I prefer the Spanish aficionado to the French amateur but that may simply be an acknowledgment that my French is beaucoup plus rouillé than my Spanish. Je manque de pratique. I also confess I don’t understand what we’re arguing about here. While I certainly cannot produce scholarship in these areas I can certainly read such scholarship with appreciation and understanding. Hooray! What do I win?
Ooh I just saw this. In my evolving opinion, the Apostle Judas is in the family of that rebel Judas in Galilee – so Jesus (and maybe his team) picked *exactly* the right person that would betray, and gave them the reasons to do so.
It gets the foremost Galilean rebel successor out of the way. These are rough sorts, even more so if Sicarii.
And then Jesus or the wildly, incredibly popular (per a recent found text) Agrippa, Galilean market taxer and Hasmonean (and maybe Prodigal Son imnho) could ascend to King of The Jews, which both do technically.
All their cards are Aces.
The important part is being “pointed out” to be the correct Jesus in front of the public and the right people at the start, because the substitute in the Substitute King Ritual does not need to be a lookalike, and which is likely why Mary and his disciples don’t recognize him (or his substitute/twin) post-event.
The Crucifixion is held at a distance.
Luke 23:49
“But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.”
John 20:14–15:
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus
It also isn’t held where he’d be broadly recognized, he basically does his preaching in Galilee-Peraea and Samaria (Herod Antipas’ tetrarchy).
Serene said
… It also isn’t held where he’d be broadly recognized, he basically does his preaching in Galilee-Peraea and Samaria (Herod Antipas’ tetrarchy).
To be fair, if he had an angel cut his hair in the Roman style and shave his beard, to be able to walk around without being recaptured, that might do it.
Stephen said
I think at any kind of disturbance in the Temple during Passover, Jesus would have been arrested outright. Consequently the events recorded in the gospels between the Temple incident and the crucifixion, the trials and Judas’ betrayal, are probably not historical.
I think your assessment lacks historical imagination. “Arrested Outright”? There are hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem. You seem to have an image of the historical scene borrowed from older popular movies where there are a couple hundred people on the stage with Jesus. This is poor historical imagination. The historian must reconstruct, imaginatively, plausible scenes. That means crowds upon crowds. That means Jewish authorities who are not sitting around idly waiting for some incident. They had jobs to do. It is the Passover. Hundreds of thousands of people coming to the temple to have a lamb slaughtered. Even when a disturbance should arise as the one Jesus created, they weren’t waiting for it. They had a hundred other concerns during this time. So there is no way they would have been prepared to simply arrest Jesus on site. That is not even how modern arrests operate. Arrests take time, even today with our technology.
It is strange and even alarming to me how little historical imagination historians exercise. A world of nonsense would be expunged if we would all just close our eyes and imagine a plausible scene.
Robert said
brown.connor4 said
And now forgive me for my next comment: when you say
And the Roman-installed local aristocratic sunedrion in Jerusalem, which was specifically tasked over its 80+-year history with replacing, limiting, or reporting any exercise or claim to royal authority would have found and dutifully punished or turned over to Pilate (at the time of Passover when he was present in the city) for punishment.
You only expose yourself as an amateur. Anyone who knows the relevant history and languages will say about your comment, “this person has never even read Josephus, let alone in greek, and is getting all his/her information from online, probably from wikipedia.”Please, no apology necessary. You’re absolutely right, I am not at all a professional historian, and have never claimed to be one, but my view of the role of the system of the sunedria, as first imposed by Gabinius and as it seems to have continued to function after it’s (partial?) dissolution by Julius Caesar and its continued role under later rulers is based almost entirely on my reading of Josephus. Thus I’ve endeavored to at least or at best to understand the sunedria as Josephus did. And it’s also true that I typically read Josephus in translation, but I do like to refer to the Greek when that seems important or merely interesting. This I did some 12 years ago when I was reading through all of Josephus’ various uses of the term συνέδριον.
Now, I do not wish to disparage amateurs from engaging topics here. But i have noticed a rampant, almost pestilent disregard for “authority” on forums such as this one. It is almost as if “anyone’s ‘thought’ is as good as anyone’s.”
It is not true. A good response should be a) logical and b) BACKED UP.
that is how history works.Perhaps in your role as a professional historian (and even an authority of some kind?) you can correct my view or those of Josephus on how the various kinds of sunedria functioned over time?
What I will expose is this….I am a jackass who sometimes writes aggressively when I should be going to sleep. I should probably look into why posts in a free debate get me so irrationally angry. I think that I get frustrated with Dr. Ehrman’s books and lash out here.
I am embarrassed by my post. I apologize.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
evgendob
Robert
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