The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Judas Priest?

Theology Biblical Theology
#1

Much has been written and speculated on the fate of Judas, including myself in a thread entitled “A Case for Judas”. But what I would like to focus on is a theory that could explain Judas in a much greater light than he is normally associated, all because of a matter over 30 shekels of silver…

But before I get into that, I would like to delve into the background of this man called Judas with some significant points:

  1. Judas was the only disciple that was not from Galilee.
  2. Iscariot in the Greek means “man from Keroith”, a city in Judah’s southern region. So it is natural to assume that this is where Judas was originally from.
  3. Judah, or Judea, is the area where Jerusalem, and of course the Temple, is located.
  4. Judas’ father was Simon Iscariot .
  5. In the incident of the woman with the alabaster jar who anointed Jesus’ feet, we are told that Jesus was in Simon’s house. Assuming it is the same Simon as Judas’ father, since Bethany is in Judah, then Simon was a Pharisee (cross reference the incident in Matthew 26:6-12 with a parallel account in Luke 7:36-40)
  6. Being a Pharisee, then, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Simon would have some interaction with the chief priests and scribes in Jerusalem.
  7. By association, that would mean that Judas could also have been in free communication with the same group of priests, even prior to the deal he made with them in betraying the Lord.
  8. Elsewhere on the forum, it has been said that Judas was a Bishop or Overseerer (I think Jason mentioned this somewhere)

I realize that this could be sort of a stretch, but if you will bear with me, all this will come into play in the theory momentarily, particularly on one important detail in the whole betrayal scenario that never occurred to me before.

30 shekels of silver is of course the amount that the chief priests agreed to pay Judas to deliver Jesus up to them:

“Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests, 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. And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him.” – Matthew 26:14-16:

It is also alluded to in a major prophesy in Zechariah 11:12-13

“And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver. And the LORD said unto me, Cast it unto the potter: a goodly price that I was prised at of them. And I took the thirty pieces of silver, and cast them to the potter in the house of the LORD.”

This prophesy is, in fact, later proclaimed fulfilled in Matthew 27:9-10, when Judas tosses the money back at the priests.

But there is one other mention of 30 shekels of silver that bears mentioning, and that is in the Law of Moses:

“If there be laid on him a sum of money, then he shall give for the ransom of his life whatsoever is laid upon him. Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter, according to this judgment shall it be done unto him. If the ox shall push a manservant or a maidservant; he shall give unto their master thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.” – Exodus 21:30-32

So the price, or ransom, for one’s ox goring a servant is 30 shekels of silver. Now I have tried to find out what 30 shekels of silver would be worth today, but I’m getting varying answers from $15 all the way up to $5000. But that depends on what weight measure you are calculating with. But I highly doubt that real estate prices for a plot of land in 1st century Palestine neared $5000, nor the price of a servant, for that matter.

The dollar amount is really inconsequential to the theory anyway. Suffice to say that whatever the cost, it wasn’t worth the price of the betrayal of a friend.

But it is what is done to the 30 shekels of silver that I would like to focus on:

“Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day.” – Matthew 27:3-8

NOTE THE FOLLOWING: Here is the detail that I want to direct your attention to. The word “temple” in the highlighted portion above is translated from the Greek as “naos”, which is the Holy Place in the Temple, where the golden candlestick, table of showbread, and the altar of incense were placed. It is different from the word “hieron” which describes the whole temple area and surrounding courts, which is where Jesus taught (see Matthew 26:55). Jesus didn’t ever enter the “naos”, BECAUSE HE WASN’T A LEVITE PRIEST. He was from the tribe of Judah.

*So how was Judas able to enter the Holy Place to cast the 30 shekels of silver? *

I suppose we can imagine a scenario where Judas ran helter skelter into the temple before anyone could react and somehow got access into the Holy Place, but then he would not gotten past the Temple Guard (see details of the temple guard of the Second Temple in this article: jewishencyclopedia.com/artic … service-of )

The only other way to get access is if JUDAS WAS A LEVITE PRIEST HIMSELF!

And here’s where I’m going with all this. If indeed Judas was a priest, then this business with the 30 shekels of silver may have more significance than that the price of a betrayal.

Consider this: The Passover lamb had to be “without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats”. The lambs are normally inspected by the priests and declared clean for sacrifice. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest set two goats aside and presents them to the Lord. Lots are cast and one goat is offered to the Lord as a sin offering and the other is set free as the scapegoat.

Many scholars will point to Pontius Pilate and the fact that he set Barabbas free and sent Jesus to be crucified (the scapegoat and the sacrificed goat), even though Pilate proclaimed Jesus as innocent. But Pilate was a Roman governor, not a Levite priest.

Furthermore, all the other chief priests declared Jesus guilty of blasphemy!

So who could rightfully proclaim Jesus clean as the Passover Lamb??

Could it be that Judas, who threw the 30 shekels of silver into the Holy Place as a ransom for a servant, and announced that he betrayed “innocent blood”, unwittingly fulfilled the role of a Levite priest, and Bishop/Overseer, in proclaiming Jesus innocent and clean as the Passover Lamb in accordance to the Law of Moses?

Furthermore, the 30 shekels of silver were used by the priests to purchase a potter’s field and called the “field of blood” because it was blood money. It has been surmised that this field was located in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, which most of us are familiar as “Gehenna”, which means the priests may have inadvertently purchased hell.

#2

Interesting… I always thought Judas was treated unfairly by most people. Has anyone read L. Ray Smith’s article on Judas regarding that it was better had he not been born? This is the short version from his emails…

#3

Even if that phrase was applied to Judas, it doesn’t necessarily mean he would endure hopeless eternity in hell. I take it that whatever good standing he might have had among the apostles is lost. He lost his reputation and meaning in this life. The Jews were very big on legacy.

#4

The bishop/overseer thing wouldn’t necessarily be relevant: Iscariot had the main duty for which Christian bishops were later chosen, keeping track of donations in order to give money to the poor. He might have been a tax collector originally instead, or a shopkeeper. (He couldn’t have been “Levi” since that man is clearly distinct from Judas Iscariot and parallels “Matthew” in other Synoptic accounts – but worth noting that Matthew Levi must have been from the priestly family!)

That Iscariot makes it all the way to the Naos however is a detail I hadn’t noticed before! – and I agree, that strongly suggests he had some permission to be there.

I can even add some corroborating textual evidence: harmonizers often infer that the disciple who lets Peter into the family compound of Annas (where Joseph Caiaphas, his son in law, either also lived or was at least gathering supporters for the emergency pre-trial inquiry that night/morning) was the beloved disciple, i.e. whichever John wrote/edited GosJohn (be that John bar Zebedee the Apostle, or John Mark, or John the son of Annas, or whatever. I tend to favor John Mark as a pet theory, as you may recall. But there are interesting connections from Papias suggesting it was John, brother of Alexander, son of Annas, who temporarily became high priest after Caiaphas was deposed and then was mysteriously replaced for no clear reason!)

But this would be the only time the BD referred to himself as a disciple without calling himself the BD, only “a disciple”.

Out of the known disciples of Jesus, called such, who were both certainly present at the arrest, and who also certainly had trusted permission to enter the high priest family compound, around midnight, at a panicky time for the Sanhedrin, even trusted so much as to be able to vouch for someone else being allowed in, we only know of one: Judas Iscariot.

#5

Having said all that: GosMatt doesn’t say Judas entered the Naos. Matthew says Judas threw the pieces of silver into the Naos, which tends to indicate he was standing outside it when he did so. (Though getting that far at all, on the day before Passover with the lambs still being slain, still suggests some priestly connections beyond just being an informant.)

Either way, why throw it into the Naos at all? Because the “showbread” wasn’t just for “show”, though it was typically brought out to show the people during religious services. It was bread which somehow was connected to God’s actual presence in the Temple: that’s why the priests would bring it out to show the people, saying “Behold the presence of God” or words to that effect. (I’d have to look up the precise wording, but it’s one of the obscured bits of scriptural evidence in favor of the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper.)

In other words, Judas was trying to give the money back to God since the priests wouldn’t take it.

#6

In that Jewish Encyclopedia article I referenced, it details various administrations of the Temple. Three officials were tasked as cashiers (or gizbarim) in charge of the Temple treasury. Perhaps Judas functioned as one of these, which would’ve given him credentials when it came to treasuring for the disciples, yet still have the clout to enter certain temple areas.

But wouldn’t Peter have been wary of suddenly finding Judas conveniently present to allow him through, particularly since he just saw Judas betray the Lord with a kiss?

But isn’t it traditionally thought that John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark?

#7

Sorry to derail, but am a bit disappointed this isn’t about the band Judas Priest, who oddly enough, wrote a heavy metal hymn that could easily apply to a Universalist view of Christ (if you add some comic book superhero trappings)…i posted about that a while ago. :laughing:

#8

Now where did I put my painkillers… I wonder if I left them between the hammer and anvil when I ran away from the night crawler. I’ll have to go in with all guns blazing to take care of him.

#9

That’s a pretty good theory! I can’t think of any direct support, but I do recall that the Sanhedrin had recently moved their offices to be closer to the treasury which also happened to be close to the Court of the Gentiles (thus also close to where the mercantilism was interfering with Gentile worship). The Pharisee party was hugely impressed with Jesus cleansing the Temple the first time (reported in GosJohn), and with Jesus standing up to the Sadducean party who (being connected with Annas and Caiaphas) had quickly shown up to challenge Him. The Pharisees spent the next three years divided over whether to support Jesus or not; maybe Judas signed up around the time of that Passover and the first cleansing.

Peter’s presence there under the circumstances would have been the weird thing; Iscariot’s would have been expected. We don’t have any information about how Peter and Iscariot related to one another, although being the group’s treasurer Judas must have been pretty high rank and we know Peter jostled with other apostles about who would outrank each other. (In this case, competing Satan figures!! :open_mouth: )

I can easily imagine scenarios where Iscariot promises Peter safe passage in and out, vouched on Iscariot’s word (which could have been a risk for Judas if Peter had tried to start trouble), so that Peter would be a ‘witness’ to whatever Judas thought Jesus’ failure had been and would be. That way Iscariot would be exonerated for what he had done, since by two witnesses in agreement the others would believe the report.

Yes, and I agree with that, too. But there are several lines of evidence pointing (though not decisively, and not without some serious problems, mainly from Papias) toward Mark having done the same thing for GosJohn as he did for GosMark. It would take too long for me to go into them, and nothing really hangs on the theory except some interesting solutions to a couple of harmonization puzzles.

#10

Yeah, it’s rather muddy when trying to pin down events in general in GosJohn since it varies significantly from the synoptic gospels. The early cleansing in John 2 seems out of place with the other accounts, as the synoptic accounts occur around Passion week. For one, John 2:23 states, “many believed in His name, when they saw the miracles he did”, but up to then, the only miracle recorded is the changing of water into wine, and even that one seemed covert. It’s almost seems like the cleansing account was inserted at that point in GosJohn.

So I don’t know if I buy that there are two cleansings. I would think that once would have caused enough ruckus to nearly have Jesus arrested, but surely He would’ve been detained if He were a repeat offender.

At any rate, I once contemplated on the theory that while the synoptic gospels spanned period of three years, GosJohn may be more compressed, perhaps covering only a period of a year from John 2 and onwards to John 12. (In a cursory scan of the GosJohn. I don’t see another mention of Passover between John 2 to John 12, but I could have missed something). There isn’t a second account of cleansing in GosJohn either, BTW

I would be interested in what your theories are on that line of reasoning. Perhaps you can touch on it in another thread?

#11

:laughing: :laughing: :laughing:
Just make sure you aren’t breakin’ the law!

#12

Or shoot da sheriff

#13

Quite possible, but I’d think it could simply the fact that Judas already having had prior dealings with the hierarchy would have been reason enough for him to gain access beyond what might normally be expected. :question:

#14

Here’s a question. If Judas wasn’t there, what alternative might unfold for Christ’s crucifixion?

#15

There’s a middle Passover in GosJohn: it’s the only account to clarify that the Feeding of the 5000 happened on a Passover. Of course, it isn’t totally three years, it’s two and a small fraction (and there aren’t other multiples of Feasts, or not clearly anyway).

The first Passover does seem to be when Jesus starts doing miracle-signs publicly even though we aren’t told of the details. On the way back from Jerusalem He goes through Samaria again (He would have done that to get to Cana earlier, too), and impresses the woman at the well with prophetic knowledge; then (based on a cue in GosJohn) goes on to Nazareth (having already moved His family to Capernaum probably, based on an earlier cue in GosJohn) and gets in trouble synagogue teaching there (reported in GosLuke). He takes the northern road out of Nazareth going back to Capernaum, through Cana again, and runs into the Nobleman (probably of the house of Herod, not the Centurion who also lived nearby north or south of Capernaum – I read somewhere once we can be pretty sure which nobleman it was for we know a child-friend of Herod who lived in the area, who grew up with Herod as one of his assigned playmates) whose son needs healing which Jesus does at a distance while complaining to other Jews nearby (not to this guy who had only arrived in desperate need) that they wouldn’t believe teaching without miraculous signs like this.

The evidence afterward from the Synoptics suggests that even when He returns to Capernaum and does several healing signs there, and calls Peter and James and John to follow Him, they actually don’t yet (having already refused the call once in GosJohn) because they want Him to stay in Capernaum rather than traveling around. It takes a third call, reported in GosLuke (though not as the third per se, but under quite different circumstances) before Peter and the others actually follow.

Anyway. Unless the incident with Nicodemus is supposed to happen very late in the final week, and not as early in the ministry as GosJohn suggests, then he himself says the Pharisees were largely agreeing Jesus had to be some kind of prophet thanks to the miracles He had been doing in Jerusalem on that Passover. From rabbinic evidence later (after the Pharisee party rose to full power and the Sadducees ceased to exist as a party at all), they would have been hugely impressed with His daring in cleaning the Court of the Gentiles that first time (and maybe later though with more interparty hostility involved) and standing up to the challenge of the Sadduccean chief priests afterward: the Pharisees had strongly criticized Annas and Sons for making the Court of Gentiles that way, too! There is no hostility from them yet in the Nicodemus scene, unlike at the final Passover where GosJohn says (supported by some evidence in the Synoptics) that many religious leaders wanted to believe in Him but (at least a strong faction in) the Pharisees were scaring them into keeping quiet about it. (In between the two scenes, about half the Pharisees repeatedly are trying to side with Jesus against the other Pharisees! – although even the half who back Jesus, are rebuked by Jesus and end up trying to stone Him after defending Him. But their defenses of Him in GosJohn continue on.)

Also, the Evangelist goes on after the Nicodemus-by-night incident to say, “After these things”, i.e. after the signs Jesus did in Jerusalem during Passover week, including cleaning the Court of Gentiles, and meeting with Nicodemus, “Jesus and His disciples went into the Judean countryside, and there He stayed for a while with them while they baptized.” (i.e. baptized some of the people who had begin putting their trust in Him during Passover. This probably takes place east of Jerusalem past Jericho at the River Jordan.) "And John was also baptizing, in Aenon near Salim, where many waters were; people still were coming to him to be baptized, for John had not yet been thrown into jail. At this time there arose a discussion between some of John’s disciples and a Jew, concerning cleansing. So they went to John and said to him: ‘Rabbi; He who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, of Whom you have testified – look! He is baptizing and everyone now is going to Him!’

“John said in answer,” ‘what are you people talking about, I’ve been dead for at least two years, and Jesus should be dead now, too, and risen again!’ :wink:

GosJohn’s author (editor/redactor/whatever) treats the unnarrated signs as occurring in the same time frame as the life and testimony of John the Baptist. There are plenty of time-space cues connecting the whole sequence together in GosJohn. When Jesus knew the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John – although certainly (the Evangelist adds) Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples were – He left Judea, and came away again into Galilee, taking the route through Samaria which would pass near Jacob’s well, thence through Nazareth (on the southern border of Galilee) up around and back east again to the northwestern shore of Lake Galilee and Capernaum (with its fisherton suburb on the shore). And GosJohn’s narrative starts to synch up with parts of the Synoptics again along the way, after meeting the Samaritan woman at the well and staying there a while evangelizing and moving on.

In short: there are strong time-place cues connecting the subtly but importantly different cleansing scene in GosJohn to the narrative flow of GosJohn; and there are pretty strong time-place cues doing the same for the subtly but importantly different cleansing of the Temple in the final week. That’s significant evidence of two cleansing incidents, one near the beginning (in a less mutually hostile fashion) and one toward the end of Jesus earthly ministry.

#16

I wrote almost 500 pages of harmonization study one spring, several years ago. :ugeek: :mrgreen: I still add to it occasionally – in fact I added the clarification that Judas through the money into the Holy Place a few days ago, thanks to this very thread! :smiley:

For some reason I don’t think I’ve ever posted it here, but it can be found in an earlier form at the Cadre Journal here: christiancadre.blogspot.com/2008 … index.html

#17

Thanks Jason, for clarifying the timeline. Yeah, I missed the Passover in John 6. and I appreciate the link to Cadre with the harmonization study. When I have time, I might just peruse it. At least it’s not the 800+ pages of your other work (which I did read, incidentally). :slight_smile:

#18

I’m of the opinion that God can work a contingency plan in any situation. Look what He did in the case of Judah’s sons in Genesis 38. The messianic line was preserved, though not conventionally.

#19

Fwiw, the wordcount for the harmonization project is less than the pagecount would suggest: a number of those pages are only contents and scripture indexes; and there aren’t many long paragraphs. :slight_smile:

#20

My hunch is that Jesus cleansed the Temple only once, at the beginning of His ministry (as reported by John). The Synoptics have no choice but to put it at the end of Christ’s ministry because they report only His final visit to Jerusalem. He couldn’t have very well cleansed the Temple unless He was in Jerusalem! (In fact, my hunch is that the Olivet Discourse was also given at the beginning rather than at the end of Christ’s ministry.)

While a lot of scholars posit that a Temple cleansing at the end of Christ’s ministry led to His arrest and death, I go with John’s claim that it was Christ’s raising of Lazarus that led to His death.