For many years I thought that Paul knew about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot. And I had good reason: he seems to refer to him in 1 Corinthians 11:23-24: “For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus 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 for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” NRSV)
Since Paul indicates that the Last Supper happened on the night Jesus was betrayed, that settles it, right? If so, it would be a relatively big deal, for one thing because otherwise Paul says almost nothing about the events of Jesus’ lifetime. That seems weird to people, but just read all of his letters. Paul never mentions Jesus healing anyone, casting out a demon, doing any other miracle, arguing with Pharisees or other leaders, teaching the multitudes, even speaking a parable, being baptized, being transfigured, going to Jerusalem, being arrested, put on trial, found guilty of blasphemy, appearing before Pontius Pilate on charges of calling himself the King of the Jews, being flogged, etc. etc. etc. It’s a very, very long list of what he doesn’t tell us about. And it’s a very interesting question: WHY?
There are several explanations that I’ve explored on the blog before, but for now I don’t want to go into the question of why, but the question of what.
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We may not have all of Paul’s writings…
Right! I’m sure we don’t!
What if we have all of Paul’s writings? This makes the case for both Paul and Jesus a huge contradiction.
Paul doesn’t validate Jesus’ characteristics and the Jesus the majority were led to believe doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, Paul is spreading his own gospel.
Why doesn’t Paul mention Judas? Maybe Judas is an invention of later authors – Mark or one of Mark’s sources. We shouldn’t say Matthew has material that’s independent of Mark when Matthew clearly copied nearly all of Mark. That fact alone ought to disqualify any claims of independence between Mark and Matthew. Surely we don’t think the movie “The Dark Knight” is independent corroboration of the Batman story just because it adds new material that’s not in the original comics. Matthew (and the other gospel authors) may well be doing something like fan-fiction.
It’s a great yarn – the hero has to die, so we invent a betrayer to hand him over. I’m not sure it passes the plausibility test though. If Jesus was a public figure – preaching in the streets, disrupting the Temple – the Romans could have just had an agent tail him. The argument that early Christians wouldn’t have wanted to invent a disciple that Jesus couldn’t control also seems wildly speculative. As you’ve pointed out, the diversity of early Christian viewpoints was all over the map. The criterion of dissimilarity makes it easy to project one’s own biases onto people we know little about.
My sense is that there are *lots* of things in the Gospels that Paul doesn’t know about. He doesn’t mention any of Jesus’ parables, conflicts with Pharisees, baptism, trip to Jerusalem, trial before Pilate — it’s a long list. Paul not knowing something, to my mind, is not evidence htat it didn’t exist or didn’t happen.
People who have NDE’s should ask Jesus what did or did not happen with Judas. And, they should ask Him what the heck Iscariot means.
Oh yes, I have a long list of questions myself….
There’s a third time that Paul uses paradidwmi with Jesus as the object. In Gal 2:20 Paul says Jesus “handed himself over.” That could be taken in different ways: Jesus turned himself in to authorities, or Jesus allowed himself to be executed without trying to defend himself or resist. So Paul uses three different subjects to describe Jesus being handed over: ambiguous and unclarified but at night (1 Cor 11:23), God (Rom 8:32), and Jesus himself (Gal 2:20). Somehow, someway, Jesus ended up in the hands of authorities who crucified him, but Paul never clarifies. But what is certain is that early Christians (including Paul) got the language of “hand over” (paradidwmi) from 3x in Isa 53:6, 12 LXX.
It seems like Paul should know from the best sources exactly what happened because Paul swears he spent 15 days with Cephas and James. There are no better sources than the lead disciple and lead brother of Jesus to know about these matters.
It’s interesting to see how information about Jesus being handed over (and Judas) gradually and incrementally progresses through our sources, from Paul to Mark to Matthew to Luke to John to beyond.
What do you think of the idea that Judas falsely told the Jerusalem authorities that Jesus was claiming kingship (when he never did)? As you know, historians can only construct their historical accounts on what probably happened. So, the probable reason Judas betrayed Jesus can be found from sociology and criminology. Judas wanted Jesus killed and so he betrayed him to brutal people who would do just that.
Why would Judas want Jesus killed? In any time and place, when one man wants another man killed, according to statistics, it is because of interpersonal, retaliatory, dominance and egotistical conflicts. These are the largest single cluster of homicide motives (about 60% from some classic criminology – Luckenbill’s character contests and Black’s conflict theory [1], [2], [3]). The next biggest homicide cluster is from criminal enterprises (about 30% by some classic measures). The probable reason for the betrayal was some large interpersonal conflict between Jesus and Judas.
REF:
[1] David Luckenbill (1977): “Character Contests”
[2] Donald Black (2011): “Moral Time”
[3] Katz (1988): “Righteous Slaughter”
What about Acts 1:12-26, where Judas Iscariot is replaced by Matthias?
True, there’s no mention of him in the synoptic gospels, but given their predominately pre-resurrection context and content, I’m not surprised details like that were omitted. But Paul, being on-scene later, might have just grouped all of it “in his head”, regardless of timing. Besides, assuming it is true that Matthias replaced Judas Iscariot, how do we know Jesus didn’t appear to him as “one of The Twelve”?
In Acts, of course, he ascended before the election of Matthias.
In The Judas Brief, Gary Greenberg makes the point that Judas gets increasingly blamed over time for “delivering” Jesus, from this passing and neutral reference of ‘a’ delivery by Paul to Mark saying he was promised money, Matthew saying he received the money, Luke involving Satan, and John accusing him of stealing from the group’s finances on top of that. From that, Greenberg rewinds the narrative and argues that Judas’ delivery was only understood as an increasingly shameful betrayal in the decades after Paul and not prior.
But this is presented in the form a lawyer’s brief in a court of law and so far I have never read a historian taking that stance. I was wondering if that was a fringe opinion among your peers?
I wish we knew. We don’t have any references to Judas before Mark (not in Paul and we have no writings before Paul).
This is similar to Paul writing about Jesus’s lineage. No mention of Joseph or Mary. Instead he says Jesus is from the seed of David and born of a woman. Likewise, Pontius Pilate is a “ruler of this age.” Maybe he didn’t mention Judas because that wasn’t the point he was trying to make.
I think he knew about Judas. Paul was just being….Paul.
Of course Paul may not have heard of Judas for the same reason he didn’t know the Empty Tomb – the story hadn’t been invented yet. There is potentially a much bigger embarrassment here than one of Jesus’ disciples betraying him. And that’s the fact that all of Jesus’ disciples seem to have abandoned him to his fate at the hands of Rome. The creation of a figure like Judas and a story of deliberate betrayal might serve to cover a multitude of sins.
> There are several explanations that I’ve explored on the blog before
I would be interested in pointers to those explanations; it is an interesting issue.
Among others: Judas may have betrayed Jesus because he expected him to start a revolution and didn’t and so he wsa upset; or the he wanted to force his hand so he’d have to summon the mobs to his support to start a revolution; or becasuse he needed/wanted the money; or because he was a Roman spy… and more!
Dear Pr Ehrman
Thank you for your blog and your books, which are essential references in my library.
Unless I’m mistaken (I’m only an amateur), Judas’s betrayal is often regarded as historically probable, chiefly on the basis of the criterion of embarrassment. Given that embarrassment, it would be ironic if Paul, unlike the evangelists, had taken the opposite route, namely “censuring” on purpose this aspect, which in any case adds nothing to his Christology (or perhaps even causes greater embarrassment), wouldn’t it?
Philippe
I’m not sure I’m following our question; it seems like you’re saying Paul censured Judas for what he did? I’m arguing Paul doesn’t talk about Judas.
Did the gospel writers have some incentive to create the betrayal for some theological point? Or, maybe to embellish something that may have happened but wasn’t an actual betrayal to those that knew what happened? I believe you have said before that perhaps the “betrayal” could have simply been Judas being so excited about Jesus that he told people inner details or claims by Jesus that resulted in him being considered a threat to the powers that be. If so, it wouldn’t be a betrayal as such to people that knew the actual story. But easy to embellish later.
The most common answer is that they invented it to blame “the Jews” since “Judas” sounds like “Jew”
Paul just seems to be selling Eternal Life tombs to rich retirees, Dr. Ehrman 😹
Paul is three years in Arabia upon being commissioned, right? (Galatians 1:17).
Acheiropoietos = “not made with human hands” — that’s the exact technical descriptor for “rock-cut” tombs. Not made with human hands means not constructed, just basically improved caves.
And Paul equates Moses with Hagar, and that’s weird until you realize that Moses had Midianite, Ishmaelite children. It’s just another tip-off that Paul is discussing Jesus spiritually-majestically as an actual king of an Israelite-Ishmaelite confederacy (as plainly templated in Isaiah, the “Fifth Gospel”.
And what elite product is namesake Hegra known for? Houses of Eternal Life (tombs) in the territory of Baal Shamin, the Lord of Heaven. Bahahahaa
Like parididomi, I’m running into other translation choices having common meanings in Koine Greek that for some reason are not used for the New Testament. Like arnios for LITTLE lamb.
Jesus is the Lamb, not the LITTLE Lamb. Yet Revelation (after Jesus’ letters) is about the LITTLE lamb. 🐑👀
• Gospel of John embeds Malichus at the Takhallus
• Revelation embeds Rabbel at the Takhallus
The lil lambie is the *heir*.
(all original research)
“Since Paul indicates that the Last Supper happened on the night Jesus was betrayed,…”
1. It seems very unlikely that there was a formal “Last Supper” as described in the Bible. So Paul inherited this idea from somewhere and repeated in 1 Cor.
2. I agree that Paul is saying that God handed Jesus over to be crucified. But he had to have heard this from somewhere as well and is just repeating it in 1 Cor.
3. So there appears to be no need for Jesus to be “handed over” by anyone. The tradition many years before Mark was that God handed Jesus over to the authorities.
4. The story of Judas handing over Jesus to be crucified does not make sense to me.
Even if the greek term in question technically means “handed over”, Paul must have thought that someone was instrumental in the delivery. Who or what could that be? Could it be the high priest handing him over to Pilate? Or Judas handing him over to the high priest? What is more likely?
When he uses the term elsewhere, it is God himself who hands Jesus over to his fate.
But he says it happened at night, which indicates that he knew the circumstances, and God in the Bible normally acts through a medium or instrument.
Sorry Bart, but there are only ten Big Ten schools.
And eight shirt-tail hangers.
I still don’t accept even Penn State 🙂
I’m on your side.
…Philistines… 😉
That word “handed over” may have been the inspiration for Mark make up the story of Judas. There is no consensus on how Judas died.
There are many things Paul said that are in the Gospels:
This is my body…
On divorce
on paying the preacher
Jesus died for our sins
speaking in tongues
gift of prophecy
Jesus son of David
And I am sure Paul didn’t read the Gospels
“the 12” i thought that was an NT oral tradition device [but what about st paul]
I think Judas felt giving up his life for a false King. there was a respected NT author- FF Bruce who purposely avoided John’s gospel to set the record less biased on that Judas