Why do we suppose that the non-Markian commonalities in Matthew and Luke come from a third source? Isn’t it simpler to assume that Matthew was the author of the material attributed to the Q document and that Luke simply copied from Matthew?
Actually, Mark is considered to have been written between 70-75 CE, the Jewish revolt effectively ended in 70CE with the destruction of the Temple (small pockets did resist further, though probably not spending their efforts by writing a gospel). Therefore, most agree that all four gospels were written after the Jewish revolt; none during.
Many scholars do not agree with the gospels that Judas betrayed Jesus for the 30 silver coins; as that fulfills Hebrew prophecy (Zech 11:12). Many believe Judas betrayed Jesus by claiming to the Sanhedrin that Jesus was proclaiming himself ‘King of the Jews’. The reason the Sanhedrin turned Jesus over to Pilate was they did not want to appear to be against a potential Jewish prophet. But saw Judas betrayal as a perfect opportunity to rid themselves of a popular dissident which was preaching against their authority and temple.
**Diogenes the Cynic ** you have always been provocative & just the facts ma’am-Joe Friday-Dragnet like which I can repect.
By your own standards, you of the empty tomb as a Markian invention, how are you saying in GQ that Jesus was crucified for “sedition” and not say perhaps simply prophalactically for showing up in festival Jerusalem with a very nervous Pilate or stirring up religious (not political) controversy among the Jews…or are you using the term so broadly that anything, even spitting on the sidewalk, is ‘sedition’ ?
Not chest thumping really am asking how/why you chose that word.
There are some who do try to argue this but the prevailing theory at the moment is still Q. Some of the reasons that scholars think that Luke did not know Matthew are that Luke uses much of the Q material in a different order and in different contexts than Matthew and that Luke has a much different nativity, geneology and resurrection narrative than Matthew does.
Because Mark speaks of an imminent destruction of Temple but gets some of the details wrong, may scholars date Mark to about 68 CE, sometime during the war but just before the destruction of the temple.
In any case, my points was that the gospels were written for a gentile audience, not a Jewish one, and that they take an apologist stance towards Pilate for that reason.
Actually, most objective scholarship is quite skeptical that any betrayal occurred at all.It’s probably just a literary device employed to work some Jewish culpability into the arrest of Jesus. The betrayal has no tradition before Mark.
I say “sedition” because that is pretty much the only reason that Romans ever crucified Jews. The {i]method* of execution tells us the reason for it. No one would have been crucified for purely religious reasons by the Romans, they had to have believed that there was the potential for a riot or a revolt.
Now what the Romans would have perceived as “seditious” is an open question. If Jesus was proclaiming himself as “King of the Jews” that might have been enough to do it. If he had caused a ruckus at the temple during Passover, that might have been enough too. The Romans were paranoid about riots during Passover so their definition of “seditious” behavior may have become much more broad during Passover.
Jesus was crucified because he was perceived as a threat to the Romans in some way. What way, exactly, remains unknown but a purely internal religious squabble would not have been enough cause for crucifixion.
Stolidus.
LOL! FWIW I do completely understand that Pilate wouldn’t have done it for religious reasons. when I said “stirring up religious (not political) controversy among the Jews” I was basically wondering if by “sedition” you were saying he had proclaimed himself King or had created a direct political threat to Rome
I was saying that Pilate wouldn’t allow any stirring up at all and that I didn’t see what, say, Josephus tells us Moses the Samaritan did as sedition per se (and apparently neither did the Roman consul & Syrian governor, Lucius Vitellius) and I always thought maybe Jesus was doing something very similar – which the synoptic Gospels do not necessarily disagree with.
You answered sanely as you always do. This post is merely clarifying my earlier post that was so (apparently embarrassingly) unclear. Thanks for the answer.
The betrayal is independently attested to by Paul in 1st Corinthians 11:23: “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread.”
Actually, the many biblical scholars (obviously not all) do agree that Jesus was in fact betrayed (if not by Judas). Why? Because it would have been embarrassing for the early church to write have written in the gospels that one of Jesus’ closest companions betrayed him, also Paul independent of any gospel source writes about it as well.
I was probably too categorical in stating that scholars disbelieve in “any betrayal at all.” What I meant was that they disbelieve the authenticity of the betrayal narrative as conveyed by Mark. A lot of these narrative chunks get referred to in shorthand as “nativities,” “passions,” “resurrections,” etc. and I realize that it looked like I was making a more sweeping statement about historicity than I intended. I meant that the “betrayal” as a literary narrative is regarded as ahistorical, not that no historical betrayal was possible or plausible in a non-literary sense.
Paul doesn’t say anything about Judas being the betrayer. I was talking about the narratives as they pertained to Judas. What Paul meant by “betrayed” was probably a more generic anti-Jewish polemic. It’s possible that some Jews may have helped to facilitate the arrest of Jesus but the story of Judas in particular comes from Mark. The very name, Judas means “Jew” and this leads some to suspect that he was a literary device. The polemic that Jesus was rejected or “betrayed” by his own people is a strong Pauline theme but he never specifically named an apostle as a betrayer. John Shelby Spong and Robert Funk are two well-known scholars who are of the opinion that Judas was an invention of Mark’s, based on the dependency of the narrative on OT scripture and what they perceive as the obvious symbolism of the name. Ironically, John Dominic Crossan, one of he most liberal scholars of historical Jesus research argues that while Mark’s account is probably largely fictionalized, that he thinks there is some circumstancial evidence to suspect that some person or persons close to Jesus may have had a role in his arrest.
Basically, while it’s possible that Jesus may have been “betrayed” by someone close to him (and he might have even been named Judas, it was a common name despite its seeming epynomous symbolism. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) the specific Markan story about the thirty pieces of silver and the kiss is regarded as his invention.
Yes, the Sanhedrin took His claim of being “the King of the Jews” to the Romans as “sedition”- which technically it was. However, they also felt it was heresy- as James was stoned for claiming his Brother was the Messiah. How do you explain away the stoning of James, then?
If during Jesus’s time in Jerusalem, the Sanhedrin was specifically prohibited (by Pilate) from executing anyone for any reason , they’d have to get Pilate to do it, now wouldn’t they? I agree the ultimate respsonsibily lies on Pilate, but he didn’t know anything about Jesus until Jesus was arrested by the Temple guard.
Josephus doesn’t say that James was stoned for saying Jesus was the Messiah, only that Ananus, the high priest had “formed an accusation against them [James and his companions] as breakers of the law.” It was not a breech of Jewish law to claim to be the Messiah or to claim that anyone else was. There was nothing heretical about it, since somebody had to be the Messiah and making such a claim was not (in Jewish expectation) a claim to personal Godhood, only a claim to the throne of David.
The Sanhedrin didn’t need Pilate’s permission to stone people who transgressed or threatened the temple, but more importantly, “Blasphemy” was not a crime for which the Romans would have executed anybody, regardless of what the priests wanted.
And like I already pointed out, nothing Jesus said was blasphemous anyway. He had done nothing under Jewish law which amounted to a captal offense- unless he specifically threatened the temple, in which case the priests did not need permission to kill him.
If Jesus was arrested, he was arrested at the instigation of the Romans. Caiphus, as a hand-picked puppet of Pilate may have facilitated the arrest but only in order to turn him over to Pilate.
So -what on earth could 'the brother of the Messiah" and a Leader of the early Church have done to tick off the Sanhedrin. I wonder… :dubious:
But they did need Pilates permission- Pilate ran a very tight ship, and there was unrest in Jerusalem at that time. From what we know, he put the kibosh on the Temple doing anything that would rile up the natives- which would certainly include a public stoning. But then when the sanhedrin mentioned that Jesus has commited trason by saying he was “the King of the jews”- and only someone schooled in Jewish lore (which Pilate most definately was not) would know that saying that you’re the messiah was tantamount to claiming to being “King of the Jews”. Face it- Pilate didn’t know Jesus from Adam. Only the Sanhedrin could have found Jesus and raised charges against Him with Pilate. True- maybe the exact words were fluffed years later.
Although Matthew was written about the time of the temple destruction- “Q” was written right after Jesus’s death. And from Q, we get three versions- Matthew, Mark & Luke- and none dispute the Sanhedrin/Temple story. Jor does John- written many years after, yes, but by someone who was there (as Q was also written by an Apostle- maybe even Matthew, but we don’t know). It strains credulity that a source that was known and passed around for 40 years or so would be re-written by no less than 4 sources- all of whom came up with the same big lie- and no one called them on it! (and note, the early Church was by no means unified & monolithic, there was a substancial group that still wanted the Church to work only with fellow Jews). So why did no one who was conversant with Q raise a shitstorm about the whole Sanhedrin thing being included in Matthew/mark/Luke even though it wasn’t in Q? :dubious: And, when the Gospels came out, there were some who were still alive from the time of Jesus’s trial- and no one disputed it then- as far as we know, anyway. This whole theory came WAY after the time of Jesus and any of his contempories. IMHO- this makes it very suspect. If it is true- and the Sanhedrin COULD NOT have done that thing- you think someone from that period would have said so then. But- nope.
And note- the Romans also could have disputed the facts of Jesus’s existance - and they had the records. Even though they had plenty of reasons to do so, they did not try and dispute the Historical Jesus. In fact that whole concept- that Jesus never existed- wasn’t even mentioned until centuries after. Jesus’s contempories- even those who thought he was a fraud- did not have any doubts as to his existance. That came way later.
Josephus doesn’t say, but it wouldn’t have been for claiming someone else was the Messiah. It was probably political if the Jerusalem cult was acquiring any influence. Josephus says that the stoning of James was seen as unjust by others.
The priests always had jurisdiction over the temple and did not need permission for summary executions of those who committed certain crimes on temple grounds. It was a specific exception of priestly authority even under Pilate.
False Messiahs popped up all the time and acquired followings. Pilate would have no ver well what a Messiah was. The point is that the Sanhedrin would have had no gripe against Jesus as far as anything he had said. He had not said anything blasphemous under Jewish law, so why did they want to gt rid of him? If he had threatened the temple they could have killed him themselves. They didn’t even need a trial. Since the high priest were pretty much puppets of Pilate, any role they had in facilitating the arrest of Jesus would have been to serve the interest of the Romans. Pilate did not serve the interests of the Sanhedrin.
[sigh] Where to start?
Mark was written around the time of the temple destruction, Matthew about a decade later. Q does not contain the Sanhedrin story. That comes from Mark. Matthew , Luke and probably John all got it from Mark. None of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses, including John. (No, John was not written by anyone who was there. The apostollic attribution of John is a late tradition and is unsupportable by critical analysis-- John is written too late (100 CE), in the wrong language, shows layered authorship and is also heavily fictionalized). There is also no evidence that Q was written by an apostle, in fact, it probably wasn’t since it’s written in Greek and quotes from the Greek Septuagint instead of the Hebrew Tanakh. It my have derived from an apostollic source, either oral or written, but it was not apostollic in itself and, more to the point of this thread, it does not contain a Sanhedrin trial.
The gospels were written between 40-70 years after the crucifixion and they were written for a gentile audience, not a Jewish one. By the time the gospels had acheived any significant circulation virtually no one would have been left alive who was a contemporary of Jesus, and even if they had been, they were not part of the gentile audience who was using them. Even if someone had both been alive and aware of the gospels and knew the trial to be fiction, there is no reason that any vocal objection would have been recorded or taken any notice of by gentile Christians.
Who said anything about Jesus’ existence? We’re just talking about the circumstances of the crucifixion. And what records would the Romans have had that Jesus didn’t exist?
Actually what Paul writes is “on the night when he was handed over” (or “delivered up” ) - no actual mention of betrayal. Some scholars interpret this as “delivered up [to God]”, although “handed over [to the authorities]” seems just as likely.
Furthermore, the whole section in I Cor 11 may have been inserted by someone other than Paul. Consider
- Nowhere else does Paul quote Jesus’s words. Elsewhere he mentions instructions “from the Lord”, but never quotes directly.
- Nowhere does he talk about any events of Jesus’s life other than his death.
- Paul has just mentioned the Lord’s Supper in 10:16-17, why bring it up again here?
- Especially as the emphasis here is on Jesus’s sacrifice, rather than on church unity as it is in the rest of I Cor 10-11.
Btw, James was executed around 62 AD, the Roman governor had just died & his replacement had not yet arrived so the High Priest Ananus effectively was in charge of things. Eusebius cites prior Church writers as saying that Ananus had James taken to the pinnacle of the Temple & challenged his teaching about Jesus as ‘the Door’, James replied with a “I see the Son of Man sitting at the Right Hand…” stuff (referencing Big Bro) at which Ananus ordered James to be cast down & stoned, with someone clubbing his head him with a fullers staff.
I believe, incidentally, that the slaying of a Davidic heir, next in line to JC, on Temple grounds by order of the High Priest was the ‘abomination of desolation’, which was the Jewish Christians cue to cut out of the city.
Curious to what verison you are using? I just checked 6 different verisons which lay behind me and the word *betrayal * is used in all them.
As to early extra-biblical references, besides Josephus and Tacitus, already mentioned, there are Suetonius (70-160), Velleius Paterculus (a contemporary), and Dio Cassius (3rd century).
Suetonius writes of one ‘Chrestus’ and his followers instigating riots in Rome at the time of Nero, clearly a muddled reference to Jesus.
Ex-alter boy here. I haven’t been to church, or much interested in it, since my years of enforced piety as a boy, but I distinctly remember noting an interesting regarding the death of Jesus as it was described in the scriptures. In one of the gospels it is mentioned that the Roman soldiers were somewhat surprised at how quickly Jesus had succumbed. Most victims of crucifiction apparently lingered in agony for days and days. Sorry, but I can’t remember which gospel it was. To me, this detail always had a ring of truth about it, when a lot of the other aspects of the story didn’t.
:smack: Sorry–“interesting detail” that should have been. Why is it I can never see these dumb errors until it’s too late?
FriendRob linked to Young’s Literal Translation.
Just for the hell of I checked the Greek and the Koine word in question is [symbol]paredideto[/symbol] (paredideto), which is the imperfect passive indicative form of [symbol]paradindomi[/symbol], which literally means “deliver up.”
Note that the list of definitions does include a nuance of “delivering up treacherously,” but there is no reason to assume from Corinthians to assume that Paul necessarily meant it that way and a more plain reading of the text is “On the night when Jesus was delivered up.” Infer what you like from “delivered up” but I would suggest that most translations are simply biased in favor of a Judas inference.
RE: The Passion Narratives
While Mt and Lk certainly had Mk in front of them when composing their Passion Narratives, something odd happens: they stop copying Mk with the same fidelity as they did up to that point. Mind you, both Mt and Lk felt free to alter Mk’s text when they wanted to clean up his grammar, punch up the story, or add specific information to which they had access. But for the most part, they kept Mk’s Gospel rather faithfully in their Gospels. When you get to their Passions, though, Mt and Lk only follow Mk loosely.
Most scholars account for this by assuming that the Passion narrative was the earliest passed around story of the early church, and thus, the most traditional aspect of the early church’s traditions. And so, Mt and Lk were more inclined to tell the Passion story as they knew it rather than slavishly following Mk.
Sorry, Diogenes, but saying that Jn had Mk’s Gospel in front of him is way outside the norm of mainstream biblical scholarship (as is one of your sources, Spong).
For this same reason (the tradionality of the Passion narrative), most mainline scholars find Jn’s Passion, though heavily reworked for theological instruction, to be full of historically accurate details. Most mainline scholars propose that Jn’s community had access to the oral tradition of the “disciple whom Jesus loved” who was clearly a Jerusalem resident. So, for example, Jn’s Gospel tells us that the Last Supper was not a Passover Meal, but just the ordinary meal of The Day of Preparation (the day before Passover). While contrary to the Synoptic Gospels, scholars side with this historical tidbit from Jn, a later Gospel.
Peace.