Judas and Pilate: a comparison

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Giuseppe
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Judas and Pilate: a comparison

Post by Giuseppe »

My previous thread (about a possible reason behind the late introduction of Pilate in the Earliest Gospel) had raised the concrete possibility of a feature shared by both Judas and Pilate: both are seen in the fatidic act of ''giving'' Jesus to their Jewish killers.

I wonder if there is some other feature in common to both, Pilate and Judas.

And surely it is the following:

43 And immediately, even as Jesus said this, Judas, one of the twelve disciples, arrived with a crowd of men armed with swords and clubs. They had been sent by the leading priests, the teachers of religious law, and the elders. 44 The traitor, Judas, had given them a prearranged signal: “You will know which one to arrest when I greet him with a kiss. Then you can take him away under guard.” 45 As soon as they arrived, Judas walked up to Jesus. “Rabbi!” he exclaimed, and gave him the kiss.


15 Very early in the morning the leading priests, the elders, and the teachers of religious law—the entire high council —met to discuss their next step. They bound Jesus, led him away, and took him to Pilate, the Roman governor.
2 Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Jesus replied, “You have said it.

In both the cases there is an entire Group (scribes & pharisees) who wants by a third person (respectively Judas and Pilate) the recognition of the true identity of Jesus.

From the promise of Jusad addressed to his instigators :
You will know...
...it is possible to conclude that this promise will fail to be fulfilled: the scribes and pharisees don't know who is really Jesus, even if Judas is able to point him in a physical (only apparently physical?) sense.

(NOTE EN PASSANT: it is curious that in Mark there is no answer by Jesus to Judas: evidently that answer (basically: ''so do you betray me?'') was put on the mouth of Jesus by the later evangelists, so ardent to deny the embarrassing fact that, in Mark, Judas was unable to recognize Jesus. Again, was this so because in Mark Jesus had only apparently a body?)


But then also Pilate has the same function of Judas: Jesus is put before to him to verify that at least Pilate can have success where already Judas had failed: to allow a recognition of the true Jesus.

This time Pilate is more astute than Judas: he addresses a question to Jesus. But Jesus replies enigmatically. Basically he doesn't add knowledge to the knowledge of which Pilate is already in possession (that Jesus was the ''king of the Jews''). So also Pilate failed.

I confess that all this seems pure marcionism (please don't confuse my definition of marcionism with the 'marcionitism' of Secret Alias).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Judas and Pilate: a comparison

Post by Giuseppe »

So again and again we note that the role of a Judas and the role of a Pilate (beyond their different nationality) is exhausted all in the will to investigate who Jesus really is.

Failing the attempt punctually in both the cases.

Hardly a role that could be found in the Earliest Gospel with the his more simple trama: the Jews crucify Jesus. Period.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Judas and Pilate: a comparison

Post by Giuseppe »

The fact that in the Earliest Gospel only the Jews appear (and not Pilate, and not Judas) and only them crucify Jesus, may explain the origin of the Messianic Secret found later in Mark.

If the Jews killed their same king, then basically they didn't recognize him. So the Messianic Secret is pure late literary embellishment to explain this background of the story, not the Earliest Gospel per se. I may define it ''an euhemerization of an euhemerization''.

In virtue of the same reason, I think that the famous fragment of Mara Bar Serapion talks really about the euhemerized Jesus of the Christians, and I wonder why the Mythicists (even the great Earl Doherty) have dismissed it (!) so rapidly as a reference to Jesus, when it is so clear that it is a proof of the first true euhemerization of Jesus (of the Jesus crucified only by the Jews in the Earliest Gospel):

What are we to say, when the wise are dragged by force by the hands of tyrants, and their wisdom is deprived of its freedom by slander, and they are plundered for their superior intelligence, without the opportunity of making a defense? They are not wholly to be pitied. For what benefit did the Athenians obtain by putting Socrates to death, seeing that they received as retribution for it famine and pestilence? Or the people of Samos by the burning of Pythagoras, seeing that in one hour the whole of their country was covered with sand? Or the Jews by the murder of their wise king, seeing that from that very time their kingdom was driven away from them? For with justice did God grant a recompense to the wisdom of all three of them. For the Athenians died by famine; and the people of Samos were covered by the sea without remedy; and the Jews, brought to desolation and expelled from their kingdom, are driven away into every land. Nay, Socrates did not die, because of Plato; nor yet Pythagoras, because of the statue of Hera; nor yet the wise king, because of the new laws which he enacted.

http://www.textexcavation.com/marabarse ... onium.html

Surely in the intention of the earliest author of the Jesus legend, there was not reason at all why ''the Jews'' killed Jesus: it was only a crude euhemerization of the spiritual crucifixion of the original (pre-70) Myth of Jesus.

But Mara bar Serapion is for me evidence of the rapid diffusion, at a popular level, of that so crude and simple Earliest Gospel.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Giuseppe
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Re: Judas and Pilate: a comparison

Post by Giuseppe »

Wow! I was arrived independently about the conclusion that Mara Bar Serapion reflected the first rashly euhemerized idea of Jesus and I had linked accordingly the first page given by Google about the text of Mara Bar Serapion...

...without realize still who was the author of that page in the far 2008:

This identification is, in my estimation, so strong on its own merits that we are entitled to turn it around and use it to shed light on pagan attitudes toward Christianity. While pagan sympathizers must have been relatively rare, they must also have existed. Interestingly, it is again Matthew who calls our attention to the possibility of their existence when he has pagan magi (Matthew 2.1-12) come to render homage to the infant Jesus, precisely as the king of the Jews.

TextExcavation 2018.
Ben C. Smith, author and designer.
File last modified 06/09/2008 08:11:13.

But a criticism is necessary: whereas Ben imagined a dependence from Matthew, I think that it is more probable a dependence from the Earliest Gospel, more old than Mark.
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Judas and Pilate: a comparison

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Giuseppe wrote: Tue Jun 05, 2018 7:12 am Wow! I was arrived independently about the conclusion that Mara Bar Serapion reflected the first rashly euhemerized idea of Jesus and I had linked accordingly the first page given by Google about the text of Mara Bar Serapion...

...without realize still who was the author of that page in the far 2008:

This identification is, in my estimation, so strong on its own merits that we are entitled to turn it around and use it to shed light on pagan attitudes toward Christianity. While pagan sympathizers must have been relatively rare, they must also have existed. Interestingly, it is again Matthew who calls our attention to the possibility of their existence when he has pagan magi (Matthew 2.1-12) come to render homage to the infant Jesus, precisely as the king of the Jews.

TextExcavation 2018.
Ben C. Smith, author and designer.
File last modified 06/09/2008 08:11:13.

Yes, that is my website. But it is an old one, and some of the points it makes I might well disown today. (In fact, I know this to be the case, because somebody on this forum once quoted me from that site and I found the quote to be downright cringeworthy.) The raw information I made a sincere attempt to get right every single time; my interpretations, however, are not always going to be the same ones I am working with today.
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Secret Alias
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Re: Judas and Pilate: a comparison

Post by Secret Alias »

You see great minds think alike ...
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
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