The Forensics of King Tut's Lineage

After more than a century of speculation within Egyptology, the lineage of King Tut and other 18^th dynasty figures has been worked out. 

To those for whom Ancient Egypt is just a passing interest, this may not seem so significant.  Yet, in the world of Egyptology, this is akin to solving the mystery of Jack the Ripper’s identity.  This is, quite simply, a major discovery and a significant mystery solved. 

As with so many other prominent identifications in the last 10-15 years, DNA technology has helped researchers determine once and for all who the parents of King Tut were, and how he and other royal mummies from the 18^th dynasty were related. 

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Since most of my readers are probably not familiar with the political and cultural conditions of the 18^th dynasty, it is necessary to give a bit of background information in order to make sense of what will follow.

The 18^th dynasty extends from roughly 1550 to 1300 B.C.E, beginning with Ahmose I and ending with Horemheb.  The exact number of rulers between these two kings is not entirely clear, because of the political upheaval associated with the pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled from about 1350 to 1334 B.C.E.     

This graph shows that Amenhotep III was the father and predecessor of Akhenaten, while his mother was a woman named Queen Tiye.  The precise lineage after that has long been convoluted.

To put it briefly, Akhenaten instituted a massive change in the religious traditions of ancient Egypt.  Outlawing the worship of the traditional gods, he began what many historians consider the first truly monotheistic religion: the cult the Aten, the sun disc god.  He moved the traditional capital from Thebes to the desert of middle Egypt, where he built a new city called Akhetaten (meaning “The Horizon of the Aten”).  Needless to say, this was not received very well by many common Egyptians, not to mention the powerful priests of the old gods, and after Akhenaten’s death, the country was plunged into religious, social, cultural, and political upheaval. 

A statue of Akhenaten.  Note the stylized facial features which characterize Akhenaten's reign.

At least two rulers seem to have held Egypt’s throne for a four year period after Akhenaten’s death.  The first was Smenkhkare, who is believed to have been Akhenaten’s brother.  This Smenkhkare appears to have married Akhenaten’s oldest daughter Meritaten.  Meritaten, in turn, appears to have ruled as a virtual co-regent with her husband, taking the throne name Neferneferuaten.  It further appears that Smenkhkare died within just a year or so of Akhenaten, leaving Neferneferuaten to rule alone for another three years, before she too seems to have died. 

The circumstances of this four-year period are extremely uncertain, and what I have provided above is simply a common historical reconstruction.  It is not clear, for instance, whether Smenkhkare and Neferneferuaten were two individuals or simply one person known by two names.  Additionally, it is not clear whether Smenkhkare was Akhenaten’s brother or his son (most believe he was a brother of Akhenaten).  Furthermore, whether two people or one person, even the gender of these figures is also not entirely clear.  Finally, it is not clear exactly when Akhenaten died, and some believe that Smenkhkare/Neferneferuaten (whether two people or one) ruled as co-regents with Akhenaten, falling from their position upon Akhenaten’s death.

In any case, following the demise of these previous rulers, Tutankhamun finally came to the throne of Egypt, beginning around 1330 B.C.E.  He was nine years old at the time.  One of his first actions as king was to abandon Akhenaten’s religion and city, return the capital to Thebes, and reinstitute the traditional pantheon of gods and religious traditions.  He ruled for ten years before dying at around the age of nineteen.  His tomb, of course, lay undisturbed for the next 3,000 years before it was discovered in 1922 by Egyptologist Howard Carter.

Inside Tut's tomb, just days after it was discovered.

EARLY THEORIES

The question of who Tutankhamun was has puzzled archaeologists for a long time.  His very existence was lost to history until about 1905, when an artifact was found with his name on it, discussing something he had done as king.  Prior to this, no one had ever heard of him.  Even after his nearly intact tomb was discovered about fifteen years later, nothing within the tomb gave any clear indication as to where he had come from or who he was related to. 

Over the years, most historians have assumed he was Akhenaten’s son.  However, there has been virtually no evidence to prove it.  Of all the paintings and depictions discovered of Akhenaten and his family, Tutankhamun is never pictured.  Instead, Akhenaten is always shown with his wife and his six daughters. 

Akhenaten with his wife, Nefertiti, and three of their daughters, worshiping the Aten.

There is nothing in the historical record to imply that he ever had sons.  Furthermore, as discussed above, his eldest daughter, Meritaten, appears to have been rather prominent, perhaps even ruling for a period of time after her father’s death.  This would imply strongly that there was no viable male heir. 

Others have argued that Tut was, indeed, Akhenaten’s son, but was his son by his secondary wife, a woman named Kiya, about whom very little is known.  This would explain why he is not pictured in paintings of Akhenaten with his principal wife, Nefertiti.     

Queen Kiya

Still others have suggested that Tut was not Akhenaten’s son but his nephew, the son of Smenkhkare, who was likely a brother to Akhenaten.     

Finally, some have argued that Tut may have been Akhenaten’s brother, another son of Akhenaten’s father and predecessor, Amenhotep III.  Akhenaten is known to have reigned for seventeen years, and Tut was only nine years old when he came to power, but this theory presupposes that the first eight to ten years of Akhenaten’s reign was a co-regency with his father Amenhotep, for which there is some (although not much) evidence.  It is significant to note that most of the inscriptional evidence from artifacts actually supports this theory of Tut being the son of Amenhotep III, and thus the brother of Akhenaten. 

Of these theories, the second and third ones have tended to be the most common – Tut was either Akhenaten’s son by his secondary wife Kiya, or was the son of Smenkhkare and thus nephew to Akhenaten.  In a series on Tutankhamun I wrote a few years ago, I supported the Akhenaten/Kiya theory. 

A discovery in 1910 seemed to lend credence to both of these theories.  Now dubbed “KV55,” the tomb was discovered by American archaeologist Theodore Davis.  Thought it was evidently originally a tomb for Akhenaten’s mother, Queen Tiye (wife of Amenhotep III), it had been reused in antiquity as a burial cache for items and mummies originally buried in the necropolis of Akhenaten’s capital city in the desert.  In fact, Tutankhamun appears to have been behind this reburial, as his name was on the sealed door (leading the archaeologists to initially believe they had found the boy king’s tomb).  Tut had, apparently, commissioned the work to remove these bodies and items from the now ruined city to the Valley of the Kings for protection.  Tut did away with his predecessor’s political and religious upheavals, but apparently still found it important to protect the afterlife destinies of figures associated with the reign of Akhenaten. 

Though the tomb had been robbed many times in antiquity, it still held a number of artifacts, including artifacts with the names of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye (Akhenaten’s father and mother), Akhenaten himself, as well as a few artifacts with Tutankhamun’s name. 

In addition to these, there were also artifacts belonging to Kiya, Akhenaten’s secondary wife (including the jar pictured above).  If Tut did indeed commission this reburial, then the presence of items belonging to Kiya might indicate a maternal affection Tut had for the woman.  It is noteworthy to point out that nothing with the name of Akhenaten’s principle wife, Nefertiti, was found in the tomb.

Finally, Davis’ archaeological team discovered a mummy in the tomb, resting inside a rotting coffin with no lid.  The mummy’s identity was not clear, but it was a male who appeared to have been in his early twenties at death.  Because his right arm was crossed over his chest in the traditional position of male royalty, it was clear this mummy belonged to a king.  Since the mummy appeared to be too young to be Akhenaten, many archaeologists assumed it must have belonged to his brother Smenkhkare.  As with the Kiya theory, if this mummy belonged to Smenkhkare, it may provide evidence of paternal affection Tut had for the man.  Perhaps Tut, then, was the son of Smenkhkare. 

CLEARING UP THE QUESTIONS

As you can see from this brief overview, the question of Tut’s identity has haunted Egyptologists for years, and numerous theories have been put forth based on the scant evidence that has survived the millennia. 

Now, with DNA testing, Egyptologists finally have definitive answers.

To begin with, DNA testing has proven that the male mummy from KV55 was, in fact, Tutankhamun’s father.  It further shows that this mummy was the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, who are known to have been the parents of Akhenaten.    

Fair enough, but who, exactly, does this mummy belong to?  Is it Smenkhkare or Akhenaten?  Both, remember, are believed to have been the sons of Amenhotep and Tiye.

To begin with, there were a number of flowery royal names on the desiccated coffin in which the mummy was found, and these are names known to have been associated with Akhenaten. 

Secondly, new studies performed together with the DNA studies, have indicated that the previously accepted age of this mummy – around twenty – may be off by as many as fifteen years.  Rather than being a young man of twenty, this mummy was probably a middle-aged man of roughly thirty-five (middle age, of course, by the standards of ancient Egypt!).    

Finally, the mummy’s condition upon its discovery indicates very strongly that it was brutalized and vandalized in antiquity.  For instance, the head was completely disconnected from the body, and it was also missing its genitalia (which led initial researchers, in the early 1900’s, to conclude that it was a female mummy).  This, of course, implies that whoever desecrated the body in antiquity most probably believed it was the mummy of Akhenaten, because there would have been no discernable reason to damage the body of Smenkhkare or someone else.   

As a result of this data, the researchers have concluded that the mummy in KV55 is, in fact, Akhenaten.  Though some folks apparently still disagree with this conclusion, it appears that most experts agree that this mummy can be no one but the infamous heretic king.

As such, we can now say with confidence that Tutankhamun was the son of Akhenaten and the grandson of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. 

But what about his mother?  Was it Nefertiti, the principle wife of Akhenaten, or Queen Kiya, who, from the evidence of tomb KV55, appears to have been important to Tut?

Turns out, it’s neither.

The DNA testing has proven conclusively that Tutankhamun was the son of an incestuous relationship.  His mother and father were full siblings, meaning both were the children of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.  Since there is no evidence suggesting that either Nefertiti or Kiya were daughters of these two people, they can be ruled out as mothers for Tutankhamun.  Unfortunately, neither of these women’s mummies has survived with any positive identification, so they cannot be tested for DNA. 

However, other existing mummies can be tested for DNA links to Tutankhamun, and because of this, the researchers have been able to identify the mummy of Tut’s mother.  It is an unidentified mummy found in 1898 in a tomb called KV35.  She has routinely been referred to as the “Younger Lady” of KV35, to differentiate her from another mummy found in that tomb, called the “Elder Lady.”  The DNA evidence has shown that this “Elder Lady” was, in fact, Queen Tiye – an identification that had long been suspected.  Additionally, the Younger Lady has proven to be Tiye’s daughter, Akhenaten’s wife, and Tut’s mother.  Her actual identity, however, is still a mystery. 

The three mummies found in KV35.  On the left is the Elder Lady, now identified as Queen Tiye.  On the right is the Younger Lady, now known to be Tutankhamun's mother (and daughter to Tiye).  The mummy in the center is a still unidentified young male, presumed to be a royal prince.

Since there is no historical evidence suggesting that Nefertiti or Kiya were sisters to Akhenaten, they seem to be excluded as possible identities for the Younger Lady (prior to this new study, at least one Egyptologist had argued extensively for the Younger Lady’s identification as Nefertiti).  Since the mummy is known to be a daughter of Amenhotep III and Tiye, and since several of Amenhotep’s other daughters are positively referred to as his own wives on various inscriptions, it is assumed that this Younger Lady is either Nebeta or Beketaten, two daughters of Amenhotep who were never married to their father (thus leaving them free to marry their brother, Akhenaten). 

It is still possible, of course, that this mummy could belong to Nefertiti or Kiya.  Perhaps one of them was, in fact, a sister to Akhenaten, but this evidence has simply not made it into the historical record.  But barring such an unlikely scenario, it is far more probable that the mummy is one of the two daughters of Amenhotep referred to above. 

Finally, DNA testing has shown that two stillborn female fetus mummies discovered in Tut’s tomb, are, in fact, his own children, as has long been assumed.  Furthermore, tentative data suggests that an unknown mummy from a tomb called KV21 is the mother of these two fetuses.  If that’s true, then it is likely that this mummy belongs to Tut’s wife, Ankhesenamun – who is known from the historical record to have been a daughter of Akhenaten and his principle wife Nefertiti. 

CONCLUSION

Confused yet?  It should be obvious by now that with every new discovery comes new questions.  What we can assert positively at this point is that Tutankhamun is the son of the male mummy in KV55 and the younger female mummy in KV35.  These two people were not only married, but were also brother and sister.  They were both the children of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, meaning Tut is the grandson of these two 18^th dynasty figures.  Additionally, Queen Tiye can now be positively identified as the elder female mummy from KV55. 

Much more tentative at this point are the identifications of Tut’s parents and the mother of his two stillborn children.  Regarding the children, it is likely from the historical record that they are the daughters of his only known wife, Ankhesenamun.  As such, it is likely that the unknown female mummy from KV21 is, in fact, Ankhesenamun.  However, the data connecting this mummy to the fetuses is not yet complete.  Furthermore, even if this mummy does prove to be the mother of the fetuses, this does not tell us for certain that she is Ankhesenamun.  Perhaps Tut had lesser wives whose names have been lost. 

Both of these problems – the mother of Tut’s children, and the identity of Tut’s parents – should be cleared up with further DNA testing on the mummy from KV21.  As mentioned above, Ankhesenamun is known from the historical record to be the daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.  As such, if the mummy from KV21 shares father/child DNA with the male mummy from KV55 (Tut’s father), this would prove beyond any reasonable doubt that not only is she Ankhesenamun, but that the KV55 mummy is, in fact, Akhenaten (and not Smenkhkare, who would have been her uncle,  not her father).  Furthermore, if her maternal DNA does not match the DNA of the Younger Lady from KV35 (the mother of Tut), this would prove that this Younger Lady was not Nefertiti (although it would still leave the door open for this mummy’s identification as Kiya, if one was so inclined).  Of course, if the maternal DNA matched the Younger Lady of KV35, this would prove that both Tut and his wife were the children of Akhenaten and Nefertiti, though I don’t think many experts expect this to be the case. 

Putting together this speculation with the hard DNA evidence, the researchers behind this project have put together an official genealogy of Tutankhamun.  His paternal grandparents are Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye.  His father was Akhenaten.  His mother was sister to Akhenaten and daughter to Amenhotep and Tiye, probably a woman named Nebeta or Beketaten.  His wife was Ankhesenamun, who was a daughter of Akhenaten and Nefertiti (making Tut her half-brother).  They had two daughters who were both stillborn.   

This genealogy, of course, is predicated on the assumption that the Younger Lady of KV35 is not Nefertiti or Kiya, and that the mummy of KV21 is Ankhesenamun.    

Judas and the Great Betrayal

If you follow my blog, you’ll know I’ve written previously on the subject of Judas, but like a lot of issues in Christianity, it is one worth revisiting from time to time.

In this essay, I want to look specifically at a question many people may not have given much consideration to: Did Judas actually betray Jesus?

Though some scholars, such as J.S. Spong and Hyam Maccoby, have suggested that Judas himself is a fictional creation, most scholars accept that Judas was a real figure of history. He seems certainly to have been one of Jesus’ followers, though there is very little we can say about him as a person. What we do know is that Christian history tells us that Judas was the betrayer of Jesus. Are these stories reliable?

For many Christians, the answer to this question would seem obvious. Of course Judas betrayed Jesus. It is one of the most familiar stories from the Gospel tradition. We find the stories in multiple accounts, some of which are independent of one another.

These independent sources are one of the keys scholars look for when determining the historical reliability of a story from history. If two authors give us the same story, but one of those authors used the other author for his information, then we have only one independent account. If, however, two authors give us the same story, and they are writing independently of one another, then this increases the probability, in the estimation of historians, that the story is reliable.

In the case of the betrayal, we do have these independent accounts – the two primary ones being Mark and John (Matthew and Luke both used Mark as source material). We may have other independent accounts as well, including the 2nd century Gospel of Judas (this text has only been available to scholars for a few years, but the preliminary research indicates that the writer probably did not know the Gospels of the New Testament).

As such, there seems to be good historical reasons for supposing that the betrayal story is true. There is a problem, however. And it’s a big one.

Put quite simply, our earliest sources reveal no knowledge of the stories about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, one of his inner circle.

This is a big problem because in addition to multiple independent sources, scholars like to have early sources. The earlier the better. While we have multiple independent sources for the Judas stories, they are not our earliest sources. Our earliest sources, on the other hand, make no mention of Judas, and imply instead no knowledge of anything like a betrayal by anyone, much less one of the Twelve.

Just what are these sources? The first is the hypothetical source scholars call Q. The Q Gospel is the common material between Luke and Matthew that is not found in Mark. Scholars are in virtual unanimous agreement that Luke and Matthew both used Mark as a primary source. However, there is a lot of material found in both Luke and Matthew that is not found in Mark. Where did this material come from? This is what scholars believe is the Q gospel – a text no longer in existence, but available in the 1st century to Matthew and Luke, which contained very little narrative framework, but was instead primarily a list of sayings attributed to Jesus, many of them apocalyptically oriented.

There are some scholars who doubt Q’s existence, but in my experience, the majority of major textual scholars accept it as real.

In any case, the Q Gospel is by its very nature earlier than the Gospels – at least earlier than Matthew and Luke. It is impossible to say, of course, whether it predates Mark, but most Q experts believe it was composed sometime in the 50’s or 60’s C.E., prior to Mark or the other Gospels.

As such, it is an early source for Christian material, and it is noteworthy that it includes nothing about Judas Iscariot or any betrayal of Jesus. Now, this in and of itself is not so strange. The text is mostly just a list of sayings attributed to Jesus, with very little narrative. It could be that the Q writer knew of the Judas story, but simply did not find it germane to his literary purposes in compiling a list of Jesus’ sayings.

More important than this problem of omission, however, is the fact that one saying attributed to Jesus in the Q Gospel implies that not only did the author of Q know nothing about the betrayal of Judas, but neither did Jesus.

Our later Gospels, of course, tell us that Jesus had foreknowledge that he was going to be betrayed. Consider, however, this saying from Q. In it, Jesus is speaking to his disciples in private:

Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

What’s so world-shattering about this statement? Quite simply, Jesus apparently has no knowledge, at least at this point, that Judas is going to betray him. He predicts that when he comes into power in God’s kingdom, his twelve disciples – all twelve disciples – will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This group, by necessity, must include Judas Iscariot.

Not only does this passage contradict later Gospel depictions of Jesus having foreknowledge of Judas’ treachery, but it also implies that the writer who wrote these sayings down also didn’t know anything about Judas’ treachery, otherwise we can assume he would have redacted it appropriately.

The second early source at issue here are the letters of Paul. Paul’s letters are the earliest Christian texts in existence, written during the 50’s C.E., or about twenty to thirty years after Jesus’ death. In them, Paul never mentions anything – not one solitary word – about Judas Iscariot or his betrayal of Jesus. He implies no knowledge of any such act.

Like the omission in Q, some may write this off as unimportant – Paul’s purposes in his letters were to address specific problems in his congregations, so it stands to reason that he may never have had reason to bring up Judas Iscariot. Indeed, Paul mentions virtually nothing about the life of Jesus at all in his letters. So this fact of omission about Judas may not tell us much.

But, again like the saying in Q, Paul does say something that implies he had no knowledge of Judas’ betrayal. It comes in a famous passage in 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about the people the risen Christ appeared to. He states that Jesus appeared “to Peter, and then to the Twelve.” Of course, we know from our Gospel accounts that Jesus appeared only to the eleven remaining disciples, because Judas was gone by then. And Paul couldn’t have been referring to Judas’ replacement, Matthias, who was voted on by the remaining disciples as depicted in the book of Acts, because that event occurs after Jesus’ ascension into heaven. As far as Paul was aware, the Twelve were still intact after Jesus’ death.

The most common argument against this point is that when Paul used the phrase “the Twelve,” he was using it as a generic title for Jesus’ inner circle. They were known as “the Twelve,” even though one eventually departed and betrayed Jesus. This, of course, is certainly possible, but it doesn’t seem very probable. The Gospels, after all, do not use any such euphemism. They tell us explicitly that the risen Christ appeared to “the Eleven.” The Twelve were no longer intact. Furthermore, making this assumption requires reading something into the text that is not actually there. It requires reading Paul through the lens of the later Gospels. If one had only Paul’s letters to go on (as his congregations did), one would make the plain, simple, and obvious deduction that the Twelve were still intact after Jesus’ death.

Some of my more savvy readers may be screaming by this point that I have overlooked a salient passage in Paul, where he explicitly talks about Jesus’ betrayal.

The passage in question is from, strangely enough, the same letter where Paul talks about “the Twelve” – 1 Corinthians. This time, Paul is talking about problems the Corinthians are having while celebrating the Lord’s Supper. In one of the very few instances where Paul refers to an event in Jesus’ life, he writes: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread…”

This seems to be a reference to a familiar passage from the Gospels – Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, which occurs on the night Judas betrays him. Clearly Paul is talking about Judas here!

Not so fast.

The word translated in that passage as “betrayed” actually means “handed over,” whether handing over car keys or handing over a perpetrator to the police. Depending on context, of course, it can also mean something like “betrayed.” In the Gospels, for instance, this is the word of choice for describing what Judas did – he handed Jesus over. Since Judas was part of his inner circle, and did it behind his back, this constituted a “betrayal.”

However, without context to imply an act of betrayal, the word simply means “handed over.” In Paul, there is no context given to suggest betrayal. Quite literally, Paul says: “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over, took bread…”

But couldn’t the context be implied? Perhaps Paul and his readers know how Jesus was handed over, and know who did it, so Judas and his betrayal are simply understood in unwritten context. This is possible, but when one looks at the greater context of how Paul, himself, uses this word most commonly, a more reasonable context comes into play.

Put simply, when Paul talks about Jesus going to the cross and being resurrected, he frequently uses this same word. But when he uses it elsewhere, he uses it in the context of God “handing Jesus over” to be crucified.

Consider, for instance, Romans chapter 8: “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?”

Or Galatians chapter 2: “And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

There are roughly ten other similar examples in the writings of Paul, where he uses this word to refer to passing something on, or giving something up, or handing something over. Never does he use the word to imply betrayal. And when he specifically uses the word in regards to Jesus’ death, as in the quotes above, it is always an act of God; God handed Jesus over to death so that we might be saved.

Given that context, it is reasonable to assume that in the passage from 1 Corinthians, when he is talking about the Lord’s Supper, he is saying, in effect, “The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over [by God unto death], he took bread…” This fits into the context with which Paul exclusively uses this word. It only fits into a betrayal context if you read Paul through the lens of later authors and their stories, and ignore Paul’s own way of using the word.

Even if one wants to argue that Paul was, in fact, referring to Jesus being physically handed over, and not just God “handing Jesus over” to death and resurrection, the phrase still does not explicitly tell us that this “handing over” was an act of Judas or one of Jesus’ inner circle. Perhaps Paul meant that Jesus was “handed over” by the Jewish leaders to the Roman authorities – which is, of course, consistent with the later Gospel accounts. Perhaps he means that some other person known to Jesus “handed him over” to the authorities. A nosy neighbor, perhaps, or the groundskeeper of the garden where Jesus was arrested.

This is all speculation, of course, but the point is that Paul is not explicit. The only context suggests that Paul is speaking metaphorically about an action of God, but even if we assume he was speaking more literally, there is no indication that this “handing over” was an act of betrayal by Judas or anyone else of his inner circle. This is particularly true in light of the fact that Paul’s use of the phrase “the Twelve” implies that he knew of no inner circle betrayal.

There is a possible third early source to consider as well. Most scholars date the Gospel of Thomas to the early 2nd century, but a few scholars, notably J.D. Crossan, have argued that Thomas predates the Gospels of the New Testament, composed around the same time as the letters of Paul and Q.

If we accept this early date for Thomas, it is significant to note that Thomas also includes nothing about a betrayal, and implies no knowledge of any such act. Like the Q Gospel, Thomas is a sayings gospel, providing very little narrative framework. In any case, Judas and the betrayal are never mentioned or implied.

This leaves us, of course, with the problem I mentioned at the beginning. We have multiple independent accounts of the betrayal by Judas, but these are later accounts, and our earliest accounts say nothing about the event, and instead say other things that imply the writers, in fact, had never heard of Judas’ betrayal.

How do we reconcile this? Ultimately, both camps have some explaining to do. If one doubts that Judas betrayed Jesus, then one must explain why our later accounts, some of them independent of one another, agree in their descriptions of Judas betraying Jesus. But if one accepts that Judas did, in fact, betray Jesus, one must explain why our earliest accounts don’t reflect the story, and the writers seem to know nothing about it.

In my opinion, this second “explanation” is the tougher one. There are, however, a few possibilities. Perhaps the Q hypothesis is completely bogus and Q never existed. Instead, the Q material is simply Luke copying from Matthew. Therefore, we can’t count Q as an early source that does not show any knowledge of Judas’ betrayal.

Furthermore, even if we accept that Q is real, the fact that the betrayal is never mentioned is immaterial. It also never mentions Jesus’ death by crucifixion, but we know that happened. And the quote about the “twelve thrones” may simply reflect that the historical Jesus did not know Judas was going to betray him (even though he is later depicted as having this foreknowledge).

As for Paul, perhaps “the Twelve” was just a euphemism, and when he talks about Jesus being “handed over,” he was, in fact, thinking of Judas, and knew his readers would know what he was talking about.

Even if we accept that Paul knows nothing about Judas, this still does not undermine the stories of the betrayal. Maybe Paul simply hadn’t heard the story. Paul claims in his letters to have gotten his information originally by direct revelation from the risen Christ. He explicitly denies that he heard the story of Jesus from the disciples (see Galatians chapter 1). Perhaps the risen Christ simply didn’t find it necessary to tell Paul about the betrayal.

For me, none of these explanations is very satisfying. The issue with Paul, in particular, is a very tough one. I can simply think of no way to explain why Paul wouldn’t have been intimately familiar with the story of Judas and the betrayal, if in fact it happened. How could he not have known this information? Even if we accept his assertion that he did not first learn the story of Jesus from the disciples, he certainly met the disciples later in life – before he wrote 1 Corinthians. He tells us about these meetings, after all. By the time he was writing that letter, it is simply unthinkable that he would never have heard the Judas story.

Is it possible, some may ask, that Paul and the author of Q (and Thomas, if it is early) were simply trying to suppress the story – that it was an embarrassing moment, one that folks like Paul were not inclined to talk about? This, I suppose, would be the best explanation, if one accepts that the Judas stories of the Gospel tradition are historically reliable. By the Gospel era, it wasn’t such a painful memory because so many years had passed. But during the early years, when Paul and the Q author were writing, Christian evangelists weren’t as likely to talk openly about it.

As for the other side of the debate – those who are skeptical of the betrayal stories – what answer can be given to explain the stories of the Gospel tradition?

This is an easier question to answer, in my opinion. It does not take a graduate degree in world mythology to understand how legends can and do arise. The stories of Judas in the Gospels are simply polemical. Judas is the embodiment of “the Jews,” and thus painted as the betrayer and Christ-killer. Why Judas, and not someone else? Maybe Judas was an easy target. Perhaps he died shortly after Jesus’ own death, and by the time of the Gospels, no one really knew anything about him, thus making him an easy pick for a betrayal legend – particularly given his name. Perhaps Judas had some kind of falling out with the early Christian movement. Perhaps he didn’t like what the other disciples were saying and preaching, and instead preached a different gospel – one at odds with the others. Perhaps he grew disillusioned after Jesus’ death and decided that they had all been deluded by a fancy talker. Maybe he became an enemy of the Christian movement because he thought they were crazy for claiming that Jesus was alive. Any of these things could explain why he would later come to be vilified as the betrayer of Jesus.

In the end, I tend toward skepticism about the betrayal stories. For me, I simply can’t get past the idea of Paul not knowing about the betrayal. He must have heard such stories, if indeed those stories were around, yet his words imply the opposite. Taken together with the lack of knowledge in the Q gospel (which I believe existed), and Thomas (which I also tend to think is earlier than many scholars suppose), it simply seems unlikely to me that the betrayal stories are historically reliable. As I said earlier, I do accept that Judas was a follower of Jesus and a real person of history, but I think the speculations I provided in the previous paragraph probably give a better explanation for why he later came to be vilified in the Gospels of the New Testament.

Big Al's Story

I hope some of my readers will excuse the sacrilegious tone in parts of this story. It's all meant in good fun, and sometimes sacrilegious jokes ARE funny...

************

Big Al is really famous. And I mean really, big time, seriously famous. Like, Michelin Man or Icee Bear famous. The Michelin Man is man who is made out of white tires.

The Michelin Man, running away from gay predators.

Like most famous people, nobody had ever heard of Big Al when he was born. He was born in an area of the world called McDonaldland, which was founded centuries earlier by a great military commander named Ronald McDonald.

Ronald McDonald

Ronald McDonald was really famous in his own right, but he got assassinated because he wanted to raise the price of a Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese to four denarii.

Big Al was his father’s fifth son, so that meant he was pretty much ignored. He also had a serious bowel problem and suffered from what doctors and other poop experts call Crohn’s Disease. Crohn’s Disease was named after a guy named Burrill Crohn who was such an expert on poop that he had an intestinal illness named after him.

In Big Al’s day, though, it was just called The Shits.

Look: Big Al was totally overshadowed by his brothers. Their names were Stan, Baldy, Bertie, and Red. They pretty much regarded Big Al as a Big Poopy Pants, and so Al generally got stuck doing stuff like milking the cows and being forced to memorize English poetry. English poetry is a collection of pretty words that pretentious assholes think is meaningful.

A pretentious asshole.

Big Al thus became an expert on teats and letters, which would come in handy later in life. His wife was particularly pleased with his udder expertise.

When he was a teenager, some pirates tried to be all badass near Big Al’s home in McDonaldland, so he and his brother Red gave them some money and they went away. A pirate is a man who wears a do-rag and ripped pants and carries a long, slender object called a sword. A sword is used to disembowel people, and Big Al probably wished, at times, that he could be disemboweled to relieve his chronic diarrhea.

Disemboweling is when you remove someone’s intestines. It’s usually fatal.

If you know anything about pirates, you know that they always come back for more. They’re like children that way. That’s the lesson Big Al and his brother Red learned. When the pirates came back, Big Al and Red fought against them, but Red got disemboweled in the process.

Funnily enough, his brother’s disemboweling meant that Big Al was now in charge, because Stan, Baldy, and Bertie had already kicked the bucket by this time too. Big Al became sort of like Mayor McCheese.

Mayor McCheese is famous for his campaign slogan of "I will cut you, bitch."

The first thing Big Al did was give the pirates some more money. This made them go away again. It’s kind of like when you put Preparation H on a hemorrhoid.  Preparation H is a medicinal cream.  A hemorrhoid is a painful, bleeding sore on your asshole.

A painful, bleeding, asshole hemorrhoid.

After that, things went okay for a few years in Big Al’s McDonaldland. Grimace and Birdie got married, and the Fry Guys came out of the closet.

Grimace: What the fuck am I?
Birdie: Beats the shit out of me.

But then everything turned to shit again because the pirates came back. This was thanks in large part to the fact that the Hamburgler turned out to be a pirate. In any case, the pirates meant business this time, and Big Al got his ass kicked in a bad way. He ended up fortifying himself in a swamp, while the pirates pointed and called him names.

Look: Big Al became a swamp person for a while. He took up music and wrote a song called Swamp Music that was later recorded by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Lynyrd Skynyrd started out as Big Al's House Band.

In the song, Big Al’s love of English poetry really shines through: “Goin’ down to the swamp, gonna watch me a hound dog catch a coon. Hound dog sing that swamp, swamp, swamp, swamp music.”

While he lived in the swamps, he had to disguise himself so the pirates wouldn’t find him and disembowel him. He took a job as a cook, but when the cougar he worked for discovered that the cakes he was watching had burned, she got really pissed. A cougar is an aging female Baby Boomer who likes to have sex with her son’s friends.

She was cougar when cougar wasn't cool.

Big Al’s cougar boss was really upset until she found out who Big Al was. Then she was really sorry and offered to make it up to him by letting him do her in the butt. Of course, he was like: “Uh, we already did that.”

In any case, Big Al was so humble, he insisted that it was he, not her, who was at fault. This made the cougar really happy. Like the legs of a hooker, the story got spread far and wide, and everybody started saying Big Al needed to come back and regain control of McDonaldland.

This is when Big Al’s true genius started to show. He dressed up like a clown and visited the pirate camp. Pirates think clowns are really great fun. A clown is a homosexual pedophile who wears make-up.  In any case, dressed up like a clown, Big Al learned all sorts of inside information about what the pirates were doing, because pirates are prone to reveal their strategy to circus performers.

After learning everything he needed to know, Big Al went back to the swamps and stowed away his clown gear in a box marked “Porn Video Props.” Then he gathered a bunch of people with pitchforks, and went and slaughtered all the pirates. It made for great sport, and fun was had by young and old alike.

Look: Big Al was a Big Ol’ Christian. A Christian is a person who believes that God had to sacrifice himself to himself in order to change a set of rules he made himself.

This Christian suffers from Crohn's Disease of the Mouth.

After the Great Pirate Slaughter, Big Al made everyone in McDonaldland become a Christian. A few people, most notably the McNugget Buddies, flat out refused, so he disemboweled them.

The pagan beliefs of the McNugget Buddies led to their disemboweling.

Everyone else was totally cool with Christianity, so they came in droves to be baptized. Baptism is a religious ritual where you pretend to drown yourself because it makes Baby Jesus happy. Baby Jesus is God as a baby.

Jesus was born to a white, Caucasian, English-speaking mother in 1st century Galilee.

After years of diarrhea, Big Al finally died. He was buried underneath the ground like most people, but a few years later, they built a prison over his grave and the convicts who built it weren’t particularly impressed with his bones, so they threw them away. A convict is a person who was born poor.

The discarding of Big Al’s bones was particularly problematic, because by this time Big Al was a saint, and saint’s bones are magical. Magic is a type of trick that people don’t believe in unless the Church says it’s okay. The Church is a religious institution that tells people what to believe. A religious institution is a form of Crohn’s Disease.

Look: Big Al is more famously known as Alfred the Great, the first King of England, who repelled the Viking invasions of the 9th century and united the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, paving the way for the future British Empire.

The sculptor who built this statue surreptitiously removed the diarrhea dribbling down Big Al's leg.

God in Popular Consciousness

Over the years, I have come to understand something about Christian belief in God: a lot of folks, whether they are casual believers or weekly church-goers, whether they are Protestant, Catholic, or non-denominational, whether they are male or female, black or white, American or foreign-born, rich or poor, rural or urban, east coast, west coast, or Midwest – regardless of any of those things, many have a stunningly shallow conception of God.

That may sound like a harsh and blanket criticism, but it is not intended to be so. Certainly there are plenty of folks, from all those categories, who have very well-developed, consistent, deep, and meaningful conceptions of God. And one can argue over how to even establish what constitutes “deep” and “shallow” in such a metaphysical discussion. But it certainly seems, to this casual observer anyway, that the deep believers are heavily outweighed by those for whom God is just a sweater they put on from time to time, but mostly just gets moth-eaten in the drawer.

I was thinking the other day about some of the more typical and traditional views of God, as accepted by a lot of Christians and Jews around the world (and a lot of other religions, for that matter), and it struck me that a lot of folks pretty much treat God like Santa Claus for Adults. Or, reversed, Santa Claus is God for Children.

In any case, consider the following similarities:

1. Santa lives above us, at the North Pole, which is a magical place no one can see. God lives above us, in heaven, which is a magical place no one can see.
2. Santa gives us things we ask for in letters or in person. God gives us things we ask for in prayer.
3. Sometimes Santa doesn’t give us what we ask for. Sometimes God does not answer our prayers.
4. Sometimes Santa brings us things we didn’t ask for. God too.
5. Santa is a man. So is God.
6. Santa is old, with a white beard. God is the Old Man In the Sky.
7. Santa “knows when we’ve been bad or good” and can essentially monitor our behavior all year long from afar. God has this omnipotent quality too.
8. Santa is immortal. So is God.
9. Santa can perform miraculous feats such as entering and exiting locked houses and individually bringing toys to all the world’s children in a single night. God too can perform various kinds of miracles.
10. Santa is surrounded by a retinue of elves. God has angels.
11. Santa rides a sled through the sky, pulled by magic reindeer that can fly. In Jewish mysticism, God rides a chariot through the sky, pulled by magic horses that can fly.
12. Santa likes milk and cookies. God likes milk and honey.

Okay, so that last one was kind of a joke, but you get the point. Either way you look at it, Santa Claus is God for Children, or God is Santa Claus for Adults.

Do we want to live our lives putting God on like a sweater and viewing God as little more than Santa Claus for Adults? Or do we want, as the apostle Paul said, to give up our childish ways and come to a deeper, more meaningful, and life-changing understanding of God and our relationship to God? In following the example of Jesus, I have chosen the latter.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the road less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

10 Fun Facts about Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States

1. Cleveland is the only president in U.S. history to serve two non-consecutive terms in the White House. He served from 1884 to 1888, then again from 1892 to 1896.

2. Cleveland was the only Democrat elected president during the era of Republican domination that lasted more than 50 years, from 1860 to 1912.

3. Cleveland lost his re-election bid in 1888 to Benjamin Harrison, a grandson of former president William Henry Harrison. However, like Al Gore in 2000, Cleveland won the popular vote, but lost the electoral vote. Also like the 2000 election, there were numerous accusations of fraud, and many historians believe that Cleveland actually won the electoral vote as well. In any case, this makes Cleveland one of only three men to win the popular vote in three presidential elections. Franklin Roosevelt, of course, won four, and Andrew Jackson won three, but lost the electoral vote in the first one (1824).

4. In 1892, Cleveland again faced the now incumbent Benjamin Harrison. This was the only time in American history that both major parties put forth either a sitting or a former American president. Despite narrowly losing four years earlier, Cleveland defeated Harrison the second time around by a landslide.

5. In that same election year of 1892, neither candidate actively campaigned. The reason for this is because Harrison's wife was dying of tuberculosis, and he wanted to be by her side. Out of respect for Mrs. Harrison, Cleveland opted not to campaign as well.

6. Cleveland came into his first term in office as a bachelor, only the third time that had ever happened (John Tyler, the first bachelor president, was actually a widower). Cleveland married during his first term, becoming the first president to get married inside the White House (Tyler had remarried while president, but not in a White House ceremony). The other bachelor, James Buchanan, never married. Later, Woodrow Wilson's wife would die during his second year as president, and he would remarry the following year.

7. Cleveland's marriage caused a minor scandal at the time, because his wife was nearly 30 years younger than he was. This, by itself, was not terribly sensational given the time period, but what made the union somewhat scandalous was that his young wife had been the daughter of one of his best friends. This friend had died some years earlier, and had named Cleveland as his daughter's financial protector. He had not exactly raised the girl, but he had been her godparent. It is not unlike when Woody Allen married the adopted daughter of one of his former partners. The only difference is that this wasn't a Hollywood director, but the president of the United States.

8. Because his wife was so young, the Clevelands began having children following their marriage. Their first child, Ruth, was born in between Cleveland's two terms, and made a national sensation. She was a sickly child, however, and died in 1904 at the age of 12. In 1921, the Curtiss Candy Company changed the name of its candy bar "Kandy Kake" to "Baby Ruth," ostensibly in honor of Ruth's memory. However, this happened during the rise of Babe Ruth in Major League Baseball, and it is likely that the name change was an effort to capitalize on Babe Ruth's fame, with a cover story about Ruth Cleveland to keep the company from being sued for royalties. In fact, another candy company marketed a true Babe Ruth candy bar, with Babe Ruth's approval, and was successfully sued by Curtiss and forced to stop production because of the similarity in names.

9. The beginning of Cleveland's second term coincided with what historians call the Panic of 1893 - a major economic recession. Cleveland was not able to effectively turn this recession around, leading to another sixteen years of Republican domination of the presidency after his term ended.

10. Cleveland and his wife continued to have children after he left the White House in 1896. In 1903, Mrs. Cleveland gave birth to their fifth and final child, Frances. Grover Cleveland was in his mid-60's by this time. Frances went on to live more than 90 years, and only just died in 1995.

"Dog Years" - An Analysis

One of the most maligned songs in the Rush cannon, Dog Years is a song found on Rush’s 1996 LP, “Test For Echo.” The song is ostensibly about the life of a dog, and the lyrics are light-hearted and seemingly frivolous, all of which makes for a song that is often criticized by the fans of Rush, who have come to expect deeper and more meaningful words from their favorite band. To quote two opinions recently given on the Rush message board: “I hate the lyrics. I think they are embarrassing;” and, “The only mistake [Rush] made on Dog Years was writing lyrics.”

I have often argued that the reason many Rush fans don’t like Dog Years is because they don’t really understand it. It’s not, in fact, a song about a dog, and there are actually a number of very clever phrases in the song that only seem flippant because they make vague references that the average listener doesn’t get. I will look at each section individually and provide an analysis of what I think the song is saying. The lyrics, for anyone who cares, were written by Rush’s primarily lyricist, drummer Neil Peart.

In a dog’s life
A year is really more like seven
And all too soon a canine
Will be chasing cars in doggie heaven

I can agree that the last line is problematic. Regardless of the point Peart is trying to make, there’s just no good reason to ever use the phrase “doggie heaven.” Then again, Rush has always tended to have a typically goofy Canadian sense of humor, so the use of this silly phrase really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Be that as it may, this opening stanza is simply setting the stage for the extended metaphor that Peart makes throughout the song – a metaphor connecting “man” and “man’s best friend” and referencing the number seven. Convention says that a dog year is like seven human years. Thus, dogs age much more quickly than humans, and end up dying, on average, at about age 11 or 12 – which, if you multiply by seven, corresponds roughly to the average age human beings tend kick the bucket and head off to “people heaven.”

It seems to me
As we make our own few circles ‘round the sun
We get it backwards
And our seven years go by like one

Here, in the second stanza, the first connection to the human condition is made. As we make our own few circles around the sun, our time seems to fly by – we live in dog years; seven years go by like one.

Dog years – It’s the season of the itch
Dog years – With every scratch it reappears

This is the first chorus. That first phrase, “It’s the season of the itch,” is an obscure one. What is Peart trying to say here? My opinion is that he is making a vague reference to one of Marilyn Monroe’s most famous films: “The Seven Year Itch.” This is the film that produced the iconic image of Monroe with her white skirts billowing up over her torso. The phrase itself is one used by psychologists to refer to how married couples frequently begin to have trouble near the seventh year of marriage, and start “itching” for something else.

The connection, then, to the “dog years” outlined in the first stanza of the first verse is obvious and twofold. First, there is the connection to the seven years of a dog year. Secondly, there is the connection with the word “itch,” which draws to mind a scratching dog. This image is continued in the second line: “With every scratch it reappears.” Like a dog, no matter how much we “scratch,” we can’t make the “itch” go away – in other words, no matter how much we fight against it, time moves inexorably onward - seven years (the season of the itch) go by like one.

This chorus, I believe, is an incredibly complex and clever reference, pulling together the themes of the first verse.

On to the second verse:

In the dog days
People look to Sirius
Dogs cry for the moon
But these connections are mysterious

Here, Peart is again talking about the struggles of humanity. In the “dog days,” people look to Sirius. Another clever, yet vague reference here: Sirius is the name of the brightest star in the night sky. It is known as the “dog star.” The point, of course, is that some people look for comfort in astrology.

The stanza, of course, also has yet another clever twist, because the phrase “People look to Sirius,” when sung aloud, sounds like “People look too serious.” In other words, people take life way too seriously, particularly during the “dog days” of life.

The second part of the stanza has another clever play on words: “Dogs cry for the moon.” The expression “cry for the moon” is akin to “ask for the moon.” In this phrase, I think “dogs” can mean people, and thus some people “cry for the moon” – that is, they want everything – because they think that will soothe their discontent. But all this, Peart affirms, is “mysterious.”

It’s a play on words because, taken literally, he’s also talking about dogs howling at the moon, a fact of canine life that is mysterious to human beings.

It seems to me
While it’s true that every dog will have his day
When all the bones are buried
There is barely time to go outside and play

This second stanza of the second verse is an extended play on words that can be taken literally about dogs, or metaphorically about humans. For a dog, by the time he has buried all his bones, there’s barely any time left to get out and play. For a human, by the time he has “buried all his bones” – that is, by the time he has taken care of all his daily business – there is never enough time for anything else.

This, of course, fits the overall theme of “dog days” and looking too serious and life flying by like dog years.

The third line, of course, also includes another double entendre, because it can also be understood as our own bones being buried after we die. We spend our lives so busy, but once we are dead, there’s no more time left. Thus, it’s an encouragement not to waste one’s life. It reminds me of a phrase my friends and I used to say in college when debating about whether to stay up late and have fun, or go to bed early because we had class the next day: “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

Dog years – It’s the season of the itch
Dog years - With every scratch it reappears
Dog years - For every sad son of a bitch
Dog years - With his tail between his ears

This second time through the chorus extends it by adding rhyming phrases. This particular part of the song gets a significant amount of criticism by many Rush fans. They miss the vague and clever reference to the Monroe film, mentioned above, and they assume that “season of the itch” is a meaningless phrase written only to create a nice rhyme for “son of a bitch.” They also argue that “With his tail between his ears” is a nonsense line that is, again, only given for the purpose of rhyming. What does it mean, after all, for a dog to have his tail between his ears? Dogs’ tails go between their legs, not their ears, right?

We’ve already discussed the meaning of the first two lines. The third line is my favorite in the whole song, because like so many of the other phrases, it’s a clever play on words – the dog/human connection again. The poor dog is a “sad son of a bitch,” and the poor man, living in the dog years, is also a “sad son of a bitch.”

The fourth line connects to the one before it. It’s not the dog with his tail between his ears, but the human with his tail between his ears. And what does it mean for a human to have his tail between his ears? It can be taken a couple of ways. First, it could be understood as a clever way of saying the “sad son of a bitch” has “shit for brains” – his “tail” (i.e., his rear end) between his “ears” (i.e., inside his head). It can also be taken as a different kind of insult; the “sad son of a bitch” has his “head up his ass.”

I prefer that last one myself, and it fits the context of the song a bit better.

I’d rather be a tortoise from Galapagos
Or a span of geological time
Than be living in these dog years

Just in case you might feel that Peart is being a bit too hard on the “sad son of a bitch,” this bridge of the song makes clear that Peart, himself, is the one living in “these dog years” with his “tail between his ears.”

This bridge has also been a frequent target of criticism, either because “Galapagos” makes for a cumbersome word in a song, or because the point is not clear. What the heck does a tortoise from Galapagos (wherever that is!) have to do with anything? the frustrated Rush fan might ask (and I’ve personally heard this complaint). Of course, Galapagos is an island off the western coast of South America, and is the place Charles Darwin visited that helped inspire his work in evolutionary science. Tortoises, which are found in abundance on Galapagos, are famous for having extremely long life spans. One famous tortoise was given to the royal family of Tonga – an island in the South Pacific – by Captain Cook in about 1777. It didn’t die until the Beatles were a pop sensation – in 1965.

The second phrase – “a span of geological time” – is a bit more explicit.

The third phrase, of course, makes the point clear: I’d rather live for a really long time than have this fleeting human life, which passes like dog years.

In a dog’s brain
A constant buzz of low-level static
One sniff at the hydrant
And the answer is automatic

This is the first stanza of the song’s third verse. Like the rest of the song, it’s a play on words that can refer to both a literal dog and a human being. In reference to a dog, the meaning is fairly clear. In reference to a human, I think it can be understood much more deeply as a reference to how we spend so much of our lives on “autopilot.” This fits with the theme of the “sad son of a bitch,” struggling through the “dog days” of his fleeting life on earth.

It seems to me
As well make our own few circles ‘round the block
We've lost our senses
For the higher-level static of talk

This second stanza makes the implication in the first stanza clearer. As we humans make our own few “circles ‘round the block,” we miscommunicate and we run on autopilot, missing the important “conversations” going on around us – the “conversations,” of course, being the important events in life. More directly, I suspect, Peart is lamenting the loss of intellectual discourse in popular culture.

In the end, despite its frequent criticism, I think Dog Years is one of Rush’s most clever lyrical efforts – a song where nearly every line is a play on words, an extended metaphor, or a double entendre.

Perhaps some will still think the lyrics are bad for a rock song. To finish the first quote given above by the critical fan on the Rush message board: “I hate the lyrics. I think they are embarrassing. I also understand them. I still think they are embarrassing.”

Well, I suppose you can’t please everyone. I’m drawn to the song because the lyrics are meaningful to me – I often feel the same feelings described in the song – and as a wordsmith, I have a deep appreciation for the cleverness of the way those feelings are expressed.

Nonviolent Resistance in the Sermon on the Mount

The Sermon on the Mount, as many Christians will know, is a famous “sermon” given by Jesus in the book of Matthew, containing some of Jesus’ most familiar sayings. I put the word “sermon” in quotation marks, because it is unlikely that Jesus uttered all these sayings in one long soliloquy on a single given day during his life. Comprising three full chapters in Matthew’s gospel, it reads more like a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, which Matthew collated into a single teaching discourse.

Entire books have been written about the various teachings that make up the Sermon on the Mount, but I want to focus particularly on five sayings that fit with Jesus’ profile as a prophet engaged in nonviolent resistance to the domination system of imperial Rome and its Jewish collaborators.

RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS IN PREINDUSTRIAL DOMINATION SYSTEMS

Don’t let the subtitle scare you. A “preindustrial domination system” is simply an anthropological way of referring to just about every civilization that existed prior to the industrial age of the 18th century. A “domination system” is a type of civilization where the vast majority of the populace lives near or below the subsistence level, with the fruits of their labors being expended primarily by a powerful and wealthy few. Think of medieval Europe, where the peasants – the serfs – worked the land and lived in virtual poverty, so that the kings and dukes and lords could live in luxury. This is a classic domination system, preindustrial, and thus “agrarian” (farm-based).

This is the kind of civilization Jesus and his followers lived within. The Romans were the imperial overlords, and the Jewish elite – the “chief priests, scribes, and teachers of the law” frequently named in the gospels – were their native collaborators. They were “collaborators” because they did Rome’s bidding to the detriment of the Jewish population. They kept people in line, collected taxes and fines, oversaw the court system and the religious system, and generally acted as the pawns of imperial Rome. Rome rewarded them with wealth, status, and power.

This, needless to say, did not go over well with the average Jew, which led to a serious of resistance movements and armed rebellions over a period of 140 years, from the death of Herod around 4 B.C.E., to the Bar Kokhba Revolt of 132 C.E.

The resistance movements that rose up among the Jews during these years are consistent with the kinds of resistance movements that tend to crop up in all agrarian domination systems. There are generally two types of resistance, each with two possible methods.

The first type is violent resistance, and it includes both passive and active violent resistance. Active violent resistance is, of course, akin to armed rebellion – bands of angry peasants rising up with sword and spear to overthrow the authorities. Passive violent resistance can be characterized as opting out of a true act of war, but being prepared to defend one’s self violently if necessary. “I won’t draw first blood, but I’ll strike quick and deadly if you make the first move.”

The second type is nonviolent resistance, and it too has passive and active forms. Passive nonviolent resistance is the form of resistance that many Jews of the 1st century took, including the gospels’ infamous Pharisees. Instead of violently resisting the Roman overlords and their native collaborators, the Pharisees delved into their religious traditions as a way to passively resist cultural, religious, and even genetic assimilation. This tradition of passive nonviolent resistance has become the hallmark of Judaism, and it is the reason why Jews still exist as a distinctive culture to this day, despite nearly 2,000 years without a homeland. In the annals of anthropology, this is quite remarkable. Notice that there are no Assyrians, Hittites, or Medians still around in the 21st century – they were assimilated long ago.

Active nonviolent resistance, on the other hand, is akin to the type of resistance the United States saw during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. Violence is rejected, but active resistance through defiance, civil disobedience, and noncompliance with cultural norms is affirmed.

This active nonviolent resistance is the type of resistance that Jesus and his follower embraced during the first part of the 1st century. Jesus does not appear to have engaged in or supported violent rebellion, but he encouraged his followers to actively resist the domination system around him.

ACTIVE NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE IN THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

With that context in mind, we move to the Sermon on the Mount, which has several sayings that illustrate Jesus’ commitment to active nonviolent resistance of the imperial Roman domination system and its elite Jewish collaborators.

The sayings in question make up only a fraction of the entire discourse, but their importance to the Jesus movement cannot be underestimated. Walter Wink was the first scholar to highlight their importance as forms of nonviolent resistance, and the following analysis is largely Wink’s work, repeated by scholar Marcus Borg in a recent book on the historical Jesus.

1. You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.

2. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.

3. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.

4. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

5. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

Each one of these sayings is rife with active forms of nonviolent resistance, though many (if not all) of them are frequently misunderstood in popular Christianity.

EYE FOR EYE, TOOTH FOR TOOTH

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer.

I have often found it odd that Christians frequently quote this phrase to support the idea of capital punishment and other punitive measures against criminals. “If someone stabs a person 20 times, they should be executed by being stabbed 20 times.” I honestly couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this argument. A cruder version goes something like this: “If someone commits rape, they should have their genitalia removed.”

I’m reminded of a well-known song by the Charlie Daniels Band called “Simple Man.” After a verse that talks about all the violent things that the narrator would like to do to criminals, the chorus states: “The Good Book says it so I know it’s the truth: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. You better watch where you go and remember where you’ve been, that’s the way I see it, I’m a simple man.”

This sort of thing dumbfounds me because in the “Good Book,” Jesus explicitly rejects “eye for an eye” justice systems. Perhaps Charlie Daniels doesn’t realize there’s another 27 books after Malachi in his bible.

In any case, when Jesus says “do not resist and evildoer,” there is a slight mistranslation at play that causes the phrase to come off as entirely passive – if you are attacked, simply lay down and die. But in the original Greek, the word translated as “resist” implies violent resistance. So what Jesus says here is that his followers should not “violently” resist an evildoer. Resist evil, but not with violence.

Thus, this saying is a kind of introduction to what comes afterward. The remaining sayings in this cluster illustrate what it means, in practice, to resist evil nonviolently.

TURN THE OTHER CHEEK

But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.

As with the phrase “do not resist an evildoer,” there are those who would suggest that the “turn the other cheek” statement encourages us not to fight back if we are attacked. Lie down and die, as it were. It is difficult to believe that Jesus taught this – and clearly if his followers had followed such a teaching, the religion that sprang up in his name wouldn’t have survived the persecutions of the 1st century!

Instead, this saying from Jesus is talking about something much more specific – namely, the imperial domination system of the 1st century Jewish homeland.

In that context, consider the word choice: Jesus refers specifically to the “right cheek.” Picture a person slapping someone on the right cheek. In order to do it, the striker would have to use a backhanded swing. The backhanded slap was a way a superior struck his subordinate. A forehand slap was the way an equal would strike another equal – such as during a fight. In this saying, then, Jesus is talking about a superior – one of the wealthy, powerful elites – striking a commoner. Perhaps a landowner striking a day laborer. When this happens, Jesus urges, turn the other cheek as well. By doing so, you are giving your left cheek, which would require a forehand slap – the slap of an equal. This is a powerful image of active nonviolent resistance. You can strike me, but you will do it as my equal.

GIVE YOUR COAT AND YOUR CLOAK

And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well.

The radicalism of this particular saying is sometimes lost because modern folks don’t generally understand the clothing designations of the ancient world. To put it simply, a common Jew in the 1st century wore two garments – a cloak or tunic, which covered the body, and a coat or robe worn over top. The cloak, then, was the undergarment, and the coat was the outer garment.

What does it mean to talk about someone “suing” you for your coat? Quite simply, this is a reference to a person being sued for clothing because of debt. This may seem foreign to our modern sensibilities, but this was the nature of poverty that so many common Jews lived within in the 1st century. Indebtedness was rampant and feared almost more than anything else, and if you could not pay your debts, you might be sued for the coat on your back, so that the creditor could sell your coat to recoup his money.

When Jesus encourages his followers to give both coat and cloak, the image is quite striking – the debtor would literally be left naked. This, like the image of turning the other cheek, is a powerful image of active nonviolent resistance. First, it shames the creditor, because in 1st century Jewish culture, nakedness shamed not the person who was naked, but the person who saw the nakedness. Secondly, as Marcus Borg puts it, it serves as a symbolic statement: “Look what this system is doing to us, stripping us naked.”

GO THE SECOND MILE

And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.

This statement, rather than being a general statement about giving yourselves to others, is referencing a specific practice in the Roman Empire. A journeying Roman soldier had the right to force a commoner to carry his heavy gear for one mile. The limit of one mile was put in place because the practice had been abused, and commoners were often forced to march with the army for extremely long distances. To put it bluntly, they sometimes had to walk as long as it took for the soldier to find another sucker. This, of course, not only served to stir up resentment, but also could have had an economic impact, as a landowner might see his fields lay dormant for a day because a passing regiment enlisted all his workers to carry their gear to the next town.

After the “one mile” rule was put in place, it was enforced with sometimes severe penalties. No Roman soldier wanted to be caught forcing a peasant to carry his gear for miles on end. So, as Walter Wink suggests (and Marcus Borg repeats), the image is almost a comical one, of a peasant insisting on going the extra distance, and the soldier wrestling with him to put the gear down and go home.

As such, this too creates a powerful image of active nonviolent resistance to the entrenched domination system, by revealing its absurd side and putting the soldier (who represents the power base of the system) in an uncomfortable spot. It turns him – and thus the system – on its head.

LOVE YOUR ENEMIES

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.

In the same way that the “eye for an eye” saying functions as a kind of introduction to this cluster of instructions about nonviolent resistance, so the “love your enemies” saying works as a kind of summary or conclusion to the theme. “Resist evil,” Jesus says, “but do it nonviolently, and love your enemies just the same.” This, for Jesus, is illustrative of God’s character. As Marcus Borg puts it, speaking about Jesus’ perspective: “Love of enemies and nonviolent resistance are grounded in God’s character and passion.” For Jesus, Borg argues, “God’s character is nonviolent; therefore, be nonviolent. God’s passion is justice, therefore be passionate about justice. Resist injustice. And do so nonviolently.”

CONCLUSION

Jesus opposed the domination system of his day through active nonviolent resistance, illustrated by several teachings recorded in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. Jesus rejected compliance with the powers that be, and attempted, through his life and message, to encourage his followers to resist the imperial domination system – what scholar J.D. Crossan calls the “violent normalcy of civilization” – through nonviolent means. These nonviolent means, like the sit-ins and freedom rides of the 1960’s, were geared at making powerful statements and exposing the dark underbelly of the systemic evils in normal society.

It leaves us with several important questions. As Christians, what are we doing, today, to resist systemic evil? We no longer live in an agrarian domination system, but in what ways does our own civilization encourage oppression and subjugation? And, most importantly, are we fighting and resisting those oppressive elements in our own society, or are we collaborators against God’s sense of justice and compassion, against Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God?

A Den of Robbers

Is a “den of robbers” a place where robbers go to steal, or a place where robbers go to hide?

Perhaps one of the most famous actions attributed to Jesus in the gospels of the New Testament, the account of the so-called “Cleansing of the Temple” is one that most Christians, devout or otherwise, are familiar with.

Theologians and historians have been picking apart this story for centuries, but my purpose here is not to give a detailed analysis of the story itself. Instead, I want to focus on one of the more famous lines from the story, uttered by Jesus: that the Jerusalem temple had become a “den of robbers.”

To give but a brief background, the story takes place during Jesus’ last week of life in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. The gospel of John also relates the story, but places it early in Jesus’ ministry, most likely for thematic reasons. Most historians agree that the event most likely occurred near the end of Jesus’ life. Indeed, Mark tells us explicitly that Jesus’ actions in the temple led directly to his arrest and execution: “And when the chief priests and scribes heard [Jesus’ pronouncements against the temple], they kept looking for a way to kill him” (Mark 11:18a).

In the story, Jesus enters the temple during the week of Passover and begins to “drive out those who were selling and those who were buying,” going so far as to “overturn the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves” (Mark 11:15). In John’s account, Jesus actually brandishes a whip! After he is finished, he quotes from two of the great Jewish prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah. From Isaiah, he states that the temple is to be “a house of prayer for all the nations” (Isaiah 56:7), but has instead become, from Jeremiah 7:11, a “den of robbers.”

This scene has traditionally been interpreted in quite simple terms: Jesus created a scene because he was angry to find the temple being treated like a marketplace – people buying, selling, and changing money, rather than worshipping and praying and sacrificing. In this perspective, Jesus’ reference to a “den of robbers” implies that in addition to not showing the right kind of respect to the sacredness of the temple, the merchants there were robbing people – charging exorbitant fees, making unfair exchanges, and applying unreasonable prices. Indeed, this idea of the merchants being unscrupulous has been behind countless interpretations of this story over the centuries. A quick Google search on “cleansing of the temple” turned up a bible study lesson from bible.org as its first site: “Of course, the dealers in cattle and sheep would be tempted to charge exorbitant prices for such animals. They would exploit the worshippers…The money-changers would charge a certain fee for every exchange-transaction. Here, too, there were abundant opportunities for deception and abuse. And in view of these conditions the Holy Temple, intended as a house of prayer for all people, had become a den of robbers.”

I like to call this sort of interpretation a “Sunday School answer” – it fits a very widely-accepted model, not too deep, easy to digest, easy to believe, and, I believe, utterly wrong.

First and foremost, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that prices placed on sacrificial animals in 1st century Jerusalem were tightly regulated. By the time of Jesus, an increasing number of Jews no longer had their own herds from which they could bring a sacrificial animal, and many who did still retain herds could not afford to use one for a sacrifice. Additionally, even those who could bring along their own animals were frequently loath to do it, because the journey to Jerusalem was hard enough without toting along a slew of sacrificial animals, particularly since the animals given for sacrifice were supposed to be unblemished. For the average Jew, it would have been next to impossible to make it to Jerusalem with an unblemished animal. For all these reasons, the sale of sacrificial animals in Jerusalem was a big business, one that made money for the temple treasury and which offered a much needed service to the average Jew. Since it was such a big business, prices were tightly regulated. There simply isn’t much evidence to suggest wide-spread price-gouging or wide-spread discontent among average Jews about having to buy sacrificial animals in the temple. Those commentators, like the one quoted above, who argue that corruption was widespread, are simply making wild, and certainly unsubstantiated, guesses based on understanding the story out of context.

Second, when we consider what the phrase “den of robbers” actually means, and apply it to the historical context of Jesus’ life and message, it becomes clear that this event had nothing to do with accusing temple merchants of robbery, or suggesting that financial transactions had no place in the sacred space of the temple.

As noted above, the phrase first appears in Jeremiah, where the prophet stands before the temple and indicts its leaders for not staying true to God’s justice. Jeremiah, speaking with the voice of God, lists a number of sinful things that the temple authorities routinely engage in, then accuses them of believing they are safe in the temple: “Will you [commit these sins], and then come and stand before me in this [temple]…and say ‘we are safe’ – only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this [temple]…become a den of robbers in your sight?”

The Hebrew word translated most commonly as “robbers” actually has a more violent meaning to it. It is more akin to “destroyer,” and is often used to describe a wild animal. In its original setting, it has nothing to do with simple theft at all. Consider its usage in Ezekiel 18:10: “If he has a son who is violent, a shedder of blood…” The word is question is translated in this passage as “violent,” but it’s the second phrase – “a shedder of blood” – that indicates exactly what this word means. It is not a simple “robber” who steals things, but a violent person – someone who commits acts of violence against others – which may, of course, include violent robbery. But in the context of robbery, think of a mugger who clobbers someone over the head with the butt of a gun, then steals her purse, rather than a thief who sneaks into a house, steals a TV, and sneaks out unseen.

So when Jeremiah says that the temple has become a den of “robbers,” he is saying that it has become a place full of “violent people.”

The second, and perhaps more poignant, aspect of this phrase is the word “den.” The Hebrew word means “cave.” As such, Jeremiah is talking about a place where violent people congregate – literally a hideout. The temple, then, is not a place where violent people go to commit violence, but a place where violent people go to hide. Robbers, after all, don’t rob inside a cave. They hide inside a cave. The context of the passage makes this clear. As seen above, Jeremiah says that these people commit violent acts of sin, then go to the temple and say “we are safe.” Thus, as Jeremiah notes, they have turned the temple into a hideout for violent people – a “den of robbers.”

With this context in mind, Jesus’ use of the phrase becomes clear. The buyers and sellers, who represent the powerful Jewish elite, have turned the temple into a “den of robbers.” They don’t go to the temple to commit crimes; they commit crimes, and then hide in the temple. The phrase, then, does not implicate the Jewish elite for being robbers, it implicates the entire domination system that oppresses the Jewish population in the name of the temple – that is, in the name of God.

This, of course, is perfectly consistent with the context of Jesus’ overall message. As I have described elsewhere, Jesus spent his life fighting against a domination system – a system of Roman overlords whose “dirty work” was carried out by powerful Jewish collaborators, namely, the high priests, client-kings, and local authorities who ruled the Jewish homeland on Rome’s behalf. Rome’s imperialism oppressed the average Jew, and the Jewish elite – those very leaders who were supposed to be watching out for the best interests of God’s people – collaborated with Rome’s oppression.

In summary, when Jesus “cleansed” the temple, it was not an attempt to purify the temple from unscrupulous merchants or impious business practices. His action was a sociopolitical statement: you oppress God’s people and mock God’s justice, then you screen yourself inside the temple, making the temple itself little more than a hideout for violent robbers.

This, of course, sheds a whole new light on our own era. Is the modern Church working within Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God – a kingdom of justice, love, and acceptance? Or is it a den of robbers – a hideaway for those who would pervert God’s love and oppress God’s people?