Why was Judas necesary for the capture of Jesus?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@UDS

OK, so, to summarise:

All four gospels agree that Christ was arrested in the Garden at the instigation of the Jewish authorities. If there were any soldiers involved, they were Roman soldiers, since there weren’t any other soldiers around. But, if we accept the Gospel accounts, we infer that they were involved at the behest of the Jewish authorities.

The Romans did not do things at the instigation of the Jewish Authorities. The Temple Priests were hand-picked lap dogs of the Romans and were generally despised as collaborators by the populace. If Roman soldiers were there, then the arrest was done under the authority- and the impetus- of the Romans. The Romans did not run errands for the priests and would not have cared in any case for what they would have perceived as an internecine religious squabble among the Jews. If the Romans were involved then something more than religion was in play, but more importantly, it meant that the Romans were the ones who wanted Jesus arrested. Whatever Temple authorities were there would have been there at the behest of the Romans, not the other way around. More on this shortly.

John is the only Evangelist to suggest that there were soldiers involved in the arrest in the Garden. His language is consistent with their being Roman soldiers, which accords with the historical facts. John’s Gospel is the latest and least historical, so may not necessarily be accurate on this point. On the other hand, John is generally at pains to maximise Jewish involvement in the Passion, and minimise Roman involvement. There seems to be no obvious reason for him to describe Roman soldiers being involved in the arrest, other than a genuine belief that they were in fact involved.

Exactly. John was not eager to shift or share any Jewish culpability if hecould avoid it, so the only sensible explanation for John putting the Romans in Gethsemane was because he believed it was true.

Now here’s my hypothesis:

It is now somewhat agreed that John probably had some knowledge of synoptic traditions even though he is not literarily dependent on them. There is also some argument that John may contain some authentic pericopes which are independent of the synoptics. In other words, some people think that John may contain elements of oral traditions which are not found in the synoptics but which are authentic, nonetheless. That’s not to say that John is anymore historical as a whole, only that it could have a few authend strands here and there.So here’s my guess. John did not add Romans to his story, he added Mark’s priests. The arrest and trial before the Sanhedrin is probably a complete fiction (it is rife with factual and procedural error), and was composed as an apolgetic device for Pilate as well as a polemic against Jewish authority.

I think there was probably some shred of oral tradition or general knowledge that the Jesus was arrested by Roman soldiers and brought to Pilate. John simply incorporated the synoptic tradition into an arrest story that originally didn’t contain it. This would make sense because it would show John shoehorning Temple culpability into the arrest and trial rather than inexplicably diminishing the role of the Temple by inserting Roman authoriies who had no literary reason to be there. It blunts John’s rant and serves no purpose in the story to throw a cohort of Romans into the arrest. I think John layering the synoptic elements on top of a pre-existing oral tradition makes more sense.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Latros, in the context of John’s gospel, a chilarchos would only be a Roman. There was no armed military of any sort in Judea except for the Romans. Herod Antipas’ personal guards would have only had much jurisdiction in Galilee. Luke is the only gospel which incororates Antipas into the passion and even then, it’s only because Jesus happened to be a Galileean (hence under the authority of Antpas), and Jesus is brought to Antipas (who was in Jerusalem for the Passover) at the request of Pilate, not Antipas. In Luke’s narrative, Antipas does not show any fear of Jesus, only disappointment that he won’t do magic tricks.

Since Antipas is really the only remotely plausible source for an armed paramilitary of any sort, and Judea was out of Antipas’ jurisdiction (along with the fact that Antipas is completely absent from te gospel of John), we are only left with the Romans.

In fact, I note that my Scholars Translation of the Gospel of John (An excellent, accurate and carefully researched translation) renders the phrase as “…a detachment (of Roman soldiers).”

It seems to have been understood as such in the Vulgate also. I just can’t see any compelling argument to say they were anything but Romans.

[Latro]

Okay, so no temple guards or jewish vigilantes?
Chiliarchos no longer means ‘commander of a chiliarchia’ but has evolved to be the greek word for ‘tribune’. Still can’t find what kind of unit a speira was but aparently in this period it is greek for ‘cohors’.

So what do you think happened? What is the consequence of the fact that Jesus was arrested by the Romans? What does it imply?

Would you think it was along these lines?
There was this fellow Jesus, who claimed to be the messiah, king of the jews.
He triumphantly entered Jerusalem but shortly afterward was arrested by the Romans and delt the usual punishment for rebellion against Rome, crucifixion.

A small number of his left behind followers couldn’t live with their dreams being shattered. They had to reason why their saviour was dead plus they had to survive inside the Roman empire.
Voila the birth of Christianity.

Ooooohoor…

Was Paul a Roman agent? Set to undermine the Jewish hate for the Romans. and the pro-Roman slant on events is his doing?

[Liberal]

Maybe it was the Greco-Macedonian on the grassy knoll.

[Latro]

@Liberal

Maybe it was the Greco-Macedonian on the grassy knoll.

Or Tribunus Sinapius in the hortus with a gladius.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Latro

Okay, so no temple guards or jewish vigilantes?

Not with swords…and vigilantes would not be referred to in military terms.

So what do you think happened? What is the consequence of the fact that Jesus was arrested by the Romans? What does it imply?

Would you think it was along these lines?
There was this fellow Jesus, who claimed to be the messiah, king of the jews.
He triumphantly entered Jerusalem but shortly afterward was arrested by the Romans and delt the usual punishment for rebellion against Rome, crucifixion.

A small number of his left behind followers couldn’t live with their dreams being shattered. They had to reason why their saviour was dead plus they had to survive inside the Roman empire.
Voila the birth of Christianity.

Well that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Can I use a lifeline?

It’s really two questions: Why did the Romans crucify Jesus and what precipitated the rise of Christianity after his death?

In answer to the first, there are two possibilities. The first is that Jesus was calling himself the King of the Jews and the Romans thought he had enough of a following to mount an insurgency. I personally have my doubts that Jesus ever called himself the Annointed One or made any claim to the throne of David, but taking this thory at face value, it’s not out of the question. The only problem with it is that when the Romans quelled insurgencies they crucified everyone involved, not just the leader. The fact that only Jesus was crucified and not his disciples would indicate to me that Pilate did not fear an insurgency.

The other possibility (and the one that I favor) is that Jesus was crucified as a public menace for stirring up shit at the Temple during Passover. The Romans were paranoid about riots during that time because Jerusalem was so crowded and the Romans were so outnumbered. If Jesus went apeshit in the courtyard and was knocking over tables, or even if he just said something about “destroying the Temple,” that would probably be enough to freak out some of the crowd and get them screaming and yelling.

At that point, some solders could have been deployed to find this nutcase preacher that was riling up the mob and quickly string him up so as to nip any potential rioting in the bud.

The incident at the Temple (whatever it was) was the only really radical thing that Jesus is said to have done during his ministry. If Jesus was crucified for that, it would have been fairly casual, and perhaps an over-reaction, but like I said, the Romans were completely paranoid during Passover and they liked to make examples.

As to the second question…God only knows. A fairly convincing argument can be made that the empty tomb story is a Markan invention and that the Jerusalem cult really began with Peter’s visions in Galilee a few years after the crucifixion.

I also think that Paul departed quite a bit from the Jerusalem cult, that he created his own theology, and that Paul is more responsible for the creation and spread of Christianity than any other single individual, including Jesus.

All this is speculative, though. I’ve been studying this stuff for years and hard data is almost non-existent. You sort of just have to pick a hypothesis you like or just shrug your shoulders and say we don’t know.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

Well, there’s always Straight Dope Staff Report: Who killed Jesus? for additional reading, and pretty much in line with what Diogenes said.

[Dog80]

@Latro

Typical Roman officer rank would have been a centurio, in charge of a centuria (80 men).

In greek, centurio = εκατόνταρχος. If we take the word literary, he is in charge of 100 men, not 80.

[Dog80]

That should read literally :smack:

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

Apologies for the bump but I happened to be doing some reading and incidentally stumbled onto the following passage from Josephus:

NOW after the death of Herod, king of Chalcis, Claudius set Agrippa, the son of Agrippa, over his uncle’s kingdom, while Cumanus took upon him the office of procurator of the rest, which was a Roman province, and therein he succeeded Alexander; under which Cureanus began the troubles, and the Jews’ ruin came on; for when the multitude were come together to Jerusalem, to the feast of unleavened bread, and a Roman cohort stood over the cloisters of the temple, (for they always were armed, and kept guard at the festivals, to prevent any innovation which the multitude thus gathered together might make,)…
Jewish Wars II, XII, 1)

(bolding mine)

So according to Josephus, the Romans kept a cohort (speiros) of soldiers at the Temple during Passover to keep an eye on the crowds. It would makes sense then that a detail from this post (although it is highly improbable that they sent the entire cohort of 600 men) was sent to arrest Jesus after the Temple disturbance. I would submit that this detail was probably the “speiros” referred to by John.