rhutchin

Judas' role was to lead the soldiers to Jesus at a convenient time when He was not surrounded by the crowds.

Matthew 26
14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,
15 And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.
16 And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.

neilgodfrey

The crowd theory is actually a contradiction of the theory that says he needed someone to identify him, as many argue. If he was so much a crowd person, then it is hard to understand why a Judas was needed to identify him. If a Judas was needed to identify him, then it would suggest the crowd following was a wild exaggeration or invention.

But back to your point:

John 7:45-46 says armed soldiers had no problem approaching Jesus to arrest him in the middle of a crowd. It was just that they got a bit overly awed by his oratory and that's what stopped them.

Whenever did Temple police, especially with Roman troops in the background on the ready to maintain order, have to worry about crowds?

Or why not wait a couple of days till Passover was over and then nab him if crowds were really a worry because all the Roman occupiers were AWOL and the Jewish police had lost all their weapons?

Or why not simply follow him to the house and grab him before he had time to sit down and eat, and who knows, maybe even catch him in what could be framed as an illegal meeting to hatch some plot?

Remember Lazarus? If Jesus was perfectly safe without a Judas, what need was there for a nobody like Lazarus to have a worry? "So the authorities want to kill me? Ha, how does anyone in the police department know what I even look like? No worries!"

My point is that the narrative as we have it does not make much sense. As I said, even children ask why Judas was needed to identify such a public figure. The plot lacks the plausibility to persuade children.

Jane H

Sorry- I missed this first time through. An interesting question although it's a bit off topic.

Describing God's transcendent nature is never going to be easy. The simple if vague formulae of C1 are to be preferred to creeds IMHO.

In 2009 the focus on Jesus is mostly on his divinity. In C1, the focus was very much more on Jesus as a man who was of the same nature as God. A different “Who” to YHWH, but the same “What”. Just as the cloud before the Israelites represented the presence of YHWH, but not his entirety, Jesus represented the presence of YHWH, but not his entirety. This meant a restriction on knowledge (e.g. not knowing the timetable for the Temple destruction in Matt 24), the ability to feel pain and die, and the need to go wee wee like the rest of us.

He was a human who turned out to be on the divine side of the equation. I'm not even sure he knew he would come back again- not in the sense that I know I had Alpen for breakfast, anyway. More like in the sense I know my mother loves me.

Jane H

There is no reason at all to suppose this. The passage fits excellently with the surrounding topic (inappropriate behaviour during the Lord's Supper). Further, the meal as described is exactly the same combination of eating and religious ceremony that were engaged in the chaburah meals as described in earlier posts- there is a clearly unbroken trajectory going on. Finally, a claim of interpolation would also have to deal with the earlier arguments in previous posts such as my double similarity/dissimilarity exercise.

Jane H

(Judas) I can't see the problem here. No miracles are being claimed. Most of us have had the experience (more than once in my case), where you think you see someone famous, and it takes a lot of looking to establish whether it is or not. I remember watching an Edinburgh fringe play, and then seeing one of the cast members two weeks later in Birmingham. At least, I and the rest of my group think it probably was them. Even though we had plenty of time to look at them on both occasions, we're still not sure.

Jesus operated outside Jerusalem almost entirely until the end, and the random Jerusalem based mob were just making sure they got the right person.


(Pilate) Compare with the golden shields in the Herodian palace incident. Having offended the Jews, who then threaten to tell Tiberius; as Philo records in Legatio- “So with all his vindictiveness and furious temper, he was in a difficult position, He had not the courage to take down what had been dedicated nor did he wish to do anything which would please his subjects”.

Exactly the same when he saw Jesus. Torn between a wish to snub the Jews, and the need to keep on the right side of Tiberius. The hand washing has in the intervening centuries acquired a perspective it didn't have at the time. No Roman felt the need to wash hands to remove impurity- but the Jews did. It wasn't a serious action, but a nasty “spoof”.

rhutchin

As we understand from the Bible, Judas was not needed to identify Jesus. People knew who Jesus was. Judas' role was to lead the temple police to Jesus when Jesus would not be surrounded by the crowds. This happened in the middle of the night, in the garden, with only His disciples around Him.

avi

Off topic?
Who is this "he", Jane, in Steven's sentence, above. It is Jesus, right?
If nothing else, Jane, I hope you realize that by employing this word, "God", i.e. "God's transcendent nature...", when the focus of the thread is discussing "Jesus", you are clarifying to us, that, in your mind, Jesus = God, i.e. that the two are relatively synonymous, to the extent that the trinitarian doctrine explains this situation, at least to the satisfaction of Christians, if no one else.

If so, then, obviously, Jesus is/was omniscient. In my opinion, you need to focus your answer, to my question, without recourse to:

Jane, your response is simply inadequate. God/Jesus i.e. supernatural beings who created the universe and time itself, for that matter, certainly cannot be pigeonholed by mere humans. Their powers and skills and abilities cannot be questioned by ordinary flesh and blood. Nonsense. These are GODS, not people. People, humans, can be confused about this or that interpretation in the first century, versus two millenia later, but not Gods, Jane. We cannot at the same time, ascribe divinity to Jesus, and then state, with calm assurance, that folks living in the first century did not know enough about Gods' properties to rationally explain whether or not Jesus felt pain, or knew the date or time of his forthcoming execution. Nonsense.

The question here is not, what did people think 2000 years ago, the question is, was Jesus a God? If he was, then, "game over". End of story. If Jesus were divine, then, supernatural powers existed, regardless of our silly, frail, human shortcomings, which may have prevented us from detecting or recognizing those supernatural powers.

We cannot summon our own lack of ability, to justify a claim that Jesus was only human. If Jesus is a god, then clearly, he is not "only human".

Jane, do you understand the concept of omnipotence?

People, Jane, humans, need extra help planting, cultivating, harvesting the crops, and raising the goats. Gods do not require such a team approach. If a god is omnipotent, it can do anything, at any time, without requiring a "son", or a "holy ghost". People, not Gods, need all hands on deck. Your idea that Jesus represented the presence of Yahweh, but not the complete God, represents a human attempt to limit and describe, or even, quantify, the power of God. You have no such right to attempt to describe the limits of Gods' omnipotence. (Neither did the authors of "the cloud before the Israelites".)

Do you have the right, Jane, to limit the quantity of trees that Paul Bunyan could cut down, or the size of the largest stump that Babe the Blue Ox could pull out of the ground?

Again, you, an ordinary human, are assigning to God, abilities, skills, and perceptions, which are attributes of humans, not omnipotent, supernatural creatures. The idea, expressed above, that "He was a human,..." is the epitome of arrogance, for you (a) have no evidence that this is true, and (b) have lots of evidence that it is false, for the document which you revere, the "bible", claims that Jesus was a god or the god, depending upon one's interpretation. People are not Gods, Jane.

avi

show_no_mercy

This topic is still on the first page http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=228640

neilgodfrey

But if they knew who he was then why did Judas tell them they would know which one it was by seeing whom he kissed? (Mark 14:44). This is the problem. Each explanation one comes up with falls over another piece of data in the narrative.

You chose to ignore the 5 points I made in the middle of my post that actually, I believe, refute your argument.

I get the impression you are attempting to imagine possible explanations -- but if you try to find evidence for your answers in the Bible, they are simply not there. The answers all come from your own imagination? Yes?

Steven Carr

Matthew 26:48
Now the betrayer had arranged a signal with them: "The one I kiss is the man; arrest him."

Why did Jesus know this was going to happen, and so needed to institute a meal whereby the cult could obtain access to his body?

Presumably because Jesus knew the others would not be arrested....