Ted Hoffman

In, the article, Taking Mark's Polemic Seriously, Ted Weeden writes:

"First, the most ignominious acts perpetrated against Jesus by his disciples were Judas' betrayal and Peter's denial. I submit that neither act is historical. They never happened. Both infamous deeds are fictive inventions of Mark. There is no convincing evidence in pre-Markan tradition that early Christians knew of either act. Paul evinces no awareness that either Judas betrayed Jesus or that Peter denied him. In fact Paul makes no explicit reference or even the slightest allusive hint of any disaffection upon the part of any one in the inner-circle of Jesus'followers. With specific respect to Judas, there is nothing in the Pauline correspondence to suggest that Jesus was betrayed by one of his own. In Paul's statement in I Cor.11:23:, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he PAREDIDETO took bread," the translation of PAREDIDETO as "betrayed," found in many English translations is a translation, which is unfortunately prejudiced by the story of Judas' betrayal in the Synoptics, John and Acts. The proper translation of PAREDIDETO in I Cor. 11:23 is "handed over or delivered up,"i.e., "arrested" (cf. C. K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians,266).

...there is no tangible evidence that Paul knew about Judas' betrayal. Nor is there any evidence of such a betrayal in either the Q tradition (I hold to the existence of Q) or the tradition behind the Gospel Thomas. Q does not show any awareness of the disaffection of any one of the inner circle of Jesus' disciples. There is at least one Q saying that implies that the integrity of the Twelve is in tact. Q 22:30 (Lk. 22:30/Mt.19:28) presents Jesus as prophesying to the disciples that they "will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Now the _QEP_ edition of Q does not have Jesus refer specifically to the fact that each of the twelve disciples sit on a throne, though the implication is there. Matthew makes what is implied in Q explicit in his appropriation of Q. Namely, in response to Peter (19:27) the Matthean Jesus states (19:28): "when the Son of the human shall sit on his throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." This declaration by the Matthean Jesus must be another case of what Mark Goodacre calls Matthean "fatigue." For the twelve disciples who are with Jesus at that point includes, by logic of the narrative, Judas. [TH: Weeden explains that the logical inconsistency "is due to the fact that they (Matt & Lk) each have included a Q saying, which speaks of the twelve as a faithful body of disciples of whom none is known to have betrayed Jesus, and places the saying within a narrative that has already "fingered" one of the twelve as a "turn coat" bent upon betraying Jesus.]

I submit that Mark and Mark alone created the narrative figure of a betrayer and named him Judas. In creating Judas, Mark modeled him after Ahithophel,the confidant of David, who betrayed David by joining the rebellion against him. I have developed extensive essays on how Mark created the whole Gethsemane scene of the betrayal using material from the Davidic saga in II Sam. 15-17 and 20:4-10, essays which appeared on Kata Markon ("Judas and Jesus" [2/22], "Re: Judas and Jesus' [3/14], "Judas' Kiss and Methodology" [3/27], "Judas' Kiss: Methodology and Misplaced Concreteness" [4/9]). See also the impressive case Spong makes for Judas being a Christian invention (Liberating ,257-276). Spong presented his case to the Jesus Seminar and the Seminar concurred with him that Judas is a fictive invention (Acts of Jesus, 136f., 138). Spong, in his paper presented to the Seminar, argued that Mark created the betrayer-figure Judas. But he does not identify Mark as the "culprit" in his book.

Mark's choice of IOUDAS as the name of Jesus' betrayer was carefully designed, in my view, to symbolize the southern kingdom of Judah (IOUDAS) and its successor the province of Judea in Mark's day. Spong pursues the case for historical antecedents for the Judas persona by suggesting that there are parallels between the Gospels' Judas and Judah the brother of Joseph. Among the interesting parallels between the two biblical stories Spong notes are the following (267):

(1) Joseph was handed over "by a group of twelve who later became known as the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel," (2) in "both stories [the story of Joseph and the story of Jesus] the handing over or betrayal was into the hands of gentiles,' (3) in "both stories money was given to the traitors- twenty pieces of silver for Joseph, thirty pieces of silver for Jesus," and (4) "one of the twelve brothers of Joseph who urged the others to seek money for their act of betrayal was named Judah or Judas (Gen. 3726-27)." Spong points out also (267f.) that in the case of Jesus the amount of conspiracy money was made thirty pieces of silver, a touch added by Matthew, as a result of the influence of the Zechariah prophecy "about the betrayal of the shepherd king of the Jews for 'thirty pieces of silver' (Zech. 11:13)."

Along with these historical antecedents behind the name Judas, which Spong points out, there lies also the traditional hostility between the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah, Richard Horsley (Galilee and Archaeology, History and Society in Galilee) has reconstructed an impressive history of the bitterness that existed among the northern tribes for the ill-treatment they received from Solomon, David's son, not to mention the inherent differences between the northern tribes and Judah with respect to their diverse origins and cultic traditions. This historic conflict between the northern tribal heritage and the southern cult and ethos has very importance for understanding some of the factors and issues driving the Markan narrative. How do I see that?

It is my thesis that Mark is a descendent of the ancient heritage of the northern tribes which were situated in the Galilean region. In a post, "Guidelines for the Location of the Markan Community," which I submitted on XTalk and Kata Markon (2/29/00), I have made a case for Mark's provenance being the village area around Caesarea Philippi. I am convinced that Mark viewed himself as a Galilean with a strong dislike of Judeans and particularly the Judean Temple establishment. There is a very detectable pro-Galilean/anti-Judean bias in the Gospel. As a descendent of the ancient Israel heritage, it is not surprising that Mark makes Galilee Mecca for the dawning of the kingdom of God. Nor is it surprising that the betrayer-figure he has created is given the name IOUDAS (Judah), symbolically representing the IOUDAIOI (Judeans) of second Temple Judaism, who, again representative of his Judean namesakes, joins the conspiracy of the Judean Temple establishment that seeks to do away with Jesus (Mk. 3:6; 11:18; 12:12; 14:1-2, 10f.). Matthew and Luke, as I have posited, appropriated Mark's Judas and added to his legendary character. The same is true of John who was dependent upon Mark for among other things the passion narrative."

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/g...17/000643.html

What are your comments? I am sure Vork will find this very interesting wrt his historical commentary on Mark.

Any members of Kata Markon list here?

Aliet

Chris Weimer

:thumbs: I must use this. Thank you.

Vorkosigan

Thanks! That's very useful. I was leaning toward that myself.

Toto

So did Mark weave Galilee into his story based on Isaiah, or because he was a Galilean and wanted to make a point about regional politics?

What does spin say about this, since he thinks the linguistic evidence shows that gMark was written in Rome?

Weeden's Guildlines for Locating the Markan Community

I am unimpressed with his second guideline:

I think that calling Lake Gennesaret the Sea of Galilee is a literary device, and there is no need to assume that the author of Mark was such a bumpkin that he had no idea what a real sea looked like.

the_cave

Of course, there was also at least one person, maybe more, named Judas associated with the disciples--Judas the brother of Jesus, who also appears in Mark, and the Judas who accompanies Paul in Acts. There is also the tradition of giving Thomas the name of Judas. Whether the betrayal of Judas Iscariot has anything to do with actual events in the community is difficult if not impossible to say. But the historical inspiration may have been there as well.

rlogan

Psalms 41:9 may be involved here too, or at least that is argued by the crowd saying jesus fulfilled all these prophesies:

"Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me."

That particular psalm has other aspects attractive to the general themes borrowed from Isaiah.

The whole betrayal-through-trial scene is so heavily lifted from Isaiah (and HB in general) that this must play strongly in any analysis. Pulling in Zechariah for the 30 pieces of silver is a no-brainer if you have already committed yourself to the enterprise of HB prophesy slutting.


The anti-temple stance of the northern tribes is interesting. That wasn't fleshed out though in the OP, beyond there being "animosity", and the link to the name. For example, were there ancient beliefs or practices supressed by the temple cult that Markan material tips us off to?

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, all,

Judas was certainly an invention. It was a rather late invention, too. I estimate it dates to about 140 CE, round about the time when Christianity was hijacked from its previous Jewish roots, in the wider context of the official Roman antisemitism under Hadrian.

But to say that it was a Markan invention is just special pleading. This is just like saying "I know that Mark was the earliest gospel", so he must have invented Judas.

Well, since I, personally, don't believe that Mk was the earliest gospel, then I guess Judas wasn't an invention, right?

What I'm saying is that these two issues are entirely separate issues. Judas was an invention -- regardless of which gospel is taken to be the earliest.

As I've said a few times in the past, the way we see it now, our present day canonical Mk is a hybrid 19th century text based on some 4th and 5th century Egyptian Greek manuscripts. In other words, it is light years removed from the 1st century.

This is the reality, folks.

Best,

Yuri

Chris Weimer

Mark is not the earliest of all gospels, but he surely is the earliest of the 4 in Christianity. When we say Markan invention, we aren't really saying Mark invented it, but we are saying that Mark's predecessors invented it, i.e. whoever Mark stole it from may have used it.

Chris Weimer

How is it 19th century?

Yuri Kuchinsky

Please check out this on my webpage,

Westcott & Hort fraud
http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/whfraud.htm

Also some other related articles,

http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/cvers.htm

Regards,

Yuri.