“JUDAS ISCARIOT

It is very unclear in the gospels just what Judas Iscariot’s betrayal consisted of, probably because there was absolutely no need for a betrayal. Jesus could have been arrested any number of times without the general populace knowing about it. It would have been simple to keep tabs on his whereabouts. The religious authorities did not need a betrayal – only the gospel writers needed a betrayal, so that a few more “prophecies” could be fulfilled. The whole episode is pure fiction – and, as might be expected, it is riddled with contradictions.

1. The prophecy

Matthew says that Judas’ payment and death were prophesied by Jeremiah, and then he quotesZechariah 11:12-13 as proof!

2. Thirty pieces of silver

According to Matthew 26:15, the chief priests “weighed out thirty pieces of silver” to give to Judas. There are two things wrong with this:

a. There were no “pieces of silver” used as currency in Jesus’ time – they had gone out of circulation about 300 years before.

b. In Jesus’ time, minted coins were used – currency was not “weighed out.”

By using phrases that made sense in Zechariah’s time but not in Jesus’ time Matthew once again gives away the fact that he creates events in his gospel to match “prophecies” he finds in the Old Testament.”

(JUDAS ISCARIOT

It is very unclear in the gospels just what Judas Iscariot’s betrayal consisted of, probably because there was absolutely no need for a betrayal. Jesus could have been arrested any number of times without the general populace knowing about it. It would have been simple to keep tabs on his whereabouts. The religious authorities did not need a betrayal – only the gospel writers needed a betrayal, so that a few more “prophecies” could be fulfilled. The whole episode is pure fiction – and, as might be expected, it is riddled with contradictions.

1. The prophecy

Matthew says that Judas’ payment and death were prophesied by Jeremiah, and then he quotesZechariah 11:12-13 as proof!

2. Thirty pieces of silver

According to Matthew 26:15, the chief priests “weighed out thirty pieces of silver” to give to Judas. There are two things wrong with this:

a. There were no “pieces of silver” used as currency in Jesus’ time – they had gone out of circulation about 300 years before.

b. In Jesus’ time, minted coins were used – currency was not “weighed out.”

By using phrases that made sense in Zechariah’s time but not in Jesus’ time Matthew once again gives away the fact that he creates events in his gospel to match “prophecies” he finds in the Old Testament.)

(JUDAS ISCARIOT

It is very unclear in the gospels just what Judas Iscariot’s betrayal consisted of, probably because there was absolutely no need for a betrayal. Jesus could have been arrested any number of times without the general populace knowing about it. It would have been simple to keep tabs on his whereabouts. The religious authorities did not need a betrayal – only the gospel writers needed a betrayal, so that a few more “prophecies” could be fulfilled. The whole episode is pure fiction – and, as might be expected, it is riddled with contradictions.

1. The prophecy

Matthew says that Judas’ payment and death were prophesied by Jeremiah, and then he quotesZechariah 11:12-13 as proof!

2. Thirty pieces of silver

According to Matthew 26:15, the chief priests “weighed out thirty pieces of silver” to give to Judas. There are two things wrong with this:

a. There were no “pieces of silver” used as currency in Jesus’ time – they had gone out of circulation about 300 years before.

b. In Jesus’ time, minted coins were used – currency was not “weighed out.”

By using phrases that made sense in Zechariah’s time but not in Jesus’ time Matthew once again gives away the fact that he creates events in his gospel to match “prophecies” he finds in the Old Testament.)

“1. The prophecy

Matthew says that Judas’ payment and death were prophesied by Jeremiah, and then he quotesZechariah 11:12-13 as proof!

2. Thirty pieces of silver

According to Matthew 26:15, the chief priests “weighed out thirty pieces of silver” to give to Judas. There are two things wrong with this:

a. There were no “pieces of silver” used as currency in Jesus’ time – they had gone out of circulation about 300 years before.

b. In Jesus’ time, minted coins were used – currency was not “weighed out.”

By using phrases that made sense in Zechariah’s time but not in Jesus’ time Matthew once again gives away the fact that he creates events in his gospel to match “prophecies” he finds in the Old Testament.”

In like manner, the fact that Luke was attempting (once again) to resolve an incongruity indicates that somebody saw that incongruity…

That’s just restating the same thesis, and adding another on top of it. It meets with the same objections.

It meets with another, as well, of course, which is that with such a thesis we are importing motives to Luke that are not certain. I presume Luke himself does not show any anxiety over there being both forms of proclamation. So why are we assuming that Luke is “noticing” something that worried him and that had to be “corrected”? Maybe he’s just repeating the way things were, and had always been (and the idiosyncrasy is just in Paul…and Clement…etc.).

I don’t mean that therefore we should so conclude. I mean there are so many possibilities, and we have no actual evidence to render any more likely than the other, that therefore we are stuck with the same conundrum of not quite knowing the causes of this evidence, and having multiple hypotheses that we must give probability space to. Just as I explain.

Now, whether my resulting numbers can be changed based on any such reasoning as you suggest, that’s possible. But someone would really need to develop that case in detail. I do think you have an interesting possibility to explore, and someone might one day do a literary analysis of Luke to see if they can show it more likely than not that Luke is indeed attempting to harmonize two sectarian views of the origin of the Gospel. But until that’s done, it remains just an interesting possibility. I am skeptical (because I don’t right off hand see any evidence in Luke that is determinative here). But someone could easily do such a study and surprise me. I’d welcome it, of course.

But here is an example of what I mean…

Luke would have had a pressing need to explain the contradiction

Where, though, does Luke explain the contradiction? He just seems to use both modes willy nilly, not even conscious that there is a contradiction. That does not mean he wasn’t. But it does mean there’s a lot of hard work to do to show he was.

That doesn’t get us anywhere mathematically. Simultaneous theatres is already a sub-thesis of the earthly meaning thesis. So adding it changes nothing. We still are at 50/50, not knowing whether he means earthly (alone or as well) or celestial alone. Unless, of course, we credit the many reasons in OHJ I provide for concluding against the former. There are no comparable arguments the other way around.

P.S. Regarding The politics of the time would suggest that there is motivation for obliquely referring to actual rulers for reasons of safety: That isn’t true. That’s a Christian myth (and not just a la Candida Moss et al.). There is absolutely no reason their safety would be in any way compromised by saying Jesus was crucified by the Romans. It’s not as if the fact that they were worshiping a crucified man was a secret. It was in fact the most public thing about the cult. Though that might have been compromising, that cat was already well out of the bag. So it would make no sense for Christians, routinely proclaiming this in public, to get all hush hush about it in their own private internal correspondence.

It seems to me that the number would be the probability that, under historicity, Paul would use a phrase that could include demonic powers.

And when we know of nothing that makes that more likely or less, then so far as we know it’s 50/50. Hence 50/50 is the default probability for having no reason to expect either outcome more than the other.

Your proposed method makes no sense. The probability in question is not the ratio of the number of ways to form a sentence. It’s the probability that he would be coincidentally vague in ratio to the probability that he would be non-coincidentally specific. The number of ways Greek allowed him to do either is irrelevant. So is the number of ways he does so elsewhere in his letters, unless you can non-circularly know when his vagueness belies the same meaning as the specific, but you can’t. For example, if Paul had elsewhere said the “rulers of this age” were the Jewish and Roman authorities, then to a high probability when used in other passages the vague phrase means that specific phrase. But that is precisely the data we don’t have (on either side of the question). So it’s a draw.