77 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
77 lines
3.2 KiB
Plaintext
From the San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, 1 April 1994
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(No, this is not an April Fool's joke)
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SOME BIBLE SCHOLARS SAY JUDAS WAS INNOCENT
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By Don Lattin
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Chronicle Religion Writer
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Christians are told his story every year around this time, but his
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name -- unlike Mary's, Matthew's, Mark's or John's -- is rarely given
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to their children.
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Judas, the mysterious apostle who allegedly betrayed Jesus for 30
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pieces of silver, may have gotten a bad rap. In fact, some Bible
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scholars say, he may not have even existed but is just an ancient,
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anti-Semitic myth.
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"Judas" is a Greek way of spelling "Judah," the ancient Jewish
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kingdom.
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"Everything about Judas just screams out that this is a
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late-developing legend to transfer the blame of Jesus' death from the
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Romans to the Jews," said Episcopal Bishop James Spong, author of the
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new book, "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?"
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Spong's work is among a flood of books about "the historical Jesus,"
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many of which portray Jesus as a teacher of wisdom, peasant
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revolutionary or social critic -- but not the resurrected savior and
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Messiah talked about in most churches.
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Today, when the church gathers to remember the crucifixion of Jesus,
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Spong and others are suggesting that Christians take another look at
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the story of Judas Iscariot.
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"It is highly unlikely that there ever was a traitor named Judas,"
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said Spong, a popular author and the Episcopal bishop of Newark, NJ.
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"And this is a tragedy of enormous dimensions."
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Spong delivered these remarks at a recent meeting in Santa Rosa of
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the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars re-examining the Bible and
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other ancient evidence in an attempt to separate the historical Jesus
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from the theological savior.
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After discussing Spong's theory, the scholars concluded that the
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story of Judas probably arose about 40 years after Jesus' death.
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During that period, which saw the destruction of the Jewish temple in
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Jerusalem, the early Jewish-Christian sect was struggling with other
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Jewish leaders over whether Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah.
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JUDAS AS SYMBOL "Judas became the symbol for all Jews who rejected
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Jesus," said Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar. "The story
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subsequently served as the basis for gentile anti-Semitism."
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Funk's band of scholars have recently published "The Five Gospels --
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What Did Jesus Say?" It concludes that no more than 20 percent of
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the sayings attributed to Jesus were actually uttered by the
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carpenter from Nazareth.
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Many conservative evangelicals are not impressed with the spate of
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new Jesus books and what Christianity Today called "the new,
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unimproved Jesus."
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"If nothing happened after Jesus' death, then any first century Jew
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would have said what many have said since: He was another deluded
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fanatic," scholar and evangelical N.Thomas Wright wrote in a recent
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cover story for the respected evangelical monthly.
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"That is why, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early
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Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind
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him."
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In recent years, conservatives in the church have criticized Spong
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for his liberal views on gay clergy, Biblical fundamentalism and such
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cherished doctrines as the virgin birth. Spong insists that he
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"really cares about the Bible."
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