And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Here the Markan criticism is retained, but put in a context that mitigates it somewhat. To justify Peter’s rejection of the idea of the passion, his very understandable comment is added: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” And Jesus’s explanation justifying his rebuke is added: “You are a hindrance to me.”
Matthew of course had every reason to clear Peter’s name, since, after all, Peter is, of course after Jesus, the hero of his Gospel. If Mark might have been the first to cast a stone at Peter, Matthew would have been the first to lay a cornerstone at the cathedral of St. Peter in Rome.
THE GENTILE CHURCH’S ECUMENICAL GOSPEL OF LUKE
Luke presented the public ministry of Jesus as a sort of idealized time, a period not only quite different from the time before Jesus’s public ministry, but also quite different from Luke’s own time long after Jesus’s public ministry.
We are quite familiar with Luke’s way of idealizing the beginnings of the church after Easter as a wonderful time, but a time that did not continue down into his present. In Luke’s book of Acts, the beginning of the church is idealized, with a kind of voluntary sharing of all goods and funds, almost a Christian kind of communism. However, this is no longer the practice in Luke’s own time. It was just the beginning of the church, which he looked back on with admiration and nostalgia, but not as a way of life to follow now. It was not a time to imitate.
Luke presented Jesus’s public ministry in a similar way, as an idealized time in the past that does not really apply to the present. Luke reports that after failing in the temptation, the devil left Jesus “until an opportune time” (Luke 4:13). The devil found that opportune time just before the passion narrative, when Satan reappeared just in time to enter Judas (Luke 22:3) and to tempt Peter (Luke 22:31). The period of the devil’s absence, corresponding to the public ministry of Jesus, is for Luke a paradise-like unrepeatable idyllic period of time, much like the idealized beginning of the Christian Church.
This idealized time, free of the devil, corresponds very closely to the limits of Q in Luke. Q began at Luke 3:2, with John the Baptist, and went through Luke 22:30, just before the passion narrative. Indeed, the idyllic period of time ends in the very next verse after Q ends. Immediately after quoting the conclusion of Q in Luke 22:30, Luke presents Satan reemerging to tempt Peter and give Jesus over in Luke 22:31. Then Luke revokes quite explicitly the mission instructions of Q (quoted in Luke 10:1–16). Those mission instructions had stated (Q 10:4):
Carry no purse, nor knapsack, nor sandals, nor stick, and greet no one on the road.
Just listen to Luke revoking these mission instructions, to get ready for the passion narrative (Luke 22:35–38):
And he said to them, “When I sent you out with no purse or bag or sandals, did you lack anything?” They said, “Nothing.” He said to them, “But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was reckoned with transgressors’; for what is written about me has its fulfillment.” And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.”
In this way Luke prepares for Mark’s immediately following report of the arrest (Mark 14:46–47):
But one of those who stood near drew his sword and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear.
So, by rearming the disciples, Luke has closed down the epoch of Q, wonderful though it may have seemed, and re-entered the “real world” of push and shove. With Q safely behind him, Luke can proceed to follow Mark through the passion narrative, and move on into the Gentile Church’s mission practices, which Luke exemplified in the book of Acts, in his portrayal of Paul moving about throughout the whole Hellenistic world.
This periodizing of history into an idealized past and a realistic present did not require Luke to omit the mission instructions of Q, though they were now outdated and formally abrogated by Jesus himself. Rather, Luke preserved them in their most archaic form (Luke 10:1–16). He had not been called upon to update them to conform to current practice, as had Matthew. Matthew, clinging longer to the older procedures, had to make the adjustments called for by the passage of time. Most prominently, Matthew justified, by appealing to Jesus’s instructions, a mission limited to Jews, a Jewish mission carried out to the exclusion of Gentiles and Samaritans, probably almost up until Matthew’s own time (Matt. 10:5b–6, 23):
Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel…. When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.
It is this Jews-only mission that one must presuppose was still being carried out by the Jerusalem Church, at the time James sent delegates to Antioch to enforce the segregated policy at the Lord’s Supper in Antioch, which Paul had so strenuously opposed.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus does not say to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” This scene would come right after Luke 9:22, to be parallel to Mark 8:33, but is completely missing. Satan tried to get hold of Peter, but Jesus protected him (Luke 22:31–32):
Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail, and you, when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.
But Satan has instead gotten a grip on Judas (Luke 22:3):
Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might give him over to them. They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to give him over to them when no crowd was present.
One would think that Judas, into whom Satan had entered, would have been the most obvious candidate for an exorcism, such as Jesus performed most dramatically for an epileptic boy (Mark 9:17–29).
Even the disciples become adept at exorcism. On their return from the mission of the seventy, they report (Luke 10:17–18):
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.”
The best-known disciple from whom Jesus had cast out a demon, or, more precisely, seven demons, is of course Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:1–3):
The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, and Suzanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources.
It is difficult to imagine Judas really being possessed by a demon, or even by Satan, and Jesus or one of the apostles not freeing him of that possession. Put otherwise, Luke’s talk of Satan entering Judas sounds more like Luke’s put-down than a historical fact. Judas wasn’t really a demoniac.
Luke modifies significantly, though in small details, the Markan report of Jesus speaking of the one who would betray him (Matt. 22:21–22):3
But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table. For the Son of Man is going as it has been determined, but woe to that one by whom he is betrayed.
Just whose hand is on the table is not made clear, but it replaces Mark’s reference to someone who dips into the dish with Jesus, which is where John clearly identifies Judas (John 13:26). Luke then adds that after Jesus said that one at the table with him would give him over (Luke 22:23):
They began to question one another, which of them it was that would do this.
But rather than following t
his up by pointing to Judas, as does Matthew (Matt. 26:25), Luke instead inserts here a scene found earlier in Mark (Mark 10:41–45): the disciples argue about which of them was to be regarded as greatest (Luke 22:24–30), triggered in Mark by the request of James and John for places on each side of Jesus in his glory (Mark 10:38–40). This was so awkward that Matthew had transferred it to a request by their mother (Matt. 20:20–23), and Luke omits it completely, only to insert the ensuing discussion of true greatness into the Last Supper, rather than going on to identify Judas as the one who would give him over.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Luke adds the fact that Judas was leading the crowd (Luke 22:47). As Judas comes to kiss Jesus, Jesus recognizes this act as the sign to the Jewish authorities (Luke 22:48):
Judas, is it with a kiss that you are giving over the Son of Man?
Judas promptly disappears from the scene, but instead one finds the Markan story of a disciple cutting off the right ear of a slave of the high priest, whereupon Luke has Jesus reproach the unnamed disciple (Luke 22:51):
But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him.
Such an act of kindness to a person who had come to arrest him is worthy of Pope John Paul II forgiving the person who tried to assassinate him. Indeed, at the crucifixion only Luke presents Jesus saying (Luke 23:34):
Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.
Just where this leaves Judas is not made clear. For Luke, Judas paid the price for what he did (Acts 1:18):
Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN
It is decidedly the Gospel of John that bears most of the responsibility for discrediting Judas completely. Here is the way he does it (John 6:64–71):
“But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would give him over. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.” Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to give him over.
The frequent question as to why Jesus would have included Judas in his inner circle is thus most acute in the Gospel of John. If Jesus knew “from the first” that Judas would give him over, he must have included him for that very purpose!
Just as Luke had transferred Peter being called Satan (Mark 8:33) into Judas being possessed by Satan (Luke 22:3), just so John presents Judas being possessed by Satan. He smuggles this “detail” into the story much earlier than at the Last Supper:
There is a familiar scene of Jesus at the home of Simon the leper in Bethany (Mark 14:3–9), or, as Luke has it, at the home of Simon the Pharisee much earlier, in Galilee (Luke 7:36). A woman (Luke 7:37: a prostitute), carrying an alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard, pours it over his head (Luke 7:38: his feet), whereupon those present (Luke 7:39: the Pharisee) are indignant at the waste. If one can thus see how Luke changes a story in the home of a leper into something that fits better his polemic against the Pharisees, it should come as no surprise to find that the Gospel of John transforms much the same story to serve his purposes as a polemic against Judas.
John takes the familiar story of Jesus in the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38–42), where Mary is praised for her attentive listening to Jesus, rather than just serving him at table, and turns it into a polemic against—Judas (John 12:1–8):
Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’s feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to give him over), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put in it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”
Here it is quite obvious that Luke, and then John, take a story from the tradition about Jesus and, by changing the characters and plot, makes it serve their polemical purposes. This should then make it equally clear that the damning of Judas, as the keeper of the moneybags, who only pretends to care for the poor so as to steal money from Jesus and the other disciples, is more probable as a creation of John than as a historical fact. At the Last Supper John needs only to mention that the devil had already inspired Judas to give him over (John 13:2), and more pointedly John writes that Satan entered Judas when Jesus gave him bread he had dipped into the dish (John 13:27).
The Gospel of John has Jesus identify Judas as the one to give him over, already at the beginning of the parting discourse held at the Last Supper (John 13:1–2, 4–11, 18–19, 21–30):
Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to give him over. And during supper Jesus… got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him…. Jesus said to him [Simon Peter], “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him…. “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But it is to fulfill the scripture, ‘The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’ I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he.”… After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. One of his disciples—the one whom Jesus loved—was reclining next to him; Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?” Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the festival”; or, that he should give something to the poor. So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.
In the so-called high priestly prayer with which Jesus’s parting discourse concludes, there is a flashback to Judas (John 17:12):
While I was with them, I protect them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the son of destruction, so that the scripture might be fulfilled.
The final scene of Judas in the Gospel of John is at the arrest (John 18:1–12):
After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who gave him over, also knew the place, because Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers tog
ether with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replied, “I am he.” Judas, who gave him over, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, “I am he,” they stepped back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So if you are looking for me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken, “I did not lose a single one of those whom you gave me.” Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest’s slave, and cut off his right ear. The slave’s name was Malchus. Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” So the soldiers, their officer, and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound him.
Here Judas plays his indispensable role in the story, of bringing the Jewish authorities to arrest Jesus. But his role is, compared to in the other Gospels, minimal. There is no kiss of death. He does his thing and disappears from history, as far as the Gospel of John is concerned.
Secrets of Judas Page 3
