Sorting by

×

New Testament Gospels

Did Jesus Favor Armed Rebellion Against Rome?

In response both to my thread on Judas and to my post on Barabbas from last week, a number of readers have asked or suggested that the stories about both figures may be explained on the hypothesis that Jesus was indeed a kind of insurrectionist who supported an armed rebellion against Rome.  That would explain possibly why Judas turned on him, and why he is treated equally to Barabbas, himself guilty of murder during an attempted insurrection. I have dealt with the issue on the blog, but it has been many years now.  The first time I addressed it at any length (in 2013!) was in response to the then recently-published book Zealot by Reza Aslan.  This was the first book about Jesus ever to become the Number One bestseller on the NYTimes bestseller list, and back then lots and lots of people had been reading it. It is a brilliantly written book: Aslan is a professor of creative writing.  He is smart, creative, and knows how to spin fine narrative.  But even though he [...]

2020-06-15T10:30:10-04:00June 15th, 2020|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Did the Gospel Writers Invent Barabbas? Readers’ Mailbag

One of the familiar stories from the end of the Gospels -- it's in all the Jesus movies! -- comes at Jesus' trial.  Pontius Pilate is trying to avoid executing Jesus.  As it turns out, he has an custom during the annual Passover feast (when the crowds of pilgrims in Jerusalem were enormous) of releasing one Jewish prisoner as a way to appease the crowds and keep himself in their good graces. And so when the Jewish leaders insist on Jesus' death, Pilate makes a last ditch effort, offering Jesus up as the one who could possibly be released.  The crowd is given the choice: either Jesus or an insurrectionist who has committed murder, named Barabbas (why these are the only two choices is not clear: there were two others crucified with Jesus, so presumably they could have been on offer as well?).  The crowd chooses Barabbas, and Jesus is then taken off to be crucified. Did this happen?  Or was Barabbas "made up"?  Could he be some kind of symbolic figure?  I get the [...]

Yet Other Accounts Of the Death of Judas

I try not to repeat blog posts from just a couple of years ago, but in this case I can't resist.  In the last post I talked about the two accounts of Judas Iscariot's death in the New Testament, one in Matthew and one in Luke, and argued that even with their intriguing and important similarities, there were also striking differences, some of which, in my judgment, simply cannot be reconciled.   But we have other accounts from Christian antiquity that are at least equally interesting, even if more obviously legendary.  Still, they are worth considering and thinking about; it's not at all clear that the authors of these accounts thought they were as humorous as most readers today do. One of these accounts is reasonably well-known to biblical scholars, from the writings of Papias (we've talked a lot about him over the years on the blog; just do a word search for Papias and you'll see).  Almost *nobody* knows about the other -- including New Testament experts --  except for a few specialist scholars. Papias [...]

2020-06-09T08:37:13-04:00June 9th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

But How Did Judas Die?

In response to my recent thread on the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot, a number of readers have asked me about the aftermath.  OK, supposing, as I'm arguing, there really was a Judas, one of Jesus twelve disciples, who betrayed something about Jesus (his whereabouts? his claim to be the future king?) that led to his arrest and execution.  What happened next?   Did Judas really kill himself? Many people don’t realize that Judas’s death, after he betrayed Jesus, is not mentioned in three of our Gospels: Mark, Luke, and John.  It is mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew, however, and just as important, in the book of Acts, written by the same author who produced the Gospel of Luke (so, well, let’s call him Luke).  What is striking is that the descriptions of Judas’ death in these two accounts are at odds with one another, even though there are, at the same time, some striking similarities. Matthew’s account (ch. 27) is the one more people are familiar with, since here we are told that .... [...]

2020-12-17T16:39:40-05:00June 8th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

But WHY Did Judas Betray Jesus?

This will be my last post in this thread on Judas Iscariot, and it deals with a question that has long been asked, often answered, and never satisfactorily: what motivated Judas to betray Jesus?  No answer has ever satisfied because there is simply no way to know.  When I say the answers are never satisfactory, and that they do not satisfy, I don't mean that no one is satisfied.  Lots of people -- including possibly you! -- have an answer that you think works perfectly.  OK then! But there's no consensus on the matter and even though I have my preference of an answer, I don't think it's possible to enter into some person's mind -- especially a person living 2000 years ago that we know virtually nothing about -- to come up with a psychological explanation for why he did what he did. Here's the reality: you can't come up with a convincing and conclusive psychological explanation for MOST things that MOST people do.  You actually have no idea what is motivating me to [...]

2020-06-02T09:45:53-04:00June 2nd, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

What Did Judas Betray?

In an indirect but very important way, recognizing what Judas actually betrayed is central to understanding the life and death of Jesus.  It goes to the heart of his messages and explains why he was crucified.  Even so, it is a complicated matter and has not been fully thought out even by many New Testament scholars. It is commonly supposed, of course, among lay-folk and scholars alike, that Judas indicated to the authorities where Jesus could be found apart from the crowds.   Maybe that’s right, even though I do have some doubts about it.  Even if it is right, there may be more to it than that.  I think the following data are worth bearing in mind, leading to the resolution of the question that I prefer.  (At first these data may not seem relevant: but hang in there for a minute!) Jesus almost certainly did not publicly claim that he was the messiah during his lifetime; more specifically, he never publicly announced that he was the King of the Jews.  In our earliest accounts [...]

2020-06-01T10:01:35-04:00June 1st, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

If We Did Have the “Original” Gospels, Would That Make Them True?

Have you ever noticed how people who are having an argument often use a slight of hand, either not realizing what they are doing or doing it in order to misdirect the discussion?  What I have in mind is when someone wants to prove a view that we will call X, but instead of directly dealing with the issues of central importance to X, they divert attention to something else that we can call Y.  Then, when they claim they have proved Y they lead their audience to think they therefore proved X.  On one hand, a  lot of time they haven’t even proved Y.  But they claim not only they have done *that* but that since they have done that they have also thereby proved X, even though Y is not the same as X.  Sometimes Y is not even related to Y. I don’t know if you’ve seen this before, but it happens a lot, in all sorts of arguments about religion, politics, society, and so on.  It certainly happens a lot in [...]

2020-05-31T13:40:04-04:00May 31st, 2020|Bart's Debates, Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Judas Iscariot? What’s an Iscariot??

I have argued that Judas Iscariot really existed as one of the disciples of Jesus.  Unlike the others, though, he is given a "last name" -- Iscariot.  But what does the name mean?  It turns out, there is a huge debate over that.  Here is how I discuss the matter in my book The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.   **************************************************** The Name Judas Iscariot Sometimes knowing the names of persons from antiquity can give further information about them.  People of the lower classes did not have last names, and so to differentiate people with the same first name, descriptive designations were often added.  For example, there are several different Marys in the New Testament.  “Mary” was one of the most common names in first-century Palestine.  And so each New Testament Mary is given some kind of identifying feature: Mary “the mother of Jesus”; Mary “of Bethany”; Mary “Magdalene.”  This last designation indicates that this Mary came from the town of Magdala, which was a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. Thus, simply by knowing [...]

2020-05-26T09:11:53-04:00May 26th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Was Judas Iscariot “Made Up”?

My recent post on Judas Iscariot generated more interest than I expected, and a lot of readers wanted to hear more.   I've posted on Judas a number of times over the years, but maybe it's a good time to give the full scoop.  If you want a lot more information, you might want to check out my book The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot.  That book was prompted by the discovery of the Gospel of Judas; I was not involved with the discovery or the restoration of the Gospel, but I was part of a small team of scholars asked by National Geographic to study it as they decided whether it was authentic and important.  Uh, yeah.  But one has to look carefully at these things before deciding (as pointed out in yesterday's post an recent academic fraud). I may talk about my involvement with the project later on the blog, but for now: my book on Judas arose out of it, and does indeed talk about the Gospel of Judas based on my preliminary [...]

2020-05-25T09:40:38-04:00May 25th, 2020|Canonical Gospels, Historical Jesus|

Did Judas Really Betray Jesus? Readers’ Mailbag

My post a few days ago about whether Paul knew that Jesus had been betrayed by Judas Iscariot -- in which I concluded there really was no solid evidence one way or the other -- generated several follow-up questions.  Many of them simply asked: well, did it really happen?   Here is an example, and my response. QUESTION: I may be showing my ignorance here but could it be that Paul doesn’t know/write about Judas’ betrayal because it never happened? Yes, it is in all four gospels but as you’ve pointed out the four gospels do not agree on who showed up at the empty tomb, what they saw, and what they did next so…. If they get that wrong could it be that the Judas betrayal is also a fabrication/legend?   RESPONSE: It's a great question, and I'm completely sympathetic to it.   But I have to say that I think Jesus really was betrayed by one of his own, Judas Iscariot.   In my judgment, that's just where the evidence points. As many of you know [...]

Did Some *One* Forge the Writings of “John”? Guest Post by Hugo Mendez

Here my colleague Hugo Mendez wraps up his discussion of the writings of "John" -- the Gospel of John, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John -- and he does so with a BANG.  I hope you can see both the quality and significance of these conclusions.  This is very serious and persuasive scholarship put at a level that even non-scholars can understand, with huge implications for understanding four of the important writings of the New Testament but also for rethinking questions of authorship of the early Christian writings and the history of our earliest Christian communities.  It's easy for scholars to see these implications (mainly because the conclusions he reaches are contrary to what most critical scholars actually teach their students all the time), which is why Hugo has stirred up a bit of a hornets' nest.  I hope it's possible for you to both appreciate and enjoy the argument as well. There is only one point on which he and I probably disagree, and it has to do with the authorship of the [...]

Was There One Author Behind the Four Johannine Writings? A Community? Guest Post by Hugo Mendez

We continue now with the third of Hugo Mendez's guest posts on the "community" allegedly behind the Gospel of John, 1, 2, and 3 John.   Here he shows why most critical scholars do NOT think (as most other interested human beings on the planet do!) that all four were written by the same person (let alone Jesus' disciple, John the Son of Zebedee), and why they have argued that instead they all come from like-minded authors from the same community. But when he gets to the end he indicates why there is a flaw in this reasoning.  This post is an excellent example of solid scholarship with an unexpected ZINGER at the end! Hugo will be happy to respond to your comments, and he has certainly set up the next post.  (If you have time, go ahead and read the three letters; they are very short and it's a fast read.  But they have an importance far beyond what you might expect from their size) Why Scholars Haven’t Given Up on the Johannine Community (Yet) [...]

Were the Gospels Generally Written for “Communities” of Christians: Guest Post by Hugo Mendez

Here now is Hugo Mendez’s second post in his thread (started yesterday, if you haven’t seen it yet), challenging whether the writings of John all emerge from a specific “community,” as I argued in my previous thread.  In this post he points out how scholars have called into question whether the idea of "communities” is helpful at all for understanding the early Gospels. Hugo will be happy to address your questions!  Just post yours as a comment to the post. ***************************************************************  Challenges to the Idea of “Gospel Communities” As I noted last time, my most recent article questions the existence of the Johannine Community. There’s an early tendency when some hear of my project to confuse it with some other recent attempts to challenge the idea of “gospel communities.” Before discussing the terms of my own proposal, then, I’d like to catch you all up to speed with the current state of that debate over “communities” and where I “fit” into this discussion Today, New Testament scholars seem to fall into one of roughly three [...]

WAS there a Community behind the Gospel and Letters of John? Guest Post by Hugo Mendez

Here we begin a series of posts written by my colleague at UNC, Hugo Mendez.   Hugo has had an intriguing and impressive career.  He did an MA in Religion at University of Georgia, but then his PhD was in Linguistics, also at Georgia.  He went from there onto a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at Yale and “retooled” to become a New Testament scholar through some, well, incredibly intense study.  He came to UNC as a postdoctoral fellow in 2016 for two years, after which we were fortunate to hire him as an assistant professor on tenure track. Hugo’s skills are remarkably wide-ranging.  He knows far more ancient languages than I do (on his CV he lists:  Indo-European: Ancient Greek, Latin, Classical Armenian, Gothic, Old Church Slavic, Sanskrit (Classical, Vedic). Aramaic (Biblical Aramaic, Classical Syriac), Classical Hebrew, and Akkadian.   Really.  OK then. If you’re interested in checking out his C.V. (hey, is this guy qualified?  J ), it is here:   https://religion.unc.edu/files/2020/05/CV_2020_Mendez_abbr.pdf Hugo has just started his publishing career, and is doing so with a bang.  One of [...]

More of the History Behind the Gospel of John

In the last post I began to discuss what we can know about the history of the community that produced (or that produced someone who produced) the Gospel of John.  My argument is that you can use hints in the Gospel to reconstruct what appears to have happened in the community in which and for which it was produced, and reconstructing what these events were can help make sense of how and why the distinctive views of the Gospel developed (or rather, the *various* views, some found in one of its sources, others in another). To make best sense of this post it will probably be of some use to read the preceding one.  Again I am taking this discussion from my textbook on the New Testament.   ***************************************************************** Stage Three: Against the Synagogue Sociologists have studied a number of religious communities that have been excluded from larger social groups and forced to carry on their communal activities on their own.  The findings of these various studies are of some interest for understanding how the [...]

2020-04-13T15:39:19-04:00April 13th, 2020|Canonical Gospels|

The History Behind John’s Gospel

In my previous post I explained that there are different (even divergent) understandings of Jesus in the Gospel of John.  I ended, the post by asking the following:  How does one explain these thematic differences among the stories of John?  Social historians would argue that the history of the community affected the ways that it told its stories about Jesus and that critical events in this history led to changes in the community's understanding of Jesus and his relationship to the people to whom he came.  Scholars who have developed this idea have traced the community's history through three stages. That is where I pick up here, by citing how I lay out the matter in my New Testament textbook discussion of John, and the three stages in the life of the community.  This particular aspect of the question will take two posts.  All of this information is important for my ultimate goal: to explain why scholars have found the theory of a Johannine Community so valuable as a way of explaining what we find [...]

2020-04-10T09:05:59-04:00April 10th, 2020|Canonical Gospels|

The Divergent Views of Christ in John

Now that I have explained what the socio-historical method is in general terms (in my previous post) I can go on to show how it can be applied to a particular Gospel, in this case, the Gospel of John.  Again, none of this is new and fresh scholarship that I myself came up with; two of the real pioneers of this method were two of the greats of New Testament interpretation in the latter part of the twentieth century, both of whom, remarkably, taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York (taught, in fact, some of my good friends!), the Protestant scholar J. Louis Martyn, and the Roman Catholic scholar, Raymond Brown.   Their views ended up being a more or less consensus position for many years, and continues to be prominent among teachers of the NT still today. This is how I explain the matter in my Introduction to the New Testament **************************************************************** The Gospel of John from a Socio-Historical Perspective The place to begin is by examining the different thematic emphases evident in different [...]

2020-04-08T09:50:46-04:00April 8th, 2020|Canonical Gospels|

The Social History Behind the Fourth Gospel

The New Testament Gospels can be studied like any other piece of literature, since they are, of course, literary texts.  And so over the years scholars have applied a number of literary approaches to unpack the meanings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.   But in a number of ways these books are different from most literature we encounter otherwise, for example, from antiquity, the writings of Homer or Virgil, or, from the modern world, Dickens, Virginia Woolf, or, well, J. K. Rowling.  These authors and their works are very different from each other, of course.  But the books they write are fiction.  The Gospels are different. They do, of course, contain numerous fictional elements, and they certainly can be studied following the same literary methods one would use for other texts (on the basic level, looking for plot, subplot, theme, character development etc etc.).   But they are, in addition, historical texts, more like historical fiction, I suppose, but not designed to be "fiction" probably -- designed to be history but (whether wittingly or not) constructed [...]

2020-04-06T10:08:23-04:00April 6th, 2020|Canonical Gospels|

So What Sources for Jesus’ Life *Were* Used in the Fourth Gospel?

I have been providing the evidence that the Gospel of John is not a single composition written by a single author sitting down to produce the account at a single time, but is made up of written sources that have all been edited together into the finished product. (See my previous two posts.) Now I can say something about these sources of Jesus’ life, teachings, miracles, death, and resurrection.  Again, this is taken from my Introduction to the NT. ****************************************************************** Thus the theory of written sources behind the Fourth Gospel can explain many of the literary problems of the narrative. These sources obviously no longer survive. What can we say about them? Character of the Sources in John (1) The Signs Source. Some of the seams that we have observed appear to suggest that the author incorporated a source that described the signs of Jesus, written to persuade people that he was the messiah, the Son of God. There are seven "signs" in the Gospel; it is possible that these were all original to the [...]

2020-04-02T09:02:02-04:00April 1st, 2020|Canonical Gospels|

The Most Intriguing Evidence that John Used Sources

So far in this going-to-be-substantial thread on the Johannine Writings (Gospel of John;1, 2, and 3 John) I have shown how John is very different from the other Gospels in numerous ways, argued that it's account is not based on those of the others three (whether or not the author knew of their existence), yet maintained that he must have had other sources at his disposal that provided him with his stories.  Before detailing what scholars have said about these other sources I need to give the argument that seems most convincing that his account is indeed based on earlier written accounts that he has taken over.   It also happens to be the argument that is most intriguing, at least for my money. The other two argument I gave may not seem in isolation to be convincing.  This one is meant to be.  There are inconsistencies in John's narrative that are easiest to be explain if he is compiling various sources together; these sources didn't all say the same thing or have the same view; [...]

2020-04-02T09:12:57-04:00March 31st, 2020|Canonical Gospels|
Go to Top