and integrity in scritpure. I came to view the Gospel not as biographical hisotry (for none of the Gospels tells us about Jesus’ entire life) but as theological history (thus each Gospel writer was writing to a Christian community in order to theologically shape the faith of that community by using various events, teachings, and stories of Jesus’ historical life).
Fundamentalists will disagree with a book like Stein’s, thus it would not be accepted among all CoC’s. But for the most part, the proposal held by Stein is accepted in much of the Evagelical Christian community and is also held by many of the Theology professors who teach at Universities associated with the CoC and Restoration Movement.
Rex,
Thanks for the great recommendation. Because I probably won’t be picking the book up any time soon (due to time constraints, not lack of interest), do you care to tell me some of the conclusions the book draws on the subject?
Thanks in advance, OOTM
John Yoder brings up Judas’ betrayal in his book “The Politics of Jesus”. He says that Judas might have misunderstood Jesus’ teachings about how God’s kingdom was going to be brought about. He goes on to say that there is a possibility Judas thought if Jesus was put in a life or death situation, He would save himself and the revolution and Messiah the Jews were looking for would be realized. Unfortunately, Judas didn’t realize that Jesus would let himself be killed and that that was his mission. It was definitely a new spin on the story for me to think that Judas betrayed him thinking it would motivate him to take up the sword. So, in the end, he unknowingly sent Jesus to his death. I might have missed some stuff but that was the main point.
JAK- I heard that theory too in grad school and thought it interesting. My understanding is that he might’ve thought by “pushing” Jesus into the situation of being arrested, Jesus would exert his power and “show” that he was in fact, the son of God, and use that opportunity to establish his kingdom. When Judas saw that was not happening, he realized he had messed up big time, couldn’t live with what he thought was messing up God’s plan, and killed himself. It follows as logical a path as any other but I can’t remember if there were scripture passages to back that up. Do you?
Stein supports what is called the “Markan Priority” By this be believes Mark’s Gospel was the first one composed. This is due to the fact that the various stories (called pericopes) of Jesus which are also found in Mt. and Lk. and tell the same plot are much longer than the pericopes in Mt. and Lk. Why would some one add detail to the stories but offer nothing new?
The theory hangs upon what critical scholars label as “Redaction Criticism.” While many believe Mark’s gospel was the complimation of many sermons preached by the apostle Peter, what was Mt. and Lk. source (and Luke tells us he investigated with sources - Lk. 1.1-4). Most redaction critics believe the writers of each gospel acted as editors and used the literary technique of editing in order to arrange the Jesus stories/teachings in such a way as to make a specific coherent theological argument (I agree with this).
Thus Mt. had access to Mark, possibly some of Luke (depending on when you date Matt.), and an unidentified source labeled as “Q” which explain the material in Matthew that is unique to Matthew’s Gospel. Likewise, Luke used Mark’s Gospel as a source, possibly Matthew’s Gospel, and his own “Q” material.
Since John’s Gospel is usually dated fairly late, it does not figure into this discussion much.
There are some scholars who believe the traditional writing order of the Gospels, with Matthew first (the Greisbach (sp?) hypothesis), but most scholars disagree. Of course, some also believe Luke’s Gospel was the earliest written but even fewer hold that posiiton.
When you begin exploring the subject of redaction criticism you will find that outside of Evagelical research, most scholars reject any level of accuracy and divine inspiration upon scripture so it can be frustrating to conservatives. I believe that one can operate with the idea of redaction criticism and still hold to the belief that scripture is inspired of God, true, and authoritative (defending this is for another post) and so do many other Christian scholars in and out of the CoC.
If you do some searching, you can find what is called a Synopsis (which are printed in both Greek and English). This is a book which has each Gospel side by side in colums so a person can see where each Gospel is the same and where each Gospel is different. But as I said earlier, the differences, I believe, are not because of error but because of editorial (redaction) decisions in order to bolster each writer’s theological emphasis. And we should remember, that ancient writers did not hold to the same literary/editorial guidlines as we demand out of writers today, therefore we should not bind them to our standards of writing.
And for good measure — the “Jesus Seminar” people are nausiating and very driven by their theological presuppositions.
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