The Sins of Scripture (20 page)

I
am suspicious of the historicity of Judas Iscariot and of his role in the Christian story as the traitor. That suspicion has been created by five easily identifiable, documentable facts.

First, a careful reading of the New Testament reveals the not-fully-suppressed memory of a man named Judas, in the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples, who was
not
evil and who was
not
a traitor. In the Fourth Gospel John refers to a disciple named Judas, who is not Iscariot (14:22). Luke in his list of the twelve disciples names, in addition to Iscariot, another disciple named Judas, identified only as the brother of James (6:16). This Judas replaces Thaddaeus in the list recounted by Mark (3:14–19) and Matthew (10:2–4). In addition to this, there is an epistle that bears Judas’ name that was included by the Christians in the New Testament. The author of this book is identified as Jude, which is simply another variation of the name Judas, and he is called in that epistle “a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James” (Jude 1:1). There is clearly an early Christian memory of a faithful Judas in the inner circle of the Christian movement.

The second source of my suspicion comes from the fact that the act of betrayal by a member of the twelve disciples is not found in the earliest Christian writings. Judas is first placed into the Christian story by Mark (3:19), who wrote in the early years of the eighth decade of the Common Era. Prior to that time, we have the entire Pauline corpus, which was written between the years 50 and 64 CE. We may also have what scholars call the Q (or
Quelle—
i.e., “source”) document, which many believe to be a lost “sayings gospel” that both Matthew and Luke are said to have incorporated into their narratives as a supplement to their use of Mark. Because we still have Mark, we can easily show that Matthew and Luke copied some of the content of Mark almost verbatim into their gospels. But when all of this Marcan material is removed from Matthew and Luke, these two gospel writers still have material so identical that it has to have had a common source. That shared material has led many to the assumption that both Matthew and Luke had a second written source other than Mark, a source that is now lost. When these identical or nearly identical passages are lifted out of Matthew and Luke and studied separately, they appear to be largely a collection of the sayings of Jesus. Hence Q is assumed to be an early collection of Jesus’ sayings. Some scholars date this Q material as early as the 50s. If that is accurate, then this is a second major pregospel source that must be examined.
⁹

Turning first to Paul, we discover that the concept of betrayal prior to the crucifixion enters Paul’s writings merely as a dating device, with no content whatsoever. Addressing a letter to the Corinthians in the mid-50s Paul says, “For I have received from the Lord, what I also delivered to you; that the Lord Jesus Christ on the night when he was ‘betrayed’; took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body which is broken for you.’” (1 Cor. 11:23–24). Paul’s intention here was simply to tell the story of the inauguration of the Last Supper. However, in doing that he used a word that the English translators in the seventeenth century said means “betrayed.” In the Pauline quote above, I placed ‘betrayed’ into a single quote because this word literally means “handed over,” which does not project the same meaning that comes to mind when we hear the word betrayed. It is worth noting that in his entire written corpus Paul gives no evidence that he was aware of a betrayal that took place at the hand of one of the twelve disciples, but the English translators knew the later gospel stories, and so they placed that meaning into their rendition of this word. It was one more of many examples in which later Christians were guilty of reading Paul through the eyes of the gospel narratives. We need to keep in mind that Paul had died before the first gospel was written. While in this particular text Paul does not rule out the betrayal possibility, he does appear to do so just four chapters later.

In 1 Corinthians 15:1–6, Paul once again declares that he is passing on to his readers the sacred traditions that he has received. Then he gives the barest outline to the details of the final events in Jesus’ life. He says that “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve.”

“He appeared to…the twelve.” Judas was still among them when Easter dawned: that is Paul’s testimony! When Matthew related the first biblical story of the risen Christ appearing to the disciples on a mountaintop in Galilee (Matt. 28:16–20), he asserted that it was only to “the eleven” that Christ appeared. Sometime between when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians (ca. mid-50s CE) and when Matthew wrote this account of a resurrection appearance (ca. 82–85 CE), the story of Judas as a traitor appears to have entered the Christian story. Paul did not know about this tradition. His writings in 1 Corinthians make that perfectly clear.

When we turn to the Q source, we discover that it is in this common, and presumably earlier, tradition that both Matthew and Luke quote Jesus as saying to the disciples, with Judas present, “At the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). Luke has this text read, “You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I confer on you, just as my father has conferred on me, a kingdom, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke 22:28–30). The assumption here is that among the twelve disciples who will judge the twelve tribes of Israel, Judas is included. The editors appear to forget that one of the twelve will be judged unworthy. The Q material, if it was indeed a separate and earlier source, seems to have been collected before the story of Judas the traitor came into the tradition, and both Matthew and Luke failed to make their source fully conform to the changing tradition that now included the story of a traitor among the twelve. That is additional evidence that the story of the betrayal of Jesus by one of the twelve, named Judas, was not an original part of the Christian narrative. It was added later, which of course begs the question as to when and why it was added. I shall return to that question later.

The third reason I am suspicious about the historicity of the betrayal story is the way the Judas account so obviously grows once it has been introduced by Mark, somewhere between 70 and 75 CE. Mark has Judas go to the chief priests to betray Jesus. They “promise to give him money,” but no amount is stated, and “he sought how he might conveniently betray him” (Mark 14:10–11, KJV). In Mark’s version of the Last Supper, Jesus identifies the traitor as “one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me” (14:20, NRSV). Mark then has the act of betrayal take place at midnight in the Garden of Gethsemane with a kiss (14:44–45). That is the last time we see Judas in Mark’s gospel.

Matthew, writing about a decade after Mark, builds on Mark’s meager details. In his growing story Matthew adds the price paid for the betrayal. It was, he says, thirty pieces of silver (26:15). Matthew also introduces dialogue between Judas and Jesus at the moment of betrayal that Mark does not mention (26:25). The disciples, Matthew tells us, resisted those who would take Jesus after this betrayal, but Jesus rebuked them (26:51–54). Matthew then tells the story of Judas repenting and trying to return the blood money. The temple leaders refused to receive the money back, so Judas cast it into the temple and, according to Matthew proceeded to hang himself. Matthew then tells us that the chief priests used the money to buy a potter’s field in which strangers could be buried (27:3–10). That is the end of Judas for Matthew.

Luke, writing some five to ten years after Matthew, portrays the chief priests and scribes as aggressively seeking to lay hands on Jesus but being restrained by their fear of his popularity with the people. So they sent spies pretending to be righteous messengers trying to entrap him (Luke 20:19–20). Judas, as the traitor, is introduced against this background. Luke explains Judas’ treachery by saying that “Satan entered [him]” (22:3) and caused him to strike a deal with the chief priests and officers. Finally, what it was that Judas actually betrayed is introduced in Luke for the first time: Judas was to lead them to Jesus apart from the crowd (22:6). This is a rather weak explanation. Surely the authorities could have followed Jesus at night and discovered where he slept apart from the crowd. He was easily identified, after all. When he was arrested, he reminded his accusers that he had been daily in the temple teaching (22:53). It is worth noting that what Judas actually did for them could have been accomplished without his assistance. It thus has the feel of a manufactured story. There Judas exits Luke’s gospel.

However, in the book of Acts Luke adds, in a speech delivered by Peter to the disciples, that it was Judas rather than the Jewish authorities who used the reward of iniquity to purchase a field. When inspecting that field Judas fell “headlong,” Luke says; “he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out” (Acts 1:16–18). It was a rather more gross way to die than simply by hanging and it quite specifically contradicts the hanging account. Both situations might bring death, but one’s bowels do not gush out when one is hanged by the neck. The story obviously was still growing.

John paints Judas with an even more sinister brush. Judas was really a thief, he says (12:6). He was filled by a satanic spirit (13:27). There is no Last Supper in John, but after the foot-washing ceremony that is substituted for it, John describes a discussion that took place in which Jesus identified the traitor as “he who ate my bread” (13:18). The disciples wondered and looked around at one another. The beloved disciple then asked Jesus quite specifically the “who” question, and Jesus responded, “The one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish” (John 13:26, NRSV). Then dipping the bread into the common food supply, he handed it to Judas and said, “Do quickly what you are going to do” (John 13:27, NRSV). Judas then went out of the upper room, and as he did, John comments, “It was night” (13:30). After the Last Supper was concluded, Judas arrived in the Garden of Gethsemane at the place where Jesus was praying, accompanied by a band of soldiers from the chief priests, and the traitorous act was accomplished (18:2–9). Peter fought back with a sword, John says, cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest (John 18:10–11). That was Judas’ last appearance in the gospel tradition.

The distinctions are fascinating! Clearly the story was evolving, the details supplied as each phase of the narrative entered the tradition. The whole story of Judas has the feeling of being contrived. My suspicions are not alleviated by the details.

The fourth reason for my suspicion is that the story of the act of betrayal is set very dramatically at midnight. It is just too neat a detail to have what the gospel writers believed was the darkest deed in human history occur at the darkest moment of the night. That looks more like a liturgical drama than it does a fact of history.

My fifth and final source of suspicion is the name of the traitor itself. Judas is nothing but the Greek spelling of Judah. The name of the traitor is the very name of the Jewish nation. The leaders of the orthodox party of that nation, who defined the worship of the Jews, were by the time the gospels were written increasingly the enemy of the Christian movement. It is simply too convenient to place the blame for Jesus’ death on the whole of orthodox Judaism by linking the traitor by name with the entire nation of the Jews. When that fact is combined with a specific attempt to exonerate the Romans by portraying Pilate as washing his hands and saying, “I am innocent of this [just] man’s blood,” then we see the shifting of blame. It simply looks made up. The Romans killed Jesus, but by the eighth decade of the Christian era, when the story of Jesus was being written, something compelled the gospel writers to exonerate the Roman procurator, Pilate, and to blame the Jews. That was when Judas the traitor, identified as one of the twelve, entered the tradition. That identification sealed the fate of the Jews as the perennial object of a violent and persecuting Christian anti-Semitism.

What were the circumstances in the eighth decade of the first Christian century that made that shift seem to be both desirable and necessary and how was it accomplished? That is the story to which I turn next.

I
ask you, my readers, to suspend your critical faculties for a moment and to assume with me that the story of Judas Iscariot was a late-developing, contrived story and not a remembered bit of objective history. If this speculation is correct, as I believe it is, then I must deal with two additional questions. The first: Since the story of Judas is not remembered history, where did the gospel writers get the content that they wove into the Judas narrative? The second: What was going on at that time in history that may have been the catalyst that led to the creation of the Judas story?

I mentioned in the previous chapter that the words “handed over,” which have also been translated as “betrayed,” enter the Christian story in the writings of Paul (1 Cor. 11), when he relates the inauguration of the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. He dates this inauguration by writing, “On the night in which [Jesus] was betrayed [handed over]
,
he took bread.”

The Greek word that we translate as “handed over” or “betrayed” was used on one other occasion with a similar understanding in the biblical story. It was the word chosen by the Greek translators of the Hebrew scriptures to describe the decision of the brothers of Joseph to hand him over by selling him to the Midianites or the Ishmaelites and thus into a life of slavery, as that story was told in the book of Genesis (37:28). It is difficult to see the connection in the English text because the translators rendered the words as “sell,” i.e., they handed him over for money. Of particular interest to me in this context is to show that all of the content of the story of Judas Iscariot comes out of other stories of betrayal in the Hebrew sacred scriptures. So I note that in this other biblical narrative, where “handed over” carries with it the sense of betrayal, is when Joseph’s brother Judah suggests that they get money for their dastardly deed. Let me repeat the obvious: when the name Judah is spelled in Greek, it is Judas.
¹¹

There is also a story in the book of the prophet Zechariah in which the shepherd king of Israel was betrayed for thirty shekels of silver. This money, says Zechariah, was hurled back into the temple treasury, which is exactly what Matthew, who is the only gospel writer to mention thirty pieces of silver, says Judas did with his money when he repented (compare Zech. 11:12–13 with Matt. 27:5). To whom was this shepherd king betrayed in Zechariah? It was to those who bought and sold animals in the temple (11:7–17 and 14:21).

Similarly, there is a narrative in the David saga of stories where one who ate at the table of the Lord’s anointed, which is what the king was called, raised his traitorous hand against King David. His treachery backfired and so he went and hanged himself. This traitor’s name was Ahithophel and it is a reference to him from the book of Psalms that is quoted in the Judas story to show that his act was simply the fulfillment of the prophets (“as it is written of him,” Mark 14:21, Matt. 26:24; “as it has been determined,” Luke 22:22). That Old Testament text reads, “Even my bosom friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted the heel against me” (Ps. 41:9). The entire Ahithophel narrative is located between 2 Sam. 15:7–17:23.

Next comes the narrative that introduces the kiss of the traitor. Its antecedent is also found in the David cycle of stories. In a rebellion led by his son Absalom, David is successful in retaining his throne but feels he can no longer trust all his former inner circle. Retiring his military chief Joab, David replaces him with a man named Amasa. Joab is not pleased and, under the guise of wanting to congratulate his successor, he seeks out Amasa. On finding him, Joab draws Amasa’s face by the beard to his own, pretending to extend to him the kiss of friendship. In the process, however, he disembowels him with a dagger (2 Sam. 20:5ff.). Perhaps this is the story that colored Luke’s account of Peter’s speech, suggesting that Judas died with all his bowels gushing out (Acts 1:15–18).

My point in this exercise is to show that every detail of the Judas story has been lifted directly out of the Hebrew scriptures, where it was originally part of narratives about other traitors in Jewish history. It is thus borrowed content that gives flesh to the gospel story of a traitor, and that in turn adds to the speculation that the story of the traitor itself was forced by some need other than to remember history. The plot thickens.

Turning to the time when the gospels were written, in Mark’s case 70–75 CE, we ask if there is anything going on that might help us explain the necessity of shifting the blame for Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews. Mark is crucial for this study, not only because his gospel was first, but because both Matthew and Luke incorporate Mark into their narratives. It is in Mark that Judas is first introduced as the traitor. The history occurring in the land of the Jews at this time was critical. Tensions had been rising between the Jews and the Romans from the time of the life of Jesus, when Jewish guerrilla fighters were already roaming the hills of Galilee doing hit-and-run attacks on the occupying Roman army. To the Jews, these guerrillas were heroic freedom fighters. To the Romans, they were terrorists and killers. These guerrillas were called Zealots. The fact that one of Jesus’ disciples was known as Simon the Zealot may indicate a closer connection between these guerrillas and Jesus than Christians have yet been willing to admit (Luke 6:15).

In the year 66 CE, this guerrilla activity escalated into a full-scale war between the Romans and the Jews that did not officially end until 73 CE, when the total annihilation of the Jewish army at a place named Masada took place. The climax of the war, however, occurred when the Romans decided that the only way to defeat the guerrillas was to destroy Jerusalem and the entire Jewish state. Led first by a general named Vespasian, and later by his son Titus, the Romans moved into siege positions around the holy city and pounded it until the walls of the city fell in 70 CE. The Romans then moved in, smashing everything in sight, razing the buildings and demolishing the Temple. The Jewish state disappeared from the maps of history, not to appear again until 1948, when the United Nations brought into being the state of Israel under the authority of the Balfour Declaration, made near the conclusion of World War I.
¹²

The Jews lost everything in the Roman devastation of the first century: their nation, their holy city, their temple, their priesthood. With their traditional sacred symbols gone, the Jews attached their identity to their scriptures, which alone gave them a sense of their past. They invested these scriptures with both absolute authority and literal truth. The whole truth of God and the divine will is in the Torah, they asserted. Nothing more is essential; nothing more is necessary. The Jews thus became increasingly rigid, fundamentalist and doctrinaire about their sacred writings. That always occurs where survival is at stake.

At the time of this tragedy, the followers of Jesus, who were still predominantly Jews, blamed the orthodox party in Judaism for bringing this disaster upon their nation. At the same time Roman hostility toward and persecution against those Jews whom they believed to be responsible for the hostilities was rampant. To separate themselves from being identified with the orthodox party, the Jewish followers of Jesus decided to tell the Jesus story by saying that they too had been victimized by these rigid temple Jews. The same people who brought this war on our nation had earlier been responsible for the death of our leader, Jesus of Nazareth, said these Jewish revisionists soon to be called Christians, to the Romans; we have a common enemy. If the agenda was to blame the orthodox party for the death of Jesus, and thus to separate themselves in the minds of the Romans from those responsible for the war, how better could they accomplish that purpose than by telling the Christ story with the chief person responsible for the death of Jesus bearing the name of the entire Jewish nation? How better could they seek Roman favor than by whitewashing the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate, in their narrative of Jesus’ final days, exonerating him of any blame in the death of Jesus? So Pilate, in the developing gospel story, was portrayed as washing his hands, proclaiming himself “innocent of this man’s blood” (Matt. 27:24). The Jewish crowd was portrayed as accepting the blame: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matt. 27:25). The shift in blame was complete. The Jews did it.
They
are the enemy. Judah/Judas did it.
He
is the enemy. Pilate was and the Romans are our friends.

With the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, the Jews could no longer observe the Festival of Dedication, later to be called Hanukkah, by celebrating the return of the light of God to the temple. So when Mark wrote his narrative, and Matthew and Luke followed him in this, he created a story in which the figure of Jesus replaced the destroyed temple. We call this story the transfiguration, and in it the light of God, which was once said to have descended on the temple, was now said to have descended upon Jesus, making him translucent. Jesus, the Christians were claiming, had replaced the destroyed temple as the new meeting place between God and human life. It is a fascinating and revelatory claim. Later, in John’s gospel, that identity was enhanced when Jesus was quoted as saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The listeners did not understand, says the gospel writer, because he was referring to the temple of his own body.

So the deed was done. To survive in a hostile environment, the Christians courted the favor of the gentile Roman government, painting Pilate sensitively and positively while they helped shift the blame for Jerusalem’s destruction onto the laps of the orthodox authorities. So Judas, the antihero, was born and the fate of the Jews in history was sealed. The Christians could hate the Jews with impunity; they could persecute them with a clear conscience; they could make their self-centered quest for survival appear to be an act of morality and virtue. That is how anti-Semitism was born. That is how it was destined to grow: it was fed year after year when the story of Jesus’ passion and death was read anew to justify again and again Christian violence against Jews.

That is the ultimate seed out of which this Christian prejudice has grown. That is the source out of which all the hostility toward the Jews has flowed. That is what allowed Christians to tolerate and even to celebrate a violent, killing anti-Jewish undercurrent that would emerge in chilling horror in the writings of the church fathers, in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in the response to the bubonic plague, in the writings of reformers like Martin Luther and in the Holocaust. Judas is our clue. Christians took the life of one disciple who had the name of the entire nation and made him the Antichrist, thereby avoiding their own persecution as Jews by the conquering Romans, and that act brought the annual infusion of bigotry and a killing anti-Semitism into the essence of Christianity. The sin of anti-Semitism was thus transformed into a virtue in Christian history.

The only purpose in raising the sources of our prejudice into consciousness is to enable us to expel them from our souls. The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church. The way to begin this process is, I believe, to return to the Christ consciousness that caused the early Christians to assert, as Luke does in the Pentecost story, that to be filled with the Spirit is to transcend all tribal boundaries and to speak the universal language of love (Acts 2). It is to recover the power in Paul’s words to the Galatians, that “in Christ…there is neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28). Later, to emphasize this point, Paul writes, “If any one is in Christ, he [and she] is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).

To enter that new creation may be what will be required for the human race to survive. At the very least, perhaps in this new creation the killing prejudice of the past that seems to affect all religions will be brought to an end. It is a vision worth pursuing.