Judas Significance Across the Gospels

JUDAS IS A significant biblical figure: the archetypal and infamous traitor, with whom no-one wants to be associated (although many would gladly associate their enemies with him!). But how significant is he? Today is a statistical response to that question. First, let us propose a methodology: count the number of words per Judas narrative, count the number of words in the books holding those narratives and divide the former by the latter to arrive at a percentage. That percentage is the amount of space given specifically to Judas by the gospel writer relative to their total. Since part of Luke's Judas narrative occurs in Acts 1, I have added Acts chapter 1 to Luke's total words.

So we arrive at the somewhat surprising following pie chart:

Because I have been studying the Judas narratives for a while, I was not too surprised to see how dominant John was when I crunched the numbers. The reason for a bigger focus for John can be accounted for in two ways, each connected to the other (and some folks aren't going to like the second one particularly).

Firstly, John ascribes the complaints at the scene of Jesus' anointing directly to Judas (and no-one else), which adds a bulky extra sub-chapter to his narrative. Secondly, since it is widely agreed that John is the latest of the gospels to be written, it is possible (and in my view very likely) that the villainy of Judas grew over time (see here for links to how the story developed by the early second century in Papias' time), requiring more gory details to fill out just how evil a character he was. John's Judas emphasis is the clear "winner" despite having no suicide scene - why might that be? Precisely because for Judas to "regret what he had done" (see Matthew 27:3) might decrease his villainy ratings. In the above hyper-linked post to Papias' account of Judas' death, I did not emphasise that strongly enough: Like John, Papias does not have a change of heart (Satan is in him, right?), and it his evil that slowly destructs his body until he disgustingly explodes! Even Papias accounts, however, require careful textual criticism to try to account for significant variations on the Judas narrative cited.

What is most surprising is Luke, who not only does include a suicide scene but still manages to emerge a distinct fourth, even behind the commonly-presumed brief Mark. Why might that be? First of all, remember this data representation is a significance comparison per author. Luke is a lengthy writer and my tally of English words (based on the NET version) for Luke plus Acts chapter 1 is 25570. Luke actually gives the same number of words to his Judas narrative as Mark does - 210 to Mark's 220. He simply has many other things to tell us about, especially about Jesus! I believe that had he had access to Matthew or John, he may well have opted to include more details.

I suppose I can also confess advance surprise by Matthew. Not on the basis of this particular comparison, but because I do not see from the Judas narrative comparison I am doing a clear awareness of Luke's account by Matthew, which I used to assume based on my meta-view of the gospel composition process. That is in part because of my understanding of how the trifold baptismal formula arose in Mat 28, as a response to a misconstrued Jesus baptism evidenced in Luke-Acts. So it is fascinating to see how these different studies tie in together, as looking in detail here helps me adjust my larger overall perspective. Two examples in Matthew then that are surprising to me: if Matthew were aware of Luke then why would he allow for regret on Judas' part and why would he omit Luke and John's insistence that Judas had become Satan's operative?

"Literal" creationists hit on a textual conundrum

Let's look back a bit, as everyone does from time to time.

Last night I went through the latest archaeological findings reported on the news in South Africa (see a BBC summary here and the formal research written up here) regarding another finding of skeletons of very human-like creatures in South Africa in 2013.
I don't know about you, but as a Christian believer growing up in an increasingly science-affected culture and world-view, I guess I have become increasingly agnostic about questions of the age of the universe. Apparently time machines are and will remain impossible, so how on Earth will we ever be able to know about this issue for sure? Why do Christians get so wound up about this anyway?
Well, I suppose it is (once again) because of the insecurity created by asserting (in a believer's words), that God could assert anything powerful in a non-literal way. Creationists have a hard time with that, not because they are limited or less intelligent or bigoted, but because they want to hold to the literal truth of the Bible. And they have some interesting ammunition (and they need it).
Firstly, as already noted, we cannot scientifically observe an ancient Earth/universe. No time machines.
Secondly, if as a believer you go down a not-everything-in-the-Bible-is-literal track, then how on EARTH (excuse the pun) can you make a judgement call on what is and what is not literal? Pure liberalism would assert, of course, that it all may be non-literal.
Thirdly, there are prominent scientific researchers who, although a minority, remain convinced that the Biblical dating method is consistent with the evidence we can gather.
Fourthly, they may think they can counter claims that they are theologically-motivated because their opponents (maybe atheistic evolutionists) could also be shown to be motivated by personal convictions, not necessarily arising from the data.
They may have other good arguments too, but these are the ones in my mind at the moment.

Before we get into those, let me just share something quite awkward I never knew about for biblical dating of the universe, and it brings us back once again to that world of textual criticism that so many would prefer simply did not exist. But it does and it affects what Christians could believe to be foundational, even the 100% literal guys. UNDERLYING THE LITERAL TRUTH INTERPRETATION IS THE ASSUMPTION OF ONE, SOLID ORIGINAL BIBLICAL TEXT THAT WE HAVE ACCESS TO TODAY. Sorry, was I shouting? Here I go again:
The Masoretic (Hebrew) texts and the Septuagint (Greek) provide very different figures, if trying to add up the years literally via the genealogies (the literal "days" of creation in Genesis not really adding anything extra to this total). If you are a creationist, then you need to be able to say that you take ONE of these texts as authoritative, but which one? If you go with the Septuagint, then you have a universe dating back 7500 years; if you go with the Masoretic version, then it's 6000 years.
That is 1500 years of existence that may or may not have been. For a creationist, that is a huge expanse of time, but I have never heard it mentioned.

I say "they" in referring to creationist because I am not in the "they" camp. I am not a creationist; I do not believe in a 6-day creation, either at around 5500 BC ago or 4000 BC.

Part of the reason for this is that I believe that it is impossible for any Christian to truly treat the texts as some kind of mono-genre factual-knowledge book, as this textual problem should be making obvious. If it is a book of facts then why can't we know for sure if the Septuagint was an inaccurate translation of Hebrew source texts of those genealogies and that the Masoretic text was the accurate copy? Copyists and translators made mistakes and changes: accept it or shove it under the carpet.

So creationists are not "playing it safe" with the Bible. The opposite is true. By hiding textual realities and important exegetical concerns like genre, they can contribute to devaluing the credibility of the book they think they defend.

Bloody Sweat

Via a series of blog posts, Bart Ehrman is currently telling the story of how he got into textual criticism of the Bible back in the 1980s. He sets the context very clearly - I already knew that the textus receptus Greek translation upon which the KJV was translated was based on very few and quite young manuscripts. But I did not know that they were all done by one man, a humanist, who updated his own work over time but that was the only improvements provided. I did not know that there was a part of Revelation he literally had no Greek manuscript for whatsoever and borrowed in some latin that he had that has never matched any subsequent Greek manuscript discovered.

In this textus receptus, you get the story of the woman caught in adultery, you get the long ending in Mark 16, you get the verse in 1 John 5 affirming the doctrine of the Trinity.

As the centuries went on, more and more manuscripts were discovered. Hundreds more. Thousands more, many of them older and more reliable than those used to form the textus receptus used for the KJV. Finally in 1881 was released a huge edition of the Greek NT, one version of which included a major contextual analysis of each significant variant in the manuscripts, along with the most likely originals. This was done by Westcott and Hort. On the basis of the evidence of the many small changes (some accidental, some not) made by scribes and their analysis of which way the changes probably went (did the scribe change John 1:18 from the only begotten God to the only begotten son, or was it the other way around, or did he add God or Son to an original "the only begotten [one]"?). In fact they did such a monumental work that there were virtually no changes for a century, or even expectation about how we could get closer to the original Greek, because we were virtually there already!

That's where the bloody sweat kicks in.

It's actually a really popular passage found in Luke's description of Jesus' "passion" building up to his crucifixion. But there is absolutely NOTHING about a text that appears good, profound, inspiring, etc., that makes it true. And while Ehrman would quibble that we are not talking about truth anyway, just the way in which the text was changed, I believe that Christians concerned about truth today should not be putting their faith in a significant textual variant or calling it the word of God. This applies to the above additions (long ending of Mark, Trinity proof text, etc.), but it also applies, I am sad to say, to the bloody sweat.

Ehrman is zooming into this passage, that a lot of Christians will know has some issues if their bibles have footnotes, for a reason. He is keen to show how the field of textual criticism really matters for other areas like theology and exegesis. It had been assumed that the study of textual changes was pretty much devoid of implications for other areas than its own technical field.

So if the bloody sweat verses are an addition, why would it be significant? Most people, like me, would be thinking about size - where most changes concern a single word or article, here is something highly constructed and thought through, like the end of Mark, that has been deliberately appended. Of course that remains a pretty big concern in its own right, there are not many passages like that where the manuscript credentials are very low. But there is a bigger more serious problem.

If you compare Luke's passion with Mark's, and most seem to agree that Luke was using Mark, there is an astonishing systematic removal of Mark's references to Jesus' anguish and suffering, right up to the point that he actually dies. If it weren't for two rather critical verses, then you might read the account thinking that actually Jesus did not really have such a hard time dying after all.

And these are the two verses concerned, from Luke 22:43-44
An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

Imagine you are a committed Christian scribe. Maybe a 100 years have gone past since the events in question, maybe more. There are heretical elements threatening the identity of the church regarding just how human Jesus really was (did he just appear human, people asked?) There are other stories circulating about what happened at Gethsemane about Christ's suffering, some quite extreme and explicit.

In my  next post, we will see just how significant and clear this insertion into Luke's account actually is, via a comparison with Mark and a look at the literary structure of the passage into which the verses were later inserted.

Key notions defined series: 13. Textual criticism

Having completed my main review of the New Testament (and some Old Testament) texts, cataloguing almost 500 passages, I am "celebrating" that milestone by publishing a part of the paper that helps me in the weighing of these texts, which is currently entitled Chapter 2: Key Notions Defined. It is also an opportunity for me to tidy up these definitions. Here is the next one, this time with footnotes (I have no idea why sometimes Blogger includes and excludes them):

Textual Criticism

This is essentially the study – I would even say a science – of establishing the most likely original text written by the author via the painstaking examination of masses of manuscript data. Its necessity flows from the following two facts:

• We have no originals manuscripts
• The copies we have all differ

In fact, the extant Greek manuscripts alone currently number close to 6000, and most evangelical or conservative scholars are not troubled by the large number of differences (I will not scare the reader with the agreed approximate number), as the vast majority of these are considered to be of no importance. However, there are passages where textual variants affect meaning, and some of these also concern the scriptural justification of Fourth Century Trinitarianism. Furthermore, these kinds of variants are no longer considered by textual critics to be all accidental.

For example, does John 1:18 say “the only begotten God”, “only begotten God”, “the only begotten Son”, “only begotten Son of God”, or “the only begotten”? In total there are no less than thirteen different variants depending on the manuscript you are looking at[1]. This verse clearly got up several copyists noses! Copyists are not machines – they are believers, followers of Christ, as Philip M. Miller is careful to note as he references to the late “giant” of textual criticism, Bruce Metzger:

“Metzger, while wrestling with the difficulties alterations raised in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, likewise noted the suppression of doctrinally difficult words, and secondary improvements ‘introduced from a sense of reverence for the person of Jesus’[2] ”[3].

This seemingly technical section will become relevant when we treat one passage in Chapter 7.

---

[1] P.M. Miller, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic and Apocryphal Evidence, p. 73 lists the manuscripts concerned. The most attested source (which of course does not necessarily mean the original) is “the only begotten son”

[2] Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2^nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 200, note on John 11.33

[3] P.M. Miller, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic and Apocryphal Evidence, p. 64

Simultaneous criteria for textual variants in the New Testament - a possible little breakthrough!

I feel slightly excited, as I consider today's post. Although I enjoy wrestling with theological questions and engaging with people's ideas about Scriptures, their assumptions and opinions, I rarely feel like I have come up with something especially new to contribute myself, until just now. The question is how to explain it clearly!

I have been engaging with textual criticism for a little bit, and the two authors, Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace, in particular. Textual criticism is quite scientific actually - it weighs up the various manuscript, historical and archaeological evidence to provide probabilities of textual change direction. This requires us to understand the indisputable claim that there are hundreds of thousands of differences between the extant (existing/found) manuscripts. That is not nearly as bad as it sounds - the slightest difference between any one of the thousands of manuscripts relative to any one other manuscript (e.g. a variant spelling) constitutes a difference.

Actually, of the most significant type of variants in the manuscripts, we can identify a top 7, which include texts like the woman caught in adultery, the long ending of Mark, and an omission in Matthew 24 "nor the son" during the Olivet Discourse and knowledge of the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man.

It is argued convincingly by Wallace, along with Gordon Fee and Philip Miller and Matthew Morgan and Adam Messer and Tim Ricchuiti and Brian Wright, that Bart Ehrman applies a too systematic and overarching criterion of orthodox corruption of significant variant passages. The person agreeing with Ehrman is basically saying: scribes changed the wording to align it better with the orthodox belief of the time.

As it turns out, Bart Ehrman is so confident of his views, unfortunately, that he does not take the time to properly answer these serious purported flaws in his methodology (see his blog post here).

My basic idea is the following, and is unique, as far as I can tell in their debate, particularly with regard to the variant in Matthew. I believe that it is highly possible for more than one factor to be acting at the same time on a scribe. Whether or not you want to call this multiple causes or multiple factors resulting in a single cause is inconsequential.  What it does do is place this view, and as far as I know, in disagreement with both Wallace and Ehrman (thank goodness I don't know them personally, they would have my guts for garters!) Let me unpack it, as so far I am being vague.

In Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament, on page 36, Wallace states [his italics]: "One cannot have it both ways; there cannot be wild copying by untrained scribes and a proto-orthodox conspiracy simultaneously producing the same variants. Conspiracy implies control, and wild copying is anything but controlled". I basically disagree with Wallace's thesis, although I need to untangle it first. Wallace is zooming in on an observation that Ehrman makes, that copying seems to be less careful the further back you go (I have not yet come across his use of "wild"). On the surface, Wallace's argument quoted above sounds pretty solid, but unfortunately, he subtly and probably unconsciously uses that premise to draw the reader into a false dichotomy that permeates significant portions of the book. I certainly missed it until I re-read his opening chapter "Lost in Transmission" today, and cross-referencing it with Miller in the subsequent chapter discussing the variant in Hebrews 2:9 (p79) and the discussions surrounding Matthew 24:36.

This verse either states that Jesus' death was by the grace of God, or apart from God. Miller correctly points out, as Ehrman should have noted, the very high similarity between the majuscule of the two words in Greek. He rightly notes that it is plausible that the copyist made a mistake and changed it to "apart" from God. What if Ehrman, though, is right, along with the (admittedly fewer) manuscripts? Can he argue uniquely the existence of the "grace" manuscripts based on orthodox corruption? Given the extreme similarity of the words, the answer has to be "no". Given the definite existence of orthodox corruptions, could we rule out the influence of theological commitments? Again, the answer is "no". The point is that Wallace's textual approach (and possibly Ehrman, although I am not so sure) seems to be based on the need to find a single criterion. What is needed here is to invite in new fields of research, notably psychology.

Some fields of psychology attempt to work on the unconscious parts of our minds, which is generally widely affirmed to highly affect our actions and responses. Sigmund Freud was obviously a classic example. For him, it was the unconscious repressed desires of childhood that governed our behaviour. But the area of unconsciousness is now understood to be much wider and more complex than that. Where this interests us is in the area of theological commitment. We all know that theological commitment is an area people feel so strongly about, and it is because it affects our various social groups and helps define our identity. That is some serious unconscious "welly". So why would a scribe, a human, flawed, theologically committed scribe not be doubly affected, both by his brain confusing two very similar words and also by what he would prefer it to say?

I feel so sure that this is significant, because it seems to me it could help us better explain how orthodox corruption might occur, while doing away with any unnecessary pressure to assume that everything was conscious, thus contributing to a rather untenable position that looks conspiratorial.

To conclude, I critique Wallace's methodology to be underpinned by an unspoken mutual exclusivity of criteria - it is far from obvious that this is necessary. I.e. - In the example of Hebrews 2:9 (although John 1:18 would have been a better example), both Wallace and Ehrman can be correct about their hypotheses of causation. It requires further investigation and particularly bringing in specialist psychological research.

Wallace is clear that more than one simultaneous factor is not possible. I am not so sure for Ehrman, and will attempt to find out on his blog in the forum area.

So how migh Ehrman respond? In order of probability from what I have seen of him thus far:
1. Probably not at all - heck, even Wallace is small fry for him!
2. Very short response, dismissive, sticking to his initial guns: it is all about the orthodoxy... kinda (unfortunately, this response will invite a quote from him about how other considerations need to be examined first)
3. Positive, curious, discussion-opener.

How might Wallace respond?
- I have no idea how to interact with Wallace. He seems like an open-minded kind of guy though, so if I ever do get through, I would expect some careful reconsideration of his exclusive view.

Quick Christianity jabs

I am so grateful and glad that Daniel Wallace is alive, kicking and writing.

In his latest post on his blog, published yesterday here, Wallace easily deals with the hasty attack on Christianity by Kurt Eichenwald, who, writing for Newsweek, exaggerates the so-called unreliability of the New Testament transmission methods, even overstating Bart Ehrman's case. Just to give you an example of some of the unsubstantiated things Eichenwald says, and Wallace should have mentioned this I think, and this of the 381 Council of Constantinople: "a new agreement was reached—Jesus wasn’t two, he was now three—Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Oh really?!

One of Wallace's key points, however, is to state that we are not talking of a near-perpetual linear series of translations of translations, one of Eichenwald's points. All serious translations of today are working off manuscripts, some of which "go as far back as" the 2nd century.

I am currently reading through Wallace's book at the moment on Revisiting the Corruption of the New Tesetament: Manuscript, Patristic and Apocryphal Evidence. 

My intention, by the way, for anyone who is interested and for my own reference, is to publish chapter summaries. Each subject is distinct and actually written by a different scholar, with the whole lot edited by (and the first chapter written by) Daniel B. Wallace. In this book, one of the key challenges of Ehrman's interpretations is that he does not acknowledge his own biases, in particular the criteria of orthodox corruption. While that is not entirely true, from what I can see, we have another clear case here that works in the opposite direction. So when we see "as far back as the second century" from Wallace, Ehrman would maintain that the second century is still a fair old way off from the first and very fragmentary in what we do have, and even these are probably at least copies of copies of a copy (or of copies). He also would remind us that from the evidence we hold, in manuscript copying errors intensify the further you go back and that we simply "cannot know" what the originals said. 

While I agree with Wallace that Ehrman overstates his case, it is easier for me to see now when presumptions are "smuggled onto the table" (Stephen Holmes' expression), and here "as far back as" implies that this is an incredibly long way back. Challenged, the Wallace crew would be quick to compare to other ancient Greek texts that are much less well attested in terms of manuscript evidence. Ehrman is not in the business of comparing, however, and has no more faith in the copies of manuscripts that we have of Homer, for example, as representative of what was originally penned to parchment. 

But the key issue I think here in Wallace's otherwise solid defence against this weak attack by Eichenwald, is an often-forgotten translation stage. It seems to have been too obvious to mention by everyone, but it is not insignificant: the quotations in the gospels are already translations. We should be aware of that and reminded of that in these sorts of conversations. So in that sense, perhaps unwittingly, Eichenwald had a point he did not realise he was scoring!