LogicandReason

I find it interesting that the Jews did not consider him the Messiah (to my knowledge, nobody did). He seems to facilitate the actions required a Messiah..politically. We know his father was quite religious but nothing about his religious fervor; only that he was a great military hero.

I'm not really positing that the two Judas are archetype and copy...rather, that early Christians, in an effort to discredit the developing Rabbinical Judaism and the High Priest system of the recently destroyed Temple used the name of the recent hero as he symbolized the orthodox power structure.

LogicandReason

Admitting my mere speculation, the evangelist writers, either following a developing oral tradition or from Mark's lead, deliberately try to discredit and blame the (then existing) Temple system for Jesus trail and death (most likely a legend as there are exactly zero historical references or artifacts that attest to either). You think the name Judas (Judah), which symbolically represents the Jewish people, is a coincidence?

Unfortunately this disagreement or competition between (then) two Jewish sects escalated into the violence against Jews for two millennia.

Analyst

Thomas / Didymus / the Twin supposedly was actually named Judas.

bacht

The author of Daniel describes the conflict with the Syrians in apocalyptic terms. And Judah did purify the temple after Antiochus' defilement ("the abomination of desolation")

It may be that Jews of the time were reluctant to apply messianic titles to contemporaries. By the early 2nd C they were eager enough to proclaim Bar Kochba as such.

bacht

Do you mean the institution of the Temple itself, or the degradation of the priesthood after the murder of Onias III, the last in the traditional Zaddokite lineage?

LogicandReason

The institution. After reading Josephus, I gleaned that the office of High Priest was more political and about $$ than being born in the linage of Zadok during Seleucid and later the Hasmonean rule. Herod surely paid no attention to it. By the time the evangelist were writing, the Zadokite linage was long broker as to the position of High Priest.

jjramsey

I can say that the statement "2+2=5" is an axiom, but that doesn't make it true.

Why, for example, is coincidence not a good enough explanation for why Judas the Galilean and Judas the Maccabee have the same first name?

Toto

Is it a coincidence? I don't know. Judas the Galilean was named after someone.

But in any case, those are two characters in different subplots in a historical drama with many players. We have no indication that this Judas Iscariot was a real person, and he is one of the main characters in this drama. The explanation that aMark picked that name to refer to an established historical character is a reasonable explanation, and more likely than many others. It cannot be compared to expecting zebras when you hear hoofbeats.

LogicandReason

First, both men are historically recorded. Second, neither become a pejorative associated to deicide. I don't think Josephus' Judas the Galilean was portrayed as a bad guy - he simply reflected the political unrest of the time after the death of Herod the great and under the rule of the inept Archelaus.

But you bring another point to view, did the evangelists, or oral traditions, portray Jesus as hailing from Galilee in view of that regions political unrest and sedition? Another coincidence?

aa5874

Well, based on Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius it would seem that the Jews epected the Messiah or ruler as stated in Daniel at around 70 CE.

It should be noted that the only text in the OT where a Messiah is mentioned is in the book of Daniel and it would seem that the arrival of the Messiah or ruler was deduced using the 70-weeks as 70X7 or 490 years after the so-called prediction.