Somewhere, perhaps in a podcast, Dr. Ehrman concludes that the apostle Paul knew nothing about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, based on Paul’s reference to “the twelve” in 1 Corinthians 15, which we all know to be anachronistic, since by then there were only eleven, Judas having vacated his office by treachery and, perhaps, suicide.
I have already dealt with the unlikelihood of this conclusion in another post; here I would like to counter Dr. Ehrman’s preemptive counter-argument.
Dr. Ehrman acknowledges that an earlier section of 1 Corinthians could suggest that Paul in fact did know about Judas’ treachery. In 1 Corinthians 11:23 Paul reminds the Corinthians of the tradition he received and delivered to them regarding the Lord’s Supper:
“For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread…”.
“…the night on which he was betrayed.” This sure sounds like Paul knew about Judas’ betrayal. And Dr. Ehrman admits this. But he has a counter, based on linguistics.
Dr. Ehrman argues, correctly, that the greek behind “betrayed” can also mean “handed over” and points out, again, correctly, that elsewhere in the Pauline corpus “betray” is exactly the meaning of the verb and that, correctly, the subject behind it is always God. Thus 1 Corinthians 11:23 can be explicated as “On the night when he was handed over by God…”. Thus 1 Corinthians 11 does not overturn the proposal that Paul knew nothing about Judas’s treachery. The paradidomi of 1 Corinthians 11 is not about Judas but God.
There are two problems with Dr. Ehrman’s reasoning, one linguistic and one, well, embarrassing.
It is true that outside of 1 Corinthians 11 Paul uses the term (paradidomi) to refer to God’s “handing over of Jesus”. But then, that term shows up only in Romans, and only three times, and all in the same section. That is hardly a wide sample from which to work.
But worse (and worst!) is this. In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul is not freewriting. He is relaying a tradition. The word choice is thus not his. It was given to him. Studying how Paul uses paradidomi is therefore useless, nay, misleading. If we want to know the nuances of paradidomi as it appears in the tradition Paul is reiterating, we cannot look to Paul; we must look to the only source we have for the last supper. And that means, the gospels. And when we investigate how the word paradidomi operates in the gospels, it 100% refers to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. It never has the meaning of “God handed him over.”
My argument above is so simple that it is hard for me to believe a scholar like Dr. Ehrman could not have thought of it first, and so I submit it to review. I must be missing something.
We do not know the fuller context, if there was one, of the tradition being handed over here by Paul, and the fact that Paul is having them recall what he has handed over to them should caution us from constructing an impermeable barrier between Paul’s own language elsewhere and this tradition that he has handed over to them.
What I find interesting is that even so early on the idea that the arrest and execution of Jesus was some kind of unplanned disaster had already been rejected. The conception of the crucifixion as part of a divine plan was already in place. The question for Paul was not if but why it happened the way it did.
Robert said
… I wouldn’t necessarily agree with Bart that in the tradition Paul is ‘handing over’ here he is necessarily referring to God handing over Jesus, Paul or the earlier tradition could be referring to anyone’s handing over of Jesus, eg, the sunedrion in Jerusalem. It could be Judas handing over Jesus to the Jewish authorities or their soldiers, and given the fact that Judas was one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, this ‘handing over’ would certainly be seen as a ‘betrayal’ in this context. …
And, indeed, if Jesus was arrested by agents of the sanhedrin, whether or not he was “handed over” to them, the crucifixion implies that at some point he was handed over by the sanhedrin to the Roman authorities, as the sanhedrin did not have the authority to crucify someone.
Did Paul know about the gospel tradition that Judas betrayed Jesus and died prior to the resurrection experiences?
The relevant passages are 1 cor. 15:3-5 and 1 Cor. 11:23.
Several scholars cast doubt on Paul’s knowledge of Judas’s involvement in the arrest of Jesus and the disciple’s swift exit.
The cause of doubt is contained in 1 Cor. 15 5b, where Paul, while reciting a creed bearing witness to Jesus’ resurrection appearances, refers to an appearance made to the twelve, a body which we know from the gospel accounts, was missing a member.
The question is, why does Paul not say, “the eleven”? The more radical answer given by historians is that he did not know there were only eleven.
I admit reference to the twelve is perplexing. But I think the ease with which historians deny Paul knowledge of the Judas’s betrayal even more perplexing. The cavalier conclusion is based on an over literalism on the one hand–a kind of literalism we typically expect from fundamentalists–and a lack of historical imagination on the other.
Let us first admit that if Paul never heard of the Judas tradition, that would make both him and Peter some of the oddest and most uninquisitive humans in antiquity. There is no reason to doubt that Paul had made an extended stay with Peter at least once in his missionary career, and that it was from Peter (or another OG) that he received the tradition in question as well as the tradition of the Lord’s Supper–which includes the words, “on the night he was betrayed.” Are we to imagine that Peter failed to mention, and Paul did not care to inquire, how it was Jesus was betrayed? Did Paul recite the words of the Lord’s Supper and breeze by the phrase “…he was betrayed…” without a second thought? It staggers belief.
(I should note an argument made by Dr. Ehrman that the phrase “on the night he was betrayed” contained in the Lord’s Supper refers not to Judas but to God; the argument is based on Paul’s use elsewhere of the word paradidomi elsewhere. Now it is true that the verb shows up in Romans three times, all in the same context, and refers to Jesus’s being handed over by God. But three occurrences, and all in the same passage, hardly amounts to a wide sample. And even then the point is moot: Paul is not free-writing in 1 Cor. 11; he is reciting. The verb and its meaning were given him. How he tends to use the verb elsewhere is irrelevant. If we are to look outside this passage for the verbs meaning, we must look outside of Paul himself. And I should note, that in the gospel traditions, the verb clearly refers to Judas’ betrayal, not to a theological interpretation of God’s handing Jesus over.)
I propose that almost any explanation with even just the slightest plausibility is to be preferred to the theory that Paul never heard of Judas’s betrayal.
Stephen said
We do not know the fuller context, if there was one, of the tradition being handed over here by Paul, and the fact that Paul is having them recall what he has handed over to them should caution us from constructing an impermeable barrier between Paul’s own language elsewhere and this tradition that he has handed over to them.
What I find interesting is that even so early on the idea that the arrest and execution of Jesus was some kind of unplanned disaster had already been rejected. The conception of the crucifixion as part of a divine plan was already in place. The question for Paul was not if but why it happened the way it did.
I do not find any of the essential propositions of your counter in the least demonstrated. Can you please…demonstrate?
>> In 1 Corinthians 11 Paul is not freewriting. He is relaying a tradition. The word choice is thus not his. It was given to him. Studying how Paul uses paradidomi is therefore useless, nay, misleading. If we want to know the nuances of paradidomi as it appears in the tradition Paul is reiterating, we cannot look to Paul; we must look to the only source we have for the last supper. And that means, the gospels. And when we investigate how the word paradidomi operates in the gospels, it 100% refers to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. It never has the meaning of “God handed him over.”
I don’t follow how the conclusion follows from this. If we want to know how the source used paradidomi, we’d need to look at that source and how that source usually uses the word, but we don’t have anything else that we can identify as being from that source.
We are stuck looking at how that word was used generally at that time, and when we do that we find that, while it can mean betray, it can also mean hand over to an authority (not necessarily betrayal), or to transfer custody of a prisoner (e.g., from the Sanhedrin to Pilate, or from Pilate to the executioners), or to hand on a teaching. (Like Robert I am not convinced of Ehrman’s contention that this refers to God handing Jesus over.)
The gospels are considerably later, and I don’t see why they should be privileged in interpreting this word in this formula. Granting, arguendo, that they understand paradidomi in that received formula to mean “betray” doesn’t mean that they interpreted it accurately; I am reluctant to historicize the triple tradition. It may very well have been ambiguous what sort of handing-over was meant, and it seems plausible that Mark saw the ambiguity in paradidomi and that that suggested to him the rather dramatic plot twist of having Jesus be betrayed with a kiss from trusted confidant.
brown.connor4 said
Stephen said
What I find interesting is that even so early on the idea that the arrest and execution of Jesus was some kind of unplanned disaster had already been rejected. The conception of the crucifixion as part of a divine plan was already in place. The question for Paul was not if but why it happened the way it did.
I do not find any of the essential propositions of your counter in the least demonstrated. Can you please…demonstrate?
Well I’m not sure I can demonstrate but I can explicate my point of view.
In Jesus’ time the only concept of the Messiah available was triumphalist. There were debates about whether the Messiah was going to be a political leader or supernatural in some way but what these views had in common was that when he appeared God’s “Anointed One” would defeat God’s enemies and rule the Kingdom of God. There was no concept of a defeated and suffering Messiah. He was going to win!
It is entirely possible Jesus had some kind of Messianic self-understanding. (This would not have required that he think himself divine in any way.) It is also possible Jesus went to Jerusalem during the Passover expecting some kind of divine vindication of his status. This would explain the incident in the Temple. It must have been a terrific shock to the Jesus movement when he was crushed by the Romans. So much so that in order to hold onto the idea of Jesus’ special status before God the movement had to radically redefine the concept of the Messiah. This is what Paul is trying to do – explain the fact of the crucifixion. This is what the gospel of Mark is trying to do – redefine what it meant to be God’s Messiah. Christianity is the byproduct of the cognitive dissonance caused by the idea of a crucified Messiah.
Stephen said
.. There was no concept of a defeated and suffering Messiah. He was going to win!
Or, in the Two Messiah’s tradition in the Dead Sea Scrolls community, “they” were going to win … a Royal Messiah to set secular affairs back in their right place and a Priestly Messiah to set religious affairs back in their right place (remembering that the Dead Sea Scroll community appears to have been sharp critics of those presently in charge at the Temple).
It is entirely possible Jesus had some kind of Messianic self-understanding.
Indeed, it is entirely possible that he had some kind of evolving Messianic self-understanding, if he was brought into the John the Baptizer community as a prospective Royal Messiah to John’s Priestly Messiah, given a bloodline that could be argued to be in a side branch of the line of David.
With the death of John the Baptizer, that would be an understanding that might be subject to evolution.
(This would not have required that he think himself divine in any way.)
And further, it might entail him thinking of himself as divine precisely in the way of being divinely appointed. Lacking any way to distinguish whether the divine name being in Jesus is from Jesus’s teaching or from early post-Crucifixion teaching about Jesus, it seems a point we have to leave as possible on either side.
It is also possible Jesus went to Jerusalem during the Passover expecting some kind of divine vindication of his status. This would explain the incident in the Temple.
And from the perspective of the Two Messiah tradition, could indicate an evolution either toward a priestly Messiah role or toward a notion of a unified role of both … the tension which some clever anonymous fellow later works to resolve with the High Priest in the Order of Melchizedek rather than High Priest in the Order of Levi.
It must have been a terrific shock to the Jesus movement when he was crushed by the Romans. So much so that in order to hold onto the idea of Jesus’ special status before God the movement had to radically redefine the concept of the Messiah. This is what Paul is trying to do – explain the fact of the crucifixion. This is what the gospel of Mark is trying to do – redefine what it meant to be God’s Messiah. Christianity is the byproduct of the cognitive dissonance caused by the idea of a crucified Messiah.
And this cognitive dissonance doesn’t start with the overthrow of the Temple and the composition of our received Mark, or with Paul’s original epistles, in whatever was their original form … it hits right away in the Jerusalem church, perhaps under the unification of the Two Messiahs, as a reaction to the death of John the Baptizer hypothesis are left in the hands of his regent as the Royal Messiah, next in the line of succession, James, and his regent as the Priestly Messiah in, perhaps, Peter, given that he is not sitting at the right hand of his father on Earth, as would have been expected, but has ascended to sit at the right hand of his Father in heaven.
But this Twin Messiahs thing is a tradition among some strands of apocalyptic Judeans, and with the crushing of the Bar Kokhba revolt hitting the Jerusalem church and its immediate hinterland the hardest, post-136 CE, Gentiles gained the upper hand in influence in most Jesus following communities. And, it seems, the most effective strands of Christianity for growing in the Greco Roman world were those with a higher Christology than the Jersualem church may have been teaching.
Robert said
brown.connor4 said
… And I should note, that in the gospel traditions, the verb clearly refers to Judas’ betrayal, not to a theological interpretation of God’s handing Jesus over.)It does indeed frequently refer to Judas handing over of Jesus to the temple authorities (which in context is indeed a betrayal), but not exclusively so. The verb is also used to refer to Herod’s arrest of John the Baptist without any sense of betrayal (Mk 1,14), Jesus being handed over into the hands of gentiles who will kill him (Mk 9,31 10,33), the disciples being handed over to sunedria and synagogues, governors, and kings (Mk 13,9.11), the chief priests, elders, scribes, and the whole sunedrion handing over Jesus to Pilate (Mk 15,1), and Pilate handing over Jesus to be crucified (Mk 15,15), all without any explicit or implied sense of betrayal, not to mention grain ripening and giving over fruit (Mk 4,29), or the handing down of teaching traditions by the Pharisees and scribes (Mk 7,13).
Again it is only the fact that Judas is presented as one of Jesus’ twelve apostles that his turning him over is understood to be a betrayal. And Paul’s use of this verb when referring to the tradition that he has heard (in Aramaic?) and passed on in Greek could easily refer to other people handing over Jesus to be killed. It need not have referred to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. It could have, but it need not have had anything at all to do with Judas or his betrayal of Jesus.
I find your response accurate but pedantic; or, to put another way, it was motivated not by the interest of understanding but the need to show off.
Yes, I said, “in the gospel tradition this verb…”, and yes, you are right, the verb shows up attached to other persons. And so my “wording” was not precise. I should have said that “wherever the verb shows up, it never refers to God’s handing Jesus over to death.” Sure. And if my post was not about whether Paul knew of a story in which Judas betrayed Jesus, but was about a strict analysis of how paradidomi is used in the gospels and Paul, I would have said, “You got me!” but i think anyone who read my post receptively, and not in the spirit of competition, would have seen that I was not doing an analysis of every occurrence of the verb in the gospels.
But I am willing to admit error, if error can be proven. Do you honestly think my post was intended as the conclusion of an analysis of every occurrence of paradidomi in the gospels? Or do you know that I was simply referring to how it is used of Jesus’s death in the passion narratives?
I find it generally best not to attribute motives to people in discussion, at least not without ample evidence.
I actually had to think through whether you actually meant what you wrote (about the synoptics only using paradidomi to mean betrayed). I decided it was unlikely (which is why I didn’t correct it when I replied).
But it was hard to be sure. The reason is that you are making a lexicographical argument that the word must be read, unambiguously, to mean ‘betrayed’ and isn’t open to other meanings. For that argument to have legs, you really need the stronger, false, claim.
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