Did Jesus support a violent revolt against Rome?  The one argument that probably gets used more than any other in support of that view is that when Jesus gets arrested in the Gospels, his followers pull out their swords to fight.  What are they doing with swords?  Why are they fighting?  Since this is in all the Gospels (independently attested) and since it's not a story that later Christians would be likely to make up (since they would want to portray Jesus to their Roman audiences as peace-loving, not as a rabble-rouser) -- wouldn't that show that it's something that really happened?  And if so, then clearly Jesus was interested in arming his followers and fighting the authorities. That's how the argument goes, and it's a very good one.  But after some long reflection, I don't find it convincing.  Here is how I discussed the matter in my book Jesus Before the Gospels (the only book title that I deeply regret!  No one knows what it's about but it's unusually important: it's about how memory [...]

Did Jesus support of an armed uprising against Rome?  Yesterday I re-posted some comments I had made years ago on the blog about Aslan's popular book Zealot, which advances that thesis.  I won't be dealing with the entire book this time around: I'm just interested at this point in dealing with this vital question itself Now I want to show how two data that are crucial for the “zealot hypothesis” actually make better sense with this apocalyptic understanding of Jesus.  The two data involve the temple cleansing and the crucifixion itself. If one wants to establish – as Aslan very much does want to do – that Jesus favored violence, there is no better scene to focus on than the disruption he caused in the Temple upon arriving in Jerusalem in the last week of his life.  According to the earliest accounts, Jesus enters the temple, overturns the tables of those exchanging money, and drives out those who were selling sacrificial animals. In our first account, Mark’s, Jesus actually shuts down the operation of the [...]

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 [...]

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 .... [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]