Bible Books

010

The Search for the Historical Judas

Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus?

William Klassen
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996) 238 pp., $19 (paperback)

Tradition has been hard on Judas of Iscariot. His very name has become synonymous with treachery and greed, while the “kiss of Judas” has come to signify the ultimate in betrayal. In paintings of the Last Supper, he is often seated apart from the other disciples, unworthy to dine with them. His bulging moneybag is invariably displayed prominently. This standard view of Judas may be attributed to a cultural soft spot: blindness to the anti-Semitism of some Christian interpretation and translation of the Bible.

For many Christian interpreters, Jesus and his faithful disciples symbolized Christians and all that was good; Judas, the unfaithful disciple, symbolized evil, especially the Jews who had rejected and, according to traditional anti-Jewish theology, killed Jesus.

Now the search for the historical Judas has begun. In Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus? William Klassen challenges what we think we know about Judas and the Passion. As a well-known Mennonite scholar who has written extensively on Jesus’ love command and on the ethics of peace, Klassen is an ideal candidate to make a case for this purportedly errant disciple.

Klassen’s soundings provide stunning examples of the rabid rhetoric that has shaped our views of Judas Iscariot. Take—as a simple yet telling example—the author’s notes on the Greek verb paradidonai. In the Passion narrative, this verb is usually translated literally as “to hand over” (Matthew 20:18–19, 26:2, 27:2, 18). But when applied to Judas’s actions, the verb is more often rendered “to betray”—a selective treatment that has led some New Testament scholars (who should know better) to refer to Judas as “the Betrayer.”

Klassen’s reinterpretation of Judas focuses on two events—Judas’s suicide, as recounted in Matthew 27:3–5, and the Last Supper, in John 13. According to Matthew’s gospel, after seeing that Jesus has been condemned, Judas repents and tries to return the money he received as an informant. He throws down the coins in front of the Jewish priests and leaders and then departs to hang himself. According to Klassen, Judas became an informer for the chief priests in the hope that he could arrange a meeting between Jesus and the authorities, enabling them to reach an understanding. In this interpretation, Judas had understood Jesus’ predictions that he would be handed over to the authorities as a desire on his part to confront those authorities with his reform program. Judas did not take Jesus’ predictions of his crucifixion seriously and thought of himself as helping Jesus. He never expected him to be executed. Unfortunately, in reframing Judas’s motivations, Klassen reflects on his psychology, sometimes without any support from the biblical narrative.

Klassen makes the surprising argument that Judas’s suicide in Matthew is a sort of self-sacrifice, intended to remove the curse on the land incurred by the death of an innocent person (Deuteronomy 21:23; Jeremiah 26:15), in this case Jesus. Klassen asserts that Judas reproaches only himself when he laments spilling “innocent blood” (Matthew 27:4). But this puts too fine a point on the narrative; Judas may also have been admonishing the Jewish leaders who hired him. Further, 012Klassen’s construction has the unintended effect of throwing all the blame back on Judas.

Working from the assumption that the evangelists edited the traditions they received, Klassen mines the gospel narratives for those details he wishes to use to reconstruct the history of Judas. He looks primarily at Matthew 26:14–16, 21–25, 47–50 and 27:3–10, and John 6:70–71, 13:2, 21–30 and 18:2–9. Klassen falters when dealing with those passages that do not fit neatly into his scheme.

Matthew’s is not the only New Testament account of Judas’s death. The other version, in Acts 1:16–20, does not lend itself to Klassen’s positive reconstruction. In Acts, Judas purchases a field with the money he earned “and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.” This version makes Judas’s death look suspiciously like the death of an evil persecutor, as described in other gruesome passages: The Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes, whose attempts to suppress the Jews led to the Maccabean Revolt in 168–164 B.C.E., was seized with pain in the bowels after being struck down by God and then “fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body” (2 Maccabees 9:7–12). Herod Agrippa, an oppressor of the early Christians, was struck by God and eaten by worms before he died (Acts 12:23). Klassen tries, unsuccessfully, to downplay this resemblance by noting that unlike the other two, Judas is not guilty of blasphemous self-deification and that his death is not clearly caused by divine intervention.

Klassen asks exegetes to read the Passion narratives as if all parties involved acted out of the best motives. Whatever one makes of his reconstruction of Judas, Klassen clearly illustrates the error in viewing Judas as “the Betrayer.” Judas, Klassen reveals, is, at worst, a rather ambiguous informer who meant no harm. Ironically, Klassen treats other disciples, especially Peter, more harshly than traditional readings do, calling Mark’s Peter, for example, “satanic.” Perhaps even Klassen’s gentler posture cannot avoid the polemic cast of ancient narratives. Nonetheless, the sad history of Judas and anti-Semitism in Christian preaching and theology adds urgency to Klassen’s case. This book presents a fascinating challenge to all Christians.

Jesus as Healer

Harold Remus
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997) x + 149 pp., $34.95 (hardcover), $10.95 (paperback)

Miracles have embarrassed modern liberal Christians because they seem to contradict science, just as science has flustered conservative Christians because it sometimes seems to contradict the Bible. Conservatives have affirmed their faith with little rational explanation (an approach called fideism), and liberals have fudged or denied the reality of miracles in deference to the dominant empirical worldview. Harold Remus, who has previously distinguished himself through his studies of miracles and healing in antiquity, responds to the prevailing confusion by taking us behind modern presuppositions about medicine, sickness 014and healing to ancient views of gods, humans, demons, bodies and illness. He reviews the healing practices of Jesus and of his early followers in each gospel and in some apocryphal writings. Remus’s final chapter compares ancient experience with modern holistic and communal healing.^a

The first-century inhabitants of the eastern Roman Empire recognized Jesus’ healing power as a common phenomenon expected of a powerful leader or holy man. For them sickness was not a disease subject to scientific analysis (diagnosis) and cured by medical treatment, but an illness (lack of health) experienced by the whole person. Illness could be caused and healed in a variety of natural and supernatural ways. Stories of Greco-Roman and Near Eastern healers, including those of Jesus in the Gospels, follow a similar pattern, which includes a description of the illness; contact with the healer; healing by words, gestures, touch or ritual; and, finally, proof of the healing. Jesus as a healer uses less ritualized words and gestures than most healers and is 045unique in combining teaching with healing.

Remus’s chapters on the four Gospels provide a good sense of the main themes of each gospel, how the healings fit into each gospel and a variety of insights into the miracle stories themselves. For example, when Matthew tells the story of the cure of a paralytic (Matthew 9:2–8), he severely abbreviates Mark’s account (Mark 2:1–12), as he often does, to focus on a central theme. Since Jesus responds to the faith of those bringing the paralytic to him (Matthew 9:2), many commentators have seen this as the point of the story. However, the mention of faith at the beginning of the story is not repeated in the narrative. Rather, the ability of a human (Jesus) to forgive sins permeates the narrative and reaches a climax in the crowd’s acclamation of God, who gave the power to forgive sins “to men” (Matthew 9:8). The author of Matthew has used the cure of the paralytic to support his position that the early followers of Jesus could forgive sins.

The author of the Gospel of Luke links Jesus’ healing with prophetic healings in the Hebrew Bible (Luke 7:1–7; 2 Kings 5:1–19; 1 Kings 17:17–24). He also stresses evil spirits as the origin of many illnesses, a common view in antiquity. For example, when Jesus cures the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law, he “rebukes” or “subjugates” it as though it were a sentient force (Luke 4:39). In all the gospel narratives, the healing of an illness is not just the restoration of health but a returning of the person to normal social relationships and roles.

In the final chapter Remus wrestles with the truth of the healing stories in relationship to 20th-century norms. Numerous studies have shown that bodily healing may be encouraged not only by medical intervention, but by psychological intervention, personal relationships, belief systems and individual attitudes. Numerous cross-cultural studies have shown that traditional healers are generally effective if their social group is convinced that “healings occur through the efforts of healers, with failures being explained in various ways.”

Although the interaction between healer and ill person cannot be scientifically weighed and explained, it is nevertheless plausible that healing is taking place. The same may be said for Jesus’ activities more than 1,900 years ago. We cannot know all the particulars of his healings, since the stories are stylized, but the process of reaching out to others to aid them is present in the narratives about Jesus and has been imitated by Christians in ministry ever since.

Understood this way, healing miracles are not empirical proofs for the divinity of Jesus, as traditional apologetic theology claims, but rather are an essential guide for Christian living and practice. As for the empirical truth of miracles, which the 20th century wants either to reconcile with science or to deny altogether, a healthy awareness of the limits of our knowledge should temper our questions and conclusions.

The Search for the Historical Judas

Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus?