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Prof Ehrman has been posting a series of comments about Judas.  I don’t know if he’s done yet but he’s far enough along that I want to go ahead and respond. 

I never used to even consider the possibility that Judas might not be a historical figure.  It simply seemed absurd that somebody would make him up.  That Jesus would select a disciple who would turn around and betray him doesn’t speak well for his management capabilities (to put it in modern jargon.)  The so-called Criterion of Embarrassment seemed to kick in.  Why would someone make this up?  

But now I’m not at all sure.  It’s interesting to revisit the old arguments, as Prof Ehrman does, after I’ve spent years reading literary and narrative approaches to the gospels, emphasizing their qualities as stories over a historical-critical approach. Of course these two approaches to interpreting the gospels aren’t at odds.  They complement each other quite well.  Even so we’re left with some interesting questions.  So let’s ask them, shall we?

First of all Prof Ehrman relies on the principle of multiple attestation.  He still sees the gospels as continuing separate, independent sources.  But this is precisely the argument that has undergone the most critique as of late. Prof Mark Goodacre has made a compelling case that, far from independent,  Luke knew Matthew and Mark, and raises the possibility that John knew them all.  So we’re not dealing with four separate literary traditions but with one, originating with Mark, supplemented by sources unique to at least Matthew and John.  Consequently the suggestion that the story of Judas is in “all our traditions” becomes much less compelling. 

So let’s cut to the chase. What we’re dealing with here is Mark.  Many of the core components of the Jesus story seem to originate with Mark.  Interestingly many of these core components are absent for our only earlier witness, Paul.   This is certainly true of Judas, as Prof Ehrman himself demonstrates in his post linked above. 

So why would Mark (or someone) invent Judas?   I suggest there is a deeper embarrassment here than that one of his disciples deliberately betrayed Jesus to his enemies.  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.   

But it’s also worth highlighting the long recognized aspect of Mark’s story that he has a very jaundiced view of Jesus’ disciples in the first place.   Remember he has Peter himself deny Jesus publicly.  But for a fleeting reference in Mark 16:7, Mark leaves Peter out in the dark and cold. (Now we have no surviving variants that exclude “and Peter” but I will betcha a boatload of shekels that this is a later interpolation meant to rehabilitate Peter.) 

My growing doubt about Judas rests also on my view of Jesus’ arrest and execution.  I won’t belabor this since I’ve discussed it before but I doubt very few of the narrative events in Mark are historical.  I think he had the frame story and surviving credos, like Paul, but most of Mark’s gospel is literary creation, not collections of stories collected over decades and passed along by members of the Jesus community.  (For example I think Mark probably knew that Jesus was executed sometime around Passover and he made it the day he did in his gospel for his own agenda. For his depiction of the crucifixion he lets Psalm 22 do the heavy lifting.)     

If we assume that there was some kind of “incident” in the Temple that led to Jesus’ arrest, then we have to wonder how Jesus got off the Temple mount unmolested?  I have suggested that the more likely historical account is that Jesus was arrested in the Temple outright and that the story of a trial before the Sanhedrin was created by Mark, just as unlikely as the trial before Pilate.  Consequently there was no need for Judas, and he was created to pull focus away from the larger Jesus community who all got away somehow.  (Or cynically, Judas was just one more bad disciple.) 

Have I tied up all the loose ends?  Of course not.   I’m merely suggesting an alternative scenario that tries to make sense of the obvious loose ends in our surviving gospel narrative.   

ps: A natural question is that if I’m going to question the historicity of Mark’s narrative why assume the incident in the Temple actually happened?  Fair enough.  But something brought Jesus to the attention of the Romans and some sort of prophetic “acting out” in the Temple around Passover – maybe Jesus expected the Parousia then and there? – seems like a logical candidate.