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  • From: JFAlward AT aol.com
  • To: gmark AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Jesus and Judas
  • Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 01:59:00 EST

In regard to the betrayal by Jesus with a kiss, Karel Hanhart wrote on 2/23:

But elsewhere (Open Tomb p.449) I proposed to interpret the incident as a
midrash on LXX 2 Sam 20.9, where Joab met Amasa with a kiss and a greeting,
"Is it well with you, my brother?"  For precisely the next verse (v. 10) is
quoted in the account of Judas' suicide in Acts 1.18, "Joab struck him [with
the sword] in the belly so that his entrails poured out on the ground."  In
other words the blow with which Judas (representing the high priest) wanted
to kill Jesus, turned upon himself.  With S. Sandmel, I believe Judas is
fictive.  Judas incorporates in my view a series of high priests (in Mark
always in the plural) and in his person he is acting out their misdeeds which
in  turn delivered the death stroke on themselves and the temple (70 CE).
======================================

My response:

The parallel Karel Hanhart points out at first seems quite sharp.  Two points
of comparison stand out:


1.  Jesus was killed because he was a dangerous rival for the high priests;
likewise, Amasa was killed because he was a dangerous rival for Joab (whose
job Amasa had been given: 2 Samuel 19:13).  

2.  Jesus' death was facilitated by a greeting and a kiss:  the subsequent
identification of Jesus to the armed crowd led to his trial and death.  
Likewise, Amasa's death was facilitated by a greeting and a kiss:  Amasa was
put off guard by the embrace and kiss and was stabbed in the belly.

But, there are many differences.  Mark's Jesus is Samuel's David, and his
Judas is Ahithophel, David's friend and counselor, as was pointed out at
least as long ago as 1897 in Easton's Bible Dictionary (available online),
and more recently in a helpful post by Ted Weeden. Mark, in my opinion, did
not wish for his readers--then, or now--to connect Joab with Judas, as
Hanhart seems to suggest, for if they were do so it would force them to see
Amasa as the prefigurement of Jesus, and that is something Mark definitely
wouldn't have wanted.  Mark worked too hard to write stories showing that
Jesus was the Lord promised David would one day occupy his throne to risk
confusing the reader about who was the prefigurement of Jesus:  It was David,
not Amasa.  

I also don't see a strong connection between Amasa's intestines spilling
after Joab stabbed him in the belly, and what Luke said happened to Judas, as
Karel seems to suggest.   Judas wasn't stabbed, of course; Luke had Judas
fall and burst open like an old wineskin bloated with new wine, because he
was unable to stomach new ideas.  (I've not seen this latter explanation
anywhere before, but that might just show I've not read as much as I should
have; please let me know if others have already offered this explanation for
Luke's description.)

Luke 5:36-38
 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the
new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will
be ruined.
 

Acts 1:17-19 (With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a
field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines
spilled out.



Finally, Karel believes that Judas "incorporates in [his] view a series of
high priests...acting out their misdeeds which in turn delivered the death
stroke on themselves and the temple."

I agree that Judas was almost as evil as the high priest (at least Judas
hanged himself in Matthew's story), but there's no indication in any of the
gospels that the authors wished for the readers to connect Judas' death
symbolically to the defeat of the high priests and the destruction of their
temple.  As I indicated above, Judas was just an old wineskin not ready for
new wine (in Acts).  Furthermore, in order that Judas' death be symbolic of
the self-destruction of the high priests and their temple, but one must point
not to the bursting in Acts, but the self-destruction by hanging in Matthew.  
In any case, this would just be a personal theology; there's no evidence that
any of the gospel writers had this type of symbolism in mind.

There still remains the apparently unsolved problem of why Mark tells us that
a signal was necessary before the arrest could be made.  The only thing that
makes sense to me is that Mark 14: 44, 45 were added later, perhaps to evoke
memories of the Joab-Amasa betrayal with a kiss scene in Samuel.  Whoever
added those verses would have had to have been uncomprehending of the
conflict with Mark 14: 49, and therefore might not have been bright enough to
know that comparing Jesus to Amasa and Judas to Joab would work against
original Mark's plan.

I'd appreciate hearing anyone's thoughts on this matter.


Regards,

Joe Alward
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html


  • Re: Jesus and Judas, JFAlward, 02/23/2001
    • <Possible follow-up(s)>
    • Re: Jesus and Judas, JFAlward, 02/25/2001

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