New Testament Authors, Part II: The Third and Fourth Gospels and Acts

Read Part I


The Gospel of Luke

Date: 90 C.E.

The Acts of the Apostles

Date: 95 C.E.

Textual Claim: Anonymous

Church Tradition: Luke, a Gentile physician and companion of Paul

The Third Gospel is the only text of the New Testament traditionally attributed to a Gentile – that is, a non-Jewish – author.  This is based on the tradition that its writer was Luke, a companion of the apostle Paul who seems to be called a Gentile in one of Paul’s letters.  The book of Acts is a virtual “second volume” to the Gospel of Luke, and it is widely recognized, understood, and agreed that whoever wrote Luke also wrote Acts.  The writing style and theology is the same, and the author himself – though he does not provide his own identity – does state, at the start of Acts, that he is writing a second volume to continue where the story of the Gospel of Luke left off.  He also addresses both books to the same person – someone named Theophilus. 

Perhaps the best place to start here is over the issue of whether Luke was, in fact, a Gentile.  Many who are familiar with this very widespread notion may be surprised to discover that there is virtually no evidence to suggest Luke was a Gentile, other than a somewhat vague statement in the New Testament letter of Colossians.  There, Paul lists the names of three of his companions, stating that they are the only Jews who work with him.  He then goes on to list several others, including Luke.  This, then, appears to be evidence that Luke was a Gentile. 

There are two problems here.  The first problem is that Paul doesn’t actually use the word “Jew” in the passage.  Instead, he refers to that first group of people as “those of the circumcision group.”  In other places, Paul uses this colloquialism as a way of referring not necessarily to people who are Jewish by ethnicity or even by religion, but to Christians who believe one must follow the Law of Moses in order to be a Christian.  This group, then, could be made up of either ethnic Jews or ethnic Gentiles.  As a group, they are usually referred to by historians as “Jewish Christians,” but there would certainly have been plenty of ethnic Gentiles among them. 

As a result, those people – including Luke – who are not, according to Paul, “part of the circumcision group,” are not necessarily Gentiles.  They could be Jews who, like Paul, have stopped following the Law of Moses. 

That’s the first problem.  The second problem involves the authorship of Colossians itself.  Since I will be talking later about Colossians, I’ll simply note that many scholars doubt that Paul actually wrote Colossians.  If, in fact, Colossians is a forgery in Paul’s name, then any biographical detail – like the names and ethnicities and religious persuasions of his personal companions – is historically unreliable anyway.  It is important to note here, as an aside, that Colossians is our only source for Luke’s profession as well – that he was a doctor.  If Colossians is a forgery, then there may be no reason to suppose Luke was a physician either. 

The writer of Luke/Acts shows a remarkably high level of understanding of Jewish culture, traditions, history, geography, and scriptures.  Coupled with the fact that there is virtually no reliable evidence suggesting the writer was a Gentile anyway, the most likely conclusion, in my mind, is that the writer was a Jew.

With that established, we turn now to the author himself – Luke the companion of Paul.  Regardless of whether he was Jewish or Gentile, what is the evidence that he is the author of the texts that bear his name? 

Our oldest evidence for the tradition dates to the late 2^nd century.  Around 180 C.E., Iranaeus, Bishop of Lyons, refers numerous times to the texts in question, and states that they were written by Luke, without making any indication that there might be some doubt as to the author’s identity.  Clearly the tradition of Lukan authorship was well-entrenched by this time.

Unfortunately, Iranaeus was writing nearly 100 years after the texts themselves were composed, and we don’t have much evidence for the tradition of Lukan authorship prior to Iranaeus.  At best, scholars can trace the tradition to about 150 C.E.  As such, it becomes necessary to look at the internal evidence of the texts themselves. 

Within the Gospel of Luke, there is very little to go by.  However, in his second volume, Acts, there are in fact some internal clues that might help us answer the question of whether Luke was the writer.

The most famous pieces of evidence are the so-called “we” passages of Acts.  In these passages, the author suddenly switches the narrative from third-person into first-person – that is, he begins using “we” and “us” – as though he was there in the story himself.  These passages occur during the missionary travels of Paul.  This has led a lot of scholars and armchair enthusiasts to conclude that the tradition of Lukan authorship may have a basis in fact.  Early tradition tells us it was Luke, Acts has first-person passages, so Luke must be the author.

Other scholars, however, have noted several alternate theories.  First, the “we” passages might, in fact, indicate that the writer was an eyewitness to these events, but that does not necessarily mean that the author was actually Luke.  Maybe it was some other eyewitness.  Second, the “we” passages might be the result of what textual experts call “redaction.”  That is, the writer was using another text as source material for these passages, and simply retained the first-person perspective.  And finally, some scholars have noted that in Greek travel literature of the time, it was common for writers to use the first-person when describing sea voyages.  Since the “we” passages in Acts all correspond to sea voyages taken by Paul, perhaps the writer was simply employing a common stylistic convention.

All of these alternative theories cast doubt on the significance of the “we” passages.  They might indicate an eyewitness, and that eyewitness might have been Luke, but the passages don’t really represent the evidential “homerun” that they might appear to represent at first glance.

Perhaps the biggest argument against Lukan authorship is the fact that he seems to get so many things wrong about Paul.  We know this, of course, because we have a number of Paul’s own writings in the New Testament.  In many cases, scholars can compare what Luke says about an event in Paul’s life with what Paul himself says about the same event.  More often than not, Luke’s version of the story differs dramatically from Paul’s version.  For the sake of space, I won’t detail all these scenes, but will simply note that they are there, and the contradictions are plain for any reader to see.  If the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts were written by one of Paul’s companions, why would he get so much vital information so dramatically wrong? 

In the end, I think Luke is the most difficult attribution to nail down.  Scholars apparently feel the same way, because the field is fairly well divided, with many good scholars arguing for Lukan authorship, and many other good scholars arguing against it.  Ultimately, the jury is still out, because the evidence is not conclusive in either direction. 

If you're interested in a bit more on this subject, I've written about it more fully in a previous blog post, from last February.  

The Gospel of John

Date: 95-100 C.E.

Textual Claim: “The disciple whom Jesus loved”  

Church Tradition: John, son of Zebedee, a disciple of Jesus

Even though it was the last Gospel written, the Fourth Gospel has perhaps had the most impact on Christian theology through the ages.  Traditionally it is attributed to John, one of Jesus’ most prominent and beloved disciples. 

Scholars across the theological spectrum agree that the disciple John almost certainly did not write this text.  In fact, there are very few reputable scholars out there today who still argue for Johannine authorship.  There are numerous reasons for this. 

To begin with, we know John from the Gospels as an uneducated fisherman from the backwoods of Galilee who spoke Aramaic.  That he might later have learned not only to speak, but to write in highly literate Greek is extremely improbable.

Second, our earliest sources for this tradition are, themselves, vague and contradictory.  Iranaeus, for instance, seems to believe there were two Johns among the early Christian evangelists, and it is not entirely clear which one he thinks wrote the Gospel.  Other early writers provide similarly confusing accounts. 

Third, textual scholars have identified several probable textual sources for the Gospel of John, and this begs the question of why a disciple of Jesus and eyewitness to all the events he describes would need to use other sources for information.

Fourth, textual scholars have also identified multiple layers within the Gospel where the text has been redacted – that is, changed, edited, updated, and collated with other sources – implying that the text we have today is not a single document written in a single time period by a single person, but rather a sort of community effort of several writers writing over the course of a number of years/decades. 

Fifth, since most scholars agree that the text was written near the end of the 1^st century, the likelihood that John was still alive and able to write coherently (in another language, no less) is very, very low.

Sixth, much of the Gospel’s content differs dramatically from the stories in the other three Gospels, leading even many early Christian writers to admit that the author had a more spiritual purpose than historical purpose, which would seem odd if it was written by an eyewitness who actually knew the accurate historical situation.

This list could go on and on.  Simply put, there is virtually no evidence to support Johannine authorship, while there is overwhelming evidence to doubt Johannine authorship.  Put together, this is the reason why virtually every reputable scholar on the planet agrees that the Fourth Gospel was the work of a community, rather than any single person, and certainly not John, son of Zebedee.  It may well be that the community in question was a community founded by John, or otherwise devoted to John – that, in fact, is a very common conclusion among scholars – but there can be little doubt that John, himself, did not author this text. 

Christianity and Old Testament Law, Part I

One of the oldest traditions in Christianity is the belief that Jewish laws and customs are not binding upon followers of Christ. When Jesus died, the argument goes, he rendered Mosaic Law irrelevant. Salvation, then, comes from belief in Jesus’s death and resurrection, and not from following the rules and regulations of the Old Testament.

This tradition goes back to the earliest days of Christianity, and the basic formulation was developed by Paul and taught amongst the congregations he founded throughout the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Today, not only are Paul’s letters used to support this notion, but even words attributed to Jesus can be called upon to undergird the tradition.

What exactly are these commandments, and why don’t Christians follow them?

JEWISH LAW AND CUSTOM

First, it is necessary to clear the air on what is meant by common phrases such as “Jewish Law,” “Mosaic Law,” “The Law and the Prophets,” or sometimes just “the Law.” All of these phrases mean the same thing, but there seems to be a lot of confusion in many circles about exactly what they refer to.

Jewish Law came in two parts, and it included far more than simply legal codes dictating criminal and civil offenses. To be sure, Jewish Law included these things, but it also included rules and regulations dictating daily behavior and customs of the Jewish people. It included things such as how to make clothes, how to plant fields and how to raise cattle, how to treat others in relationships, how to prepare food, how to structure family life, and so on. Of course, it also detailed the sacrificial system of ancient Judaism. In short, it was a complete system of legal, religious, and cultural codes for living as a Jew in the ancient world.

The first aspect of this Jewish Law consisted of written laws and customs. Most came from the Torah – that is, the first five books of the Christian Old Testament, also called the Pentateuch, and believed by the ancient Jews to have been given by Moses. By the time of Jesus, Jewish scripture included a lot more than just these five books. There were also texts detailing Jewish history, books of poetry, proverbs, and literature, and books of prophecy. Some Jewish sects, both then and know, followed only the Torah. Mainstream Judaism, however, regarded these other traditional Jewish texts as scripture, and this is where familiar New Testament phrases such as “the Law and the Prophets” come from. The Law was the Torah; the Prophets were the books of prophecy such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and a dozen others.

In addition to this written aspect of Jewish Law – those codes and customs outlined in Jewish scripture – there was also an oral aspect that consisted of the interpretation of these codes and customs. This interpretive aspect of Jewish Law was well established in oral form by the time of Jesus, but did not achieve codification in written form until several centuries after the time of Jesus. Collectively called the Talmud, these interpretative traditions were the hallmark of the Pharisees, an influential group of 1st century Jews whose practices and traditions became the basis of Rabbinical Judaism, which has been the most common form of Judaism for nearly two millennia.

These two aspects of Jewish religious and cultural customs – Torah and Talmud, the instructions of Moses and the rabbinical interpretation of those instructions – constitute what is meant by phrases such as “Jewish Law.”

JEWISH LAW AND CHRISTIANITY

For most of Christian history, Christians have disregarded Jewish Law, both the written Law of Moses and the rabbinical interpretation of that Law. It is perhaps easy to see why Christians have never given much thought to the interpretative side of Jewish Law. In the Gospels, Jesus himself is frequently depicted at odds with the Pharisees – the experts of interpretation – and consistently insults and degrades them, even as he disagrees with them in their interpretations. While much of the antagonism in the Gospels between Jesus and the Pharisees is a reflection of the antagonism between Christians and Jews of the late 1st century, there is little doubt that Jesus had run-ins during his life with the Pharisees, whom he saw as collaborators with Roman imperial domination. As a rural Galilean, the Pharisees would have seen Jesus as a rabble-rouser and fiery revolutionary, while Jesus, for his part, would have seen the Pharisees as pretentious, so-called “experts” who were more concerned with their scholarship than with real people in real life. One might compare this situation to a Pentecostal preacher from rural Alabama meeting a group of Reformed theologians from Oxford.

But in addition to dismissing the interpretive traditions of the Pharisees and their later rabbinical successors, Christians have also long rejected the written Law of the Old Testament – the set of laws and customs ostensibly given by God to his chosen people.

As we saw above, this rejection of written Mosaic Law comes largely from the influence of the apostle Paul.

Paul was one of the earliest and certainly most influential Christians. Though he never followed or even knew of Jesus during Jesus’ life, he was converted to Christianity within a few years of Jesus’ death, after a vision of the resurrected Christ.

The Apostle Paul

Very early on, he seems to have begun to jettison his old ways within Judaism, and by about 50 C.E., a major conflict arose between Paul and the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem.

To put it briefly, the Jerusalem community in the time of Paul was the center of Christendom. It was to Paul’s era what Rome is today to Catholics. This community was supported by many of Jesus’ disciples (such as Peter and John), and led by Jesus’ brother, James. To these Christian leaders, Christianity was essentially a sect within Judaism. It was not a different religion from Judaism, but was instead a new form of Jewish practice. These Jewish Christians believed very strongly that Christianity should remain part of Judaism – in other words, Jewish traditions and customs were still very much a part of their religious practice.

Paul, on the other hand, believed that Jesus’s resurrection had effectively done away with these traditions, and following Jewish Law was no longer necessary. If pressed on the matter, I’m sure Paul would have agreed that if someone wanted to follow Jewish customs, they were certainly entitled to do so, but his argument was that these customs were no longer necessary for salvation. Instead, salvation came through faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection, which Paul saw as the ultimate and final atonement for human sin. Since Jesus made himself the ultimate sacrifice, humans could now be forgiven and thus saved, with or without adherence to the Law of Moses.

Needless to say, the Church in Jerusalem did not take Paul’s ideas very well. As described in the book of Acts, and also discussed by Paul himself in Galatians, things came to a head when Paul visited Jerusalem in about 50 C.E. The Jerusalem leaders attempted to reach a compromise with Paul, and agreed that while Paul’s converts did not need to become circumcised (which, in the ancient world, was the “official” way that someone became Jewish), they did need to follow Jewish dietary customs. Specifically, according to Acts, they were to refrain from eating food sacrificed to idols, food from strangled animals, and any food with blood in it.

Paul seems to have accepted this compromise, then immediately gone back to the missionary field and ignored it. Time and again in his letters, Paul insists that “all food is clean,” and even goes so far as to suggest that eating food sacrificed to idols is permissible, because idols are not real, they are simply inanimate objects. The only exception to this rule, for Paul, is when someone’s dietary habits may cause problems for someone else. In other words, if a Christian is eating with another Christian, and the second Christian believes strongly in the difference between “clean” and “unclean” food, then the first Christian should respect that belief and only eat “clean” food when they are eating with that person. Otherwise, “all food is clean” and permissible to eat.

In time, after Paul’s death and the deaths of James, Peter, and the other early Christian leaders, Christianity slowly became more and more of a non-Jewish religion. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. by the Romans, there was no longer a Jewish-Christian community in Jerusalem, and the center of Christendom shifted first to Alexandria in Egypt, and later, of course, to Rome. This led, during the last few decades of the 1st century, to a painful separation between Christianity and Judaism, a separation that is reflected in the Gospels, which were written around this time. By the start of the 2nd century, Christianity was essentially a non-Jewish religion, and Paul’s viewpoint won the day.

One example of this is reflected in the letter of 1 Timothy, a letter forged in Paul’s name in the late 1st century. The writer is discussing false Christian teachers, which he calls “hypocritical liars,” and he states that they teach people to “abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving.” The writer goes on to say: “For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.” So much for the views of James and Peter that some foods are unclean.

Christians from that time to now have left Jewish Law and Jewish customs behind them.

JESUS AND JEWISH LAW

We have looked at what Jewish Law was, and we have also seen why Christians don’t follow Jewish Law. Even though the earliest Christians – the followers of Jesus and their converts – seem to have adhered strongly to Jewish norms and customs, and seem to have believed, at least early on, that one needed to become Jewish in order to be Christian, Paul challenged all that and spread the gospel of Jesus to non-Jews, leading Christianity to an eventual separation from Judaism all together. It became, by the end of the 1st century, a non-Jewish religion that did not adhere to Jewish laws and customs.

But since Jesus is the heart and soul of Christianity, one might wonder what Jesus himself had to say on this matter. For many Christians (and for institutional Christianity in general) Jesus was not just a prophet, but the Son of God, even God himself in human form. For Christians, then, one would expect Jesus’s words to carry significant weight.

Many folks may be surprised to discover that Jesus seems to have strongly affirmed adherence to Jewish Law. Consider, for instance, Matthew 23, where Jesus states: “The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’s seat. You must obey them and do everything they tell you.” He goes on to encourage his listeners not to be hypocritical like the Pharisees, but he affirms that their teaching of the Law is sound and his listeners should follow it. For Jesus in this passage, the problem with the Pharisees is not their reliance on Jewish Law, but on the fact that they are hypocrites who don’t really follow it.

Consider also a story repeated in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, where Jesus heals a man with leprosy. Afterwards, he instructs the man to go to the temple to be ritually purified and to “offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded.” Clearly he found these customs to be necessary.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, provided by Luke, Jesus tells of a beggar named Lazarus who always had to eat the scraps from the table of a rich man.

The Rich Man and Lazarus, by Leandro Bassano

The rich man lived the high life and consistently ignored the plight of Lazarus. In time, both men died, with the rich man going to hell, and Lazarus going “to the bosom of Abraham.” The rich man begs Abraham to let Lazarus return to earth to warn his brothers about the dangers of luxurious living. Abraham responds that the rich man’s brothers “have Moses and the Prophets” and that they should “listen to them.” Abraham goes on to say that if the rich man’s brothers won’t listen to Moses, then neither will they listen to someone who is raised from the dead (i.e. Lazarus). Jesus, through this parable, is affirming the salvific nature of Mosaic Law.

In a story related in Matthew and Mark, Jesus is approached by a Gentile who wants him to heal her daughter. Jesus flatly refuses to do so, stating that he has come only “to the lost sheep of Israel” and that it is not right to take “the children’s bread” (that is, Jesus’s teachings) and “toss it to the dogs” (that is, unclean Gentiles). The woman persists, however, and Jesus finally agrees to heal her daughter. But he does it from a distance; he does not go to the woman’s unclean, Gentile house.

A similar story is found in both Matthew and Luke. Here, the Gentile is a Roman centurion, and the sick person is his servant. Jesus agrees to heal the servant, but, as with the story from Matthew, he does not go to the centurion’s house, and instead heals the servant from afar.

It is noteworthy to point out that these are the only two healings attributed to Jesus from afar. They are also the only two healings of Gentiles attributed to Jesus. In the Gospel tradition, Jesus keeps away from Gentiles, because he viewed them as unclean, which was consistent with a Jewish worldview.

Finally, there is a passage from Matthew where Jesus explicitly talks about adherence to Jewish Law and customs:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

It is hard to imagine how Jesus could be more explicit. “Until heaven and earth disappear” – that is, until the end of time – the Law of Moses is valid. Unless your righteousness – that is, your adherence to God’s commandments – exceeds even the righteousness of the Pharisees, who are famous for their strict adherence to the Law, you will not see God’s kingdom.

CONCLUSION

This final passage from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount is a difficult one to reconcile in light of traditional Christian practice. As we saw above, from the time of Paul, Christians began rejecting Jewish laws and customs, and by the beginning of the 2nd century, virtually no Christian followed any of the laws of Moses, except those that they found particularly important. This is true even today, as many Christians revere the Ten Commandments, but handily reject countless other mandates from the Old Testament.

As we have seen, Jesus was a Jewish man, living in the Jewish homeland, and teaching and preaching within the worldview of 1st century Judaism. In the Gospel of Matthew in particular, Jesus is fiercely loyal to Jewish laws and customs, and explicitly states that these commandments are valid for all time – indeed, “until heaven and earth disappear.”

In Part II of this series, we will look much more closely at this passage from Matthew and consider how we might reconcile it with modern Christian practice.

Luke the Evangelist

In Church tradition, the Gospel of Luke (GoL), together with Acts of the Apostles, are two books widely believed to have been written by the same person, a man Church tradition has called Luke the Evangelist (hence, of course, the Gospel bearing his name). This same Church tradition tells us that Luke was both a doctor and a Gentile, meaning that his two volumes, GoL and Acts, are the only books in the New Testament written by a non-Jew. This is more significant than one might suspect at first glance. There are 27 books in the New Testament, so two books might not seem like so much, but in fact those two books are among the longest in the New Testament, and thus make up something like 25% of the entire canon. That makes the author of GoL and Acts the most prolific of the New Testament authors, including Paul (and that’s even assuming that Paul wrote all the letters attributed to him, which is doubted by the majority of scholars).

So as the author of a full one-quarter of the Christian scriptures, the question “Who was Luke?” is an important one for Christians.

The short answer to that question, unfortunately, is that we know hardly anything about Luke, and in fact there are many good reasons to doubt that the historical person known as “Luke the Evangelist” had anything to do with writing either text.

In tackling the question of authorship in regards to GoL and Acts, there are three important questions to ask. First, were GoL and Acts written by the same person? If so, was that person a physician named Luke, a companion of Paul? And finally, was that person also a Gentile?

WERE GoL AND ACTS WRITTEN BY THE SAME PERSON?

All the available evidence suggests strongly that Church tradition is correct in saying GoL and Acts were written by the same individual. The most compelling reason to accept this is that the author himself says as much. Consider the prologues to both GoL and Acts:

Gospel of Luke: “I…write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.”

Acts: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught…”

Both books are addressed to someone named “Theophilus” and the opening paragraph of Acts makes it clear that Acts is a sort of second volume to the story begun in the Gospel of Luke. (Theophilus, by the way, may have been an individual, or it may have been a euphemism meant to refer to any Christian reader, since “Theophilus” literally means “Friend of God” and was routinely used in the 1st century as an honorary title rather than an individual name.)

Of course, just because a writer claims that his present book is a continuation of a former book doesn’t mean it’s true. We know that Christian history, after all, is rife with what are called “pseudonymous writers” – that is, scribes writing in other people’s names. Be that as it may, the linguistic characteristics of GoL and Acts – writing style, grammar, word usage – indicate strongly that, in fact, both books were written by the same person. Furthermore, the general theological thrust of the books is similar, again suggesting that we are dealing with a single writer.

WAS LUKE A PHYSICIAN AND COMPANION OF PAUL?

This question can be asked more pointedly like this: “Was the author of GoL and Acts the man known as Luke the Physician in the letters of Paul?”

A man named Luke is mentioned in three letters attributed to Paul the apostle – Philemon, Colossians, and 2 Timothy. In Philemon and Colossians, Luke is mentioned as one of the people with Paul who “sends greetings” to the recipients. In 2 Timothy, which is written as a personal letter from Paul to Timothy, Paul mentions in passing that “only Luke is with me.”

Thus, Luke appears to have been one of Paul’s companions. In Colossians, Paul mentions specifically that Luke is a “beloved doctor,” which has lead, quite obviously, to the conclusion that Luke was a physician, and also has led many to suggest that Luke must therefore have been Paul’s personal doctor.

There are at least two major problems here, however. The first problem is the most obvious: just because Paul had a companion named Luke doesn’t mean this person wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts. Certainly nothing in the letters of Paul suggests this, nor is there any indication in GoL and Acts about the identity of the author (those books mention the recipient, Theophilus, as we saw above, but make no mention of the author).

So where did the connection to Luke the Companion of Paul come from? Quite simply, it comes from Church tradition, a tradition that first begins appearing in the historical record near the end of the 2nd century. Does that mean the tradition didn’t begin until the late 2nd century? Not necessarily, but we simply cannot know with any kind of certainty when the tradition began. We know by the end of the 2nd century, many Christian groups were connecting GoL and Acts to Luke the Companion of Paul. But we don’t know if that tradition went all the way back to the actual time of composition, or if it was simply an “emerging” tradition – someone was trying to figure out who wrote it, and decided Luke the Companion of Paul was the best choice.

It is significant to point out that many early manuscripts of GoL do not use Luke’s name in the title. While that’s not a “silver bullet” argument against Lukan tradition, it does seem to indicate that the tradition was not known in certain areas of Christendom until much later.

Those who argue that Luke the Companion of Paul wrote GoL and Acts can point to a number of arguments. First, roughly 66% – or two-thirds – of Acts centers on the life of Paul. Paul is the main figure in that text. This would seem to indicate that the writer was especially partial to Paul – thus probably a follower or companion.

Second, there is a portion of Paul’s story in Acts were the writer suddenly, and seemingly inexplicably, switches into a first-person narrative. Instead of “they” and “them,” it suddenly becomes “we” and “us.” A few paragraphs later, the narrative switches back to third-person again, just as abruptly. This actually happens several times throughout the narrative. This occasional switching into first-person has been seen as evidence that, in fact, GoL and Acts were written by a companion of Paul – thus leading the writer to write in the first-person whenever he was actually present during an event he was describing.

This seems to make sense on the surface, and certainly seems to suggest strongly that the Lukan tradition must have a basis in reality – whether it was Luke or not is up for debate, but it seems that these books must at least have been written by a companion of Paul. There is one problem, however. This problem involves literary techniques frequently employed in the ancient world by Greek writers. In Greek literature, it was common for a writer to switch into the first-person when narrating stories involving sea voyages. This may seem odd to our modern literary sensibilities, but it was a well-established poetic technique among Greek writers of the ancient world.

If you read the book of Acts, you’ll find that every time the perspective switches into first-person, the narrative centers on a sea voyage. In fact, every sea voyage discussed in Acts is written in first-person.

Thus, the first-person narratives of Acts may not, in fact, indicate any implication on the part of the writer that he was there himself – that he was among Paul’s companions in these scenes. The writer may simply have been using a tried and true Greek literary technique.

The second major problem regarding the character of Luke from the letters of Paul is that only one of those letters – Philemon – is one of the so-called “undisputed” letters of Paul. Among New Testament scholars, there is wide agreement that at least seven of the thirteen letters attributed to Paul actually came from the historical Paul. Philemon is among these. Three others, however, are widely debated, with some scholars accepting Pauline authorship, and others rejecting it. Colossians falls into this category. Furthermore, there are an addition three letters attributed to Paul on which there is wide consensus that the historical Paul, in fact, did not write the letters, and 2 Timothy is one of these.

Since Luke is mentioned in Philemon, we can be fairly confident that Paul did, in fact, have a companion named Luke (though that tells us nothing, of course, about whether this Luke wrote GoL and Acts). However, the designation of Luke as a physician comes from Colossians – one of the disputed letters. If Colossians was indeed pseudonymous, is there any reason to suppose that its personal data about Paul’s life (such as commenting that his companion Luke was a doctor) can be trusted as historically accurate? Maybe, but also maybe not. In either case, it casts some doubt on the supposition that the author of GoL and Acts was a physician.

WAS LUKE A GENTILE?

Putting aside the questions about whether Luke the Companion of Paul actually wrote the books attributed to him and whether or not this Luke was actually a physician, we move on to the issue of whether GoL and Acts were written by a Gentile.

That these two books were Gentile-authored has been an assumption on the part of scholars and theologians for centuries. But that assumption is primarily based on the presupposition that Luke the Companion of Paul was the author of these books. If he wasn’t, then the remaining discussion is moot. For now, then, we’ll assume that Luke the Companion of Paul wrote GoL and Acts.

Why is Luke called a Gentile? The primary reason is rather convoluted, but it involves an interpretative reading of Paul’s greetings in the book of Colossians. Recall that many scholars doubt Colossians was actually written by Paul. So again, for the moment, we will presuppose that Colossians was, in fact, an authentic letter of Paul.

In Colossians, as we saw above, Paul mentions that Luke is a “beloved physician” and that he sends his greetings to the Christians at Colossae. Prior to this, however, he had mentioned a few other companions, namely Tychicus, Onesimus, Aristarchus, Mark, and Jesus (no, not that Jesus). After mentioning these people, he notes that “these are the only Jews among my co-workers for the kingdom of God.” After this, he names several more people, including Luke. This, therefore, has led to the assumption that Luke, and the others mentioned with him, were Gentiles.

This may seem like an opened and closed case. Luke the physician was a Gentile, according to Colossians. But there is one major issue. Despite the fact that many modern English translations have Paul explicitly say that “these are the only Jews among my co-workers for the kingdom of God,” Paul doesn’t actually use the word “Jew.” Instead, he uses a euphemism that translates to “those of the circumcision.” This is typically a phrase that refers in general to Jews, but more specifically to people who follow Jewish purity laws. A Gentile convert, for instance, would have been “of the circumcision,” even though he wasn’t ethnically Jewish. In the same way, someone could be ethnically Jewish but not be part of the “circumcision crowd” because they didn’t follow Jewish law. Paul himself would be among this group, because he gave up adherence to the Torah.

In the book of Romans, Paul makes his views clear: “Circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the [Jewish purity] law; but if you break the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.” He goes on to say: “For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart – it is spiritual and not literal.”

In other words, in Paul’s view, whether a person is ethnically Jewish (that is, physically circumcised) or not is irrelevant. What makes a person Jewish is that they follow Jewish purity rituals.

In light of this, it is certainly possible that Paul never meant to imply that Luke, and the others listed with him, where actually Gentiles. He may simply have meant that Luke and the others had – like Paul himself – given up adherence to Jewish law, and were thus no longer part of the circumcision crowd. Still ethnically Jewish, but no longer Jews at heart.

The point, of course, is this: the book of Colossians, despite surface appearances, does not explicitly and unquestionably assert that Luke was a Gentile. That may not be what the passage is saying at all. In the end, we can’t know for sure. But if that’s not what the passage was saying, then there is certainly no reason to assume the writer of GoL and Acts was a Gentile.

Some supporters of Lukan tradition will say that even without the evidence of Colossians, GoL and Acts themselves give indication that the writer was a Gentile. The Gospel of Luke, for instance, seems clearly to have been written for a Gentile audience, and this is widely recognized among scholars. However, Mark and John were both written for Gentile audiences too, and no one supposes that those writers were Gentiles themselves. Furthermore, if Luke was a Gentile, he demonstrates a remarkable understanding and familiarity with Jewish customs that one would not expect of a 1st century Gentile from Roman Asia Minor, far removed from the Jewish homeland.

CONCLUSION

There is no question that a reasonable argument can be made to support the Church tradition of Lukan authorship. I want to make this clear, lest I be seen as simply trying to buck the trend for the sheer joy of it. It’s possible that Luke the Companion of Paul wrote GoL and Acts, and it’s possible that this person was a physician and a Gentile. It is not outside the realm of historical plausibility.

However, there are so many question marks in this tradition that I think scholars and theologians should take more care when asserting this conclusion. We do not know when, or why, the tradition of Lukan authorship first arose. We know it was there by the end of the 2nd century, but we have no knowledge of whether it began at composition, or arose later as leaders in the Church attempted to attach familiar and authoritative names to all the various texts floating around the emerging Christian world. It does not take a great leap of faith, nor does it constitute unusual criticism, to suggest that Church tradition might have gotten it wrong when it attached Luke the Companion of Paul to the Gospel of Luke and Acts.

Furthermore, as illustrated above, there are a number of question marks about the details of who Luke was – physician, Gentile, etc. The letter of Colossians, which gives us this information, has a disputed authorship, with some insisting it is authentically from Paul and others insisting it is not. If Paul didn’t write it, there is good reason for doubting its historical accuracy when calling Luke a physician (or a Gentile, for that matter). Furthermore, whether Paul wrote it or not, it is not entirely clear that the author intended to imply that Luke was a Gentile. The implication may have been that Luke, like Paul, was an ethnic Jew who had given up Jewish purity customs. Ultimately, it’s impossible to say for sure, but if the writer of GoL and Acts was a Gentile, he had a remarkably intimate knowledge of Jewish history, traditions, customs, scriptures, theology, and eschatology. It’s hard to imagine that a 1st century Gentile who did not live in the Jewish homeland (Church tradition says Luke came from Troas, in Asia Minor) could possibly have known Judaism so thoroughly and intimately.

Here’s what I think the most likely scenario is. We don’t know who wrote the Gospel of Luke and Acts. It was not a man named Luke. It was not someone who was a doctor. It was not someone who had accompanied Paul on missionary journeys, nor was it someone who probably even knew the historical Paul. Instead, the writer was probably a Jew who lived in one of the cities where Paul had founded a Christian congregation decades earlier (perhaps Ephesus). At some point he had become involved with this congregation, converting ultimately to Christianity. He knew Jewish history and theology so well because he was a Jew. He had a special affinity for Paul’s story because he was a member of a congregation founded by Paul (though, as I said, he probably never knew Paul).

I use a lot of “probably’s” there, and that was done on purpose. Any of those suggestions could be wrong. It may be that the writer did, in fact, know the historical Paul, having been a member of the congregation during Paul’s life. It may be that the writer was, in fact, a Gentile, though if that is true, I think it is likely that he was what many Jewish writers of the 1st century called a “God-fearer.” The God-fearers were Gentiles who did not convert to Judaism (that is, they did not become circumcised), but they had an affinity for Jewish customs and religious traditions, and they were generally looked upon kindly by Jews. The Jews considered them allies, as it were. They were essentially doing in the 1st century what a lot of folks still do today – engaging in buffet-style religion. They were taking the best of all the available religions (in this case, Roman paganism and Judaism) and combining them into a highly personal faith system. They didn’t care much for the pagan gods of Rome and liked the idea of Judaism’s monotheism, but they certainly had no intention of circumcising themselves and sticking to all the difficult purity laws of the Jewish Torah. Instead they worshipped a single God, perhaps took part in Jewish holidays, but also no doubt celebrated pagan holidays, and probably still occasionally burned incense in pagan temples and paid their homage to the emperor. This, of course, made them prime targets for Christian evangelists in the 1st century – they were already nearly halfway there. They liked Judaism’s God and Judaism’s traditions, but they weren’t Jews by birth, had no need for Jewish purity rituals, and likely found Christianity’s easy message of faith and grace quite palatable. Scholar J.D. Crossan, in fact, has argued quite well that Paul’s missionary journeys primarily consisted of converting these “God-fearers” to Christianity rather true Jews or true Pagans.

It’s noteworthy to mention that the book of Acts mentions these “God-fearers” more than a dozen times. It may just be that the writer of GoL and Acts was one of them. I still think it’s more likely, however, that he was a true Jew who became a Jewish-Christian.

In any case, all of these things should cause us to take a bit more care when assuming that the Gospel of Luke, or the book of Acts, was necessarily written by a Gentile, a doctor, or a companion of Paul. Maybe all those things are right. More than likely, however, they are not.

Driving Out Demons

In the New Testament, Jesus is remembered as a miracle worker and healer, a rabbi and prophet, the son of God and the anointed one (messiah) of Israel. Among his many different hats, however, is also the role of exorcist. In the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus is seen driving out demons at least as often as he is seen healing the sick or performing nature miracles. In fact, one of his methods for healing the sick is depicted as exorcising unclean spirits that cause illness.

My purpose in this account is not to discuss the circumstances of Jesus’ various roles in the New Testament, or whether demon-possession and exorcism is real or metaphorical. It is enough for my purposes here that folks living in the 1st century certainly believed in demon possession, believed that unclean spirits were responsible for some illnesses, and certainly believed in the efficacy of exorcism.

With that established, I want to look at two specific passages in the New Testament that talk about demon possession and exorcism. These two accounts deal more with who is qualified to perform exorcisms than with the nature of the exorcism itself. We’ll look first at a story from the Gospel of Mark.

Mark 9:38-41 (NRSV):

John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”

But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.”

In this story, the disciples have witnessed someone performing exorcisms in Jesus’ name, but it was a stranger – not one of their group. John informs Jesus that they tried to stop him. Jesus, however, rebukes them with the adage “whoever is not against us is for us” – in other words, we’re all part of the same team. He goes on to make the rather eye-raising assertion that anyone who does a kind thing for a Christian will, themselves, earn the rewards of a Christian.

A good theological debate could no doubt be had over that last phrase of the Markan passage, but it is secondary to our purposes here. The point Jesus makes in this story is that everyone who works in the name of Jesus is “part of the group.”

In the larger context of Mark’s Gospel, the writer’s purpose with this story is reasonably clear: Mark is addressing concerns in Christian society over competing Christian communities. It is important to remember that in the 1st century (and, in fact, well into the 4th century), Christianity did not have the sort of unified doctrine and belief that it has today. And in fact, the idea that it has unified doctrine and belief today is really an anachronism. Since the Protestant Reformation, and later the Enlightenment, Christianity has become wildly diverse, with beliefs ranging from non-theistic self-improvement to rabid fundamentalism. Most modern Christians, however, can at least agree on a few major points of Christian theology (Jesus existed, he died for our sins, he was raised, we can have new life in his name, etc.).

In the 1st century, however, Christian beliefs were at least as diverse as they are today, and probably far more so. In modern society, most Christians accept the legitimacy of other denominations. “My neighbor is a Roman Catholic and I am a Methodist, but we are brothers and sisters in Christ.” That sort of thing. Not so in the 1st century. (In fact, not so until about the 20th century). Christian groups were very exclusive and very suspicious of outsiders. Their regard for non-Christians was not very high: they were pagans and sinners worshipping offensive false gods. Yet their regard for other Christian groups was frequently even worse. As Elaine Pagels points out in her book “The Origin of Satan,” the “intimate enemy” is far worse than the outsider. While pagans were godless sinners, other Christians with different beliefs were doing the very work of Satan. Corrupting the true faith, as it were.

This connection between Satan and those “Christians who disagree with us” remained common in Christianity right up until the last hundred years or so. Of course, for some modern Christians, it still remains.

With that in mind, we turn again to the referenced passage from Mark. “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Clearly Mark’s purpose in this story was to address the competition and hard feelings among Christian groups of the late 1st century (Mark was writing around 70 C.E.). While many Christians felt negatively toward other Christian groups, Mark is attempting, through the words of Jesus, to call for unity and encourage reconciliation.

In historical context, we know that by the time Mark was writing his Gospel, Paul had already lived and died and become an important figure in developing Christianity. Church tradition, in fact, holds that John Mark – a companion of Paul – later became the secretary for Peter and wrote the Gospel that bears his name based on stories from Peter. That may or may not have any historical credibility, but in any case, the writer of Mark certainly would have been familiar with Paul and the impact he had on Christianity.

In his own letters, Paul makes it clear that competing groups of Christians were already well established. He writes of false prophets and other rabbis teaching in Jesus’ name. Paul makes his negative opinion of them clear.

Yet the writer of Mark is calling for reconciliation, despite Paul’s own views about competing Christian teachers. Again, historical context explains why. As we saw above, Mark was writing his Gospel in the early 70’s C.E. At the start of that decade, the Jewish-Roman war had ended with Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple burnt to the ground, and the Jews dispersed into Gentile lands. It was a time of great social, political, cultural, and even theological upheaval within Judaism – which at that time still included Christianity. Writing in the midst of that chaos and tragedy, Mark is encouraging Jewish Christians to unite, to band together, to recognize that anyone who is not against us is for us. In essence: “We’re all brothers and sisters in Christ.”

With that in mind, we turn to another exorcism story from the New Testament. This time, it comes from the writer of Acts of the Apostles.

Acts 19:13-16 (NRSV):

Then some itinerant Jewish exorcists tried to use the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this.

But the evil spirit said to them in reply, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”

Then the man with the evil spirit leapt on them, mastered them all, and so overpowered them that they fled out of the house naked and wounded.

Immediately before this story in chapter 19 of Acts, the writer had talked about the unbelief Paul encountered in Ephesus. The writer then recounts this story, suggesting that the event helped solidify faith in Paul’s message of Jesus. For the writer of Acts, only Paul and “those in the group” had the authority to perform exorcisms.

So how can one explain these competing theological messages? In Mark, Jesus says that anyone driving out demons in his name is “for us” – that is, part of the group. In Acts, it is made clear that no one but those “in the group” have the authority to do this.

Again, historical context brings the answer into focus. As we have seen, Mark was writing around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Thus, his message of reconciliation. Whoever is not against us is for us. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

The writer of Acts, however, was writing some twenty to twenty-five years later, in the middle of the 90’s C.E. By that time, drastic theological and cultural changes had taken place. Christianity had split violently from Judaism in the intervening years between Mark and Acts – an event reflected in many New Testament texts. In splitting from Judaism, Christianity was quickly becoming a religion of Gentiles, and Jews were increasingly seen as the enemy. Furthermore, as Christianity distanced itself from Judaism, it began to undergo a lot of dramatic theological changes. It was spreading into many new areas, and Christian groups and communities were popping up all across the Mediterranean. This inevitably led to problems not unlike what Paul addresses in his own writings – Christian groups vying for authority and primacy, and accusing one another of heresy and false prophesying.

Mark’s call for reconciliation was, apparently, either ignored or didn’t stick for long.

Thus, Acts reflects what was happening culturally during the era that the book was written. Unlike Mark, who wanted to see Christian groups reconcile, the writer of Acts clearly believed that only Paul’s Christianity was legitimate. Anyone else was a false prophet, a heretic, unable to channel the power of Jesus in exorcisms.

The nature of this perspective is evident in the polemical tone of the story itself. First, we see the result of trying to exorcise falsely in Jesus’ name: you get beaten up by the demon you are fighting and end up fleeing naked and injured. You’re made a fool of, in other words.

Second, consider the writer’s choice of words in that passage: he refers to these false prophets as “Jews.” This, of course, gives modern readers the impression that these are just more of the same Jewish enemies of Jesus and Christianity. Yet clearly the content of the story implies that they are not practitioners of Rabbinical Judaism. They may or may not have been ethnically Jewish, but that is completely beside the point: they are performing exorcisms in the name of Jesus; clearly they are Christians. Jewish Christians, perhaps, but Christians nonetheless. The important point is that these are not Rabbinical Jews that the writer of Acts is talking about. He is talking about other Christians, but he is derisively calling them “Jews” in an effort to equate them with those who had rejected Jesus (remember, again, that Acts was written during the painful separation of Christianity from Judaism). This is not unparalleled in early Christian writings. The 2nd century Christian leader Valentinus, for instance, called anyone not following his brand of Christianity a “Hebrew,” whether they were actually Jewish, pagan, Christian, or otherwise.

It may also be noteworthy to point out that no historical record, outside of Acts, makes reference to any Jewish high priest, either before, during, or after Paul’s life, named Sceva. That is true despite the fact that extremely thorough records exist covering the identities and actions of the various Jewish high priests of the 1st century.

So we are left with an obvious question: Which account do we take as “gospel”? The story of Jesus, that says we are all brothers and sisters in Christ, or the story of Sceva’s sons, that says only Paul’s version of Christianity has primacy?

I’ll leave that question unanswered and rhetorical since the theological implications lie outside the scope of my purposes here.

There is, however, another curious aspect to this double tradition of exorcisms and Christian unity.

Many readers will be aware of the fact that the same person who wrote Acts of the Apostles also wrote the Gospel of Luke. Church tradition says this person was a Gentile named Luke who was the physician for Paul. Most scholars and theologians are skeptical of this, as there is no textual evidence to support it, but what most everyone agrees on is that the person who wrote Luke also wrote Acts.

Many readers will also be aware that the writers of Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as a primary source. This is a well-established idea within modern Biblical scholarship that virtually all scholars agree upon.

One of the stories that Luke used from Mark is the first exorcism story mentioned above, where Jesus asserts that “anyone who is not against us is for us.” Thus, the writer of Luke seems to contradict himself between his two volumes: in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus asserts that anyone driving out demons in his name is “for us;” but in Acts of the Apostles, it is clear that only those “in the group” can drive out demons.

How can we explain this contradiction? Many theories may no doubt account for Luke’s change in tone, but there are two explanations that I think are most likely.

First, perhaps Luke simply made a mistake. The editing process for writers of the 1st century wasn’t exactly like it is today. There were no word processors with scroll bars and word searches to review one’s work. Furthermore, several years probably passed in between the writing of Luke and Acts. By the time he wrote Acts, the writer of Luke may simply have forgotten the story of Jesus and the exorcists, or may not have given consideration to the contradiction he was creating. Minor theological inconsistencies like that are not uncommon between Luke’s two volumes, and most can probably be explained as a result of Luke’s reliance on many different sources. He frequently copied Mark word for word, but Mark’s theology (like the theology of any single writer in the 1st century) was not always uniformly consistent with all possible accounts available at the time. We have already seen, after all, how varied Christian beliefs were in the 1st century. Luke’s minor inconsistencies can no doubt be chalked up to his use of multiple sources that would have had competing theologies.

A second possible explanation is that Luke simply changed his mind. After writing the Gospel of Luke, where he repeated Mark’s story calling for unity among Christians, Luke may have had experiences that led him to see Paul’s version of Christianity as primary among all competing groups. Thus, he illustrated that change of heart by writing a story in his second volume, Acts, that was specifically geared toward “taking back” the theology of unity he had expressed in his first volume.

Even with all that, there is still one curious aspect of this story left to analyze. As we saw above, both Luke and Matthew relied heavily on Mark as a primary source. We also saw that Luke, in the Gospel of Luke, repeats Mark’s story about Jesus and the exorcists. Matthew, however, does not repeat this story. Yet he does use a form of the adage “whoever is not against us is for us.”

The curious thing about this, however, is that Matthew turns it around into the negative. He has Jesus utter these words during a dispute with the Pharisees over his authority to cast out demons (sound familiar?). In Matthew’s version of the story, Jesus says: “He who is not with me is against me.”

Now, instead of a story about casting out demons where Jesus asserts that anyone working in his name is “part of the group,” for Matthew, Jesus uses a situation of casting out demons to argue for exclusion – whoever is not with me is against me.

This simply provides more evidence to the historical context we saw above. In the 1st century, there were many different Christian groups all vying for primacy and exclusivity, and while some writers urged reconciliation and unity, many other writers expressed their belief in the primacy of their own community’s tradition. Mark urged unity. Matthew urged exclusivity. Luke first urged unity, then later urged exclusivity.

What these stories ultimately tell us is that Christianity is, and always has been, a highly personal faith system, malleable to many different worldviews and spiritual tastes. This is, no doubt, one of the reasons for its rise to prominence and continued primacy among the various religions of the world. Christianity, by its very nature, is open to interpretation.

In my opinion, this is something that Christians should celebrate, rather than attempt to whitewash or gloss over.

Early Christian Practice

Caught up as we often in are in our daily lives, routines, and little corners of the world, we frequently fail to take the time to reflect much on our own religious practices. This is especially true for those Christians like me who have been associated with one denomination, and therefore one denominational tradition, throughout their lives.

Whatever our personal denominational preference is, we tend to think of those worship traditions as the norm. While many of us realize that these worship traditions had some starting point in the past and haven’t just existed for all time, we tend to go through life as though they did. We may fail to recognize that for the first three or four centuries of Christian history, there was basically no organized and institutionalized form of Christian practice. There were no Protestants at all, and those who would become “Catholics” represented only a small subset of the greater Christian world. Catholicism as we know it today did not come to control Christianity in principle until the mid 300’s C.E. and in practice until the 400’s C.E. That means that for the first 350 years or so of Christian history, Christianity looked remarkably different than any form of Christianity that exists today.

It might be easy to gloss that over, and we frequently do just that. When discussing ancient history, to sum up an entire block of several hundred years with just a word or two is common. Yet 400 years is a very long time. Imagine trying to sum up American history with just a sentence or two - and U.S. history only goes back about 250 years. The period of early Christianity at issue here is nearly twice that long. To those countless generations of Christians who lived during that very long period of time, their lives, beliefs, and practices certainly were not reducible to a footnote of history.

So let’s take a look at what those early forms of Christianity looked like.

FIRST CENTURY

Most of our texts in the New Testament come from the 1st century. Assuming Jesus died in roughly 30 C.E., that means the 1st century represents the first 70 years or so of Christian history. How did Christian practice look during that earliest era?

The Eucharist, or Lord’s Supper, appears to have been a ritual practiced among Christians from a very early time. It is discussed by the apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, written in the 50’s C.E. His words on this are familiar to many Christians, as they are routinely spoken liturgically during Lord’s Supper celebrations.

But while the Lord’s Supper/Eucharist today consists of a simple ritualistic ceremony – performed in some churches each week, in other churches only once per month – for early Christians, it was an entire ritual meal. Paul says:

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s Supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.

While this passage gives an interesting glimpse into a problem at the Corinthian church, in a more general sense it allows us to see what the Lord’s Supper ritual was like. It was a full meal of food and drink that the Church ate together. It was, essentially, a 1st century potluck, only with much more liturgical, ritualistic, and theological purpose.

How often did they eat this ritualistic complete meal? There is no indisputable answer, but it was almost certainly at least once a week. In the book of Acts, from roughly 90 C.E., the writer mentions that he and his companions “broke bread” on the first day of the week (Sunday). Other 1st century texts, such as the teaching text called the Didache, imply that it was a meal eaten at every gathering. The Didache calls it the “Thanksgiving meal,” and provides instructions on prayers that should accompany it. It says that Christians should gather together “every day” and “eat a meal,” giving thanks and confessing sins in the process. This same text asserts that only those who have been “baptized” can take part in this most holy of meals.

Baptism, of course, seems also to have been one of the earliest Christian rituals. The Didache instructs its congregation to baptize in cold, “living” water. “Living” water was a euphemism for running water (such as a stream or river). It conceded, however, that the still waters of a pond or lake would suffice if no living water was available. It even went so far as to permit pouring three jugs of water on a person’s head, if neither living nor still water could be found. It also asserted that both the “overseer” performing the ritual, and the new convert receiving it, should fast for “one or two days” prior to the baptism.

For the community that produced the Gospel of John, baptism was so important that Jesus is found to say: “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and spirit.” For those 1st century Christians, baptism was an integral part of receiving the Holy Spirit. Luke makes this explicit when he has Jesus say, in Acts, that John the Baptist baptized with water, but Christians will be “baptized with the Holy Spirit.” The writer of 1 Peter promises that baptism is a pledge to God and part of the path of salvation.

Another aspect of 1st century Christian practice was communal living. The writer of Acts says explicitly that the earliest communities of Christians “would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” The Didache agrees: “Share all things with your brother, and never say that your possessions are exclusively your own, because if you share in eternal things, how much more in things that are temporary?”

For that same Didache community, fasting was an integral part of Christian life. The Didache instructs its listeners to fast on Wednesday and Friday of each week (explicitly saying not to fast on Monday and Thursday, since this is when “hypocrites” fast).

Prophecy and speaking in tongues is yet another early aspect of Christian practice. Paul and other New Testament writers talk about this phenomenon as part of regular worship services, as does the Didache. The Didache even gives explicit instructions about how to know true prophecy from false prophecy.

SECOND CENTURY

As we move into the second century, we have more history to work from in terms of understanding what early Christian communities looked like. It was during the second century that Gnostic forms of Christianity began to flourish, and thanks to a number of archaeological discoveries of the last 100 years or so, much of their literature is known to modern scholarship.

First, it is apparent that 2nd century Christian groups propagated a lot of “secret knowledge.” To use a modern euphemism, they were big on divine secrets. These secrets, of course, were frequently attributed to teachings Jesus had given one-on-one to various apostles. In a letter that Clement, bishop of Alexandria, wrote to a man named Theodore in the mid-2nd century, there is a discussion of what has come to be known as the “Secret Gospel of Mark.” Clement says that Mark wrote down his Gospel – presumably an early form of the one we know today – but that after Peter died, Mark came to the church in Alexandria and expanded on his book, adding in secret stories and accounts. This “secret” version of Mark was fiercely protected by the Alexandrian church, its content given only to initiates deemed spiritually worthy of receiving it.

According to Clement’s letter, however, their secret text got stolen by an opposing group of Christians called the Carpocratians. This group, in turn, corrupted the teachings of the secret text and began using it to assert ideas that Clement found highly offensive. One of these ideas was, apparently, that Jesus initiated secret teachings to his male followers in rituals that included homosexual sex.

This same group of Christians, according to a later Christian writer, had a painting of Jesus that they claimed had been made by Pontius Pilate, and which they used as part of their religious rites and celebrations.

Not all Gnostic groups were quite as bizarre as that. In the 2nd century, in fact, many scholars assert that most forms of Christian practice were essentially Gnostic. Catholic or “orthodox” Christianity certainly existed in the 2nd century, but it was not yet institutionalized and it was not the “mainstream” form of Christian practice.

Gnostics believed that the Hebrew god of the Old Testament was actually a lesser, evil god. He had created this world of sin and depravity, and now the one true God of the universe – a being completely unknowable – had sent his light into the world through Jesus so that Christians could figure out the secret, mysterious way of escaping this world of sin and returning to the ground of their perfect being. Gnosticism was an inherently “internal” religion of self-discovery leading to salvation. God is within you. It contrasted the “orthodox” view that salvation was attained through faith. God is outside of you.

Fasting continued to be a common practice among Christians of the 2nd century. The Christian leader Ptolemy, writing in the mid-2nd century, says: “Among us, external fasting is also observed, since it can be advantageous to the soul if it is done reasonably, not for imitating others or from habit or because of a special day appointed for this purpose.” This indicates that while fasting was still a common ritual, the group represented by Ptolemy did not care much for strict rules regulating days of fasting, as we saw in the Didache.

Other Christian groups of the 2nd century followed extreme forms of hedonism. Iranaeus, bishop of Lyons in the late 2nd century, writes of Christian groups that took the issue of faith and works to the extreme. These groups agreed so strongly with the notion that salvation comes solely from faith, apart from works, that they felt no compunction to follow moralistic codes. Of course, these forms of “hedonism” would seem mild to us today: eating food sacrificed to idols (a big no-no for folks like Iranaeus), sex outside of marriage, and groups of women and men living together in the same home (which Iranaeus took to mean they were obviously engaging in orgies).

Other groups took it further, however. The Cainites, who were especially enamored with Adam’s son Cain, believed so strongly that the body was a shell of evil that they pursued worldly pleasures to the full, in order to defile the sinful body and essentially destroy it.

From the Gospel of Phillip in the middle of the 2nd century, we find that the group who produced this text used three “temples” in its ritual practice. The first was called the “baptism,” the second “redemption,” and the third the “bridal chamber.” It is not clear whether the ritual in the bridal chamber included ritual sex, although this was certainly suspected by other Christians of the era. Iranaeus gives us a description of what took place there:

A few of them prepare a bridal chamber and in it go through a form of consecration, employing certain fixed formulae, which are repeated over the person to be initiated, and stating that a spiritual marriage is to be performed after the pattern of the higher [celestial beings].

These higher celestial beings were called “aeons,” and were believed to be emanations of God into the world. The bridal chamber, then, re-enacted the sexual union of these Godly emanations. The community that produced the Gospel of Phillip was probably the Valentinian community. The Valentinians were “mainstream” Gnostics who followed the hierarchies of priest and bishop, and who practiced the doctrines and dogmas of the emerging Church, but who taught a path of spiritual enlightenment beyond those organized structures. Just as Buddhist teachings are frequently likened to a raft that gets the practitioner to the other side and is then abandoned, so the doctrines and dogmas and structures of Christianity were there only for the novice. Once spiritual enlightenment had been attained, those rules and regulations could be left behind because they were no longer valuable or necessary.

During the early part of the 2nd century, we also begin to see descriptions of Christians from outside Christianity. In a series of letters sent between Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia and the emperor Trajan, we get our first “Roman” discussion of Christianity. Pliny has had some run-ins with Christians in his region, and has put them on trial. He gives us a nice glimpse at what Christian practice looked like in his region in the first decade of the 2nd century:

[Christians] were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath…When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food.

Pliny goes on to mention “two female slaves” who he refers to as “deaconesses” among the Christians.

Later in the 2nd century, we have another Roman perspective, this time from the philosopher Fronto: “They know one another by secret marks and insignia, and they love one another almost before they know one another…They call one another…brothers and sisters.” He goes on to accuse these Christians of “loving the head of a donkey” and of being obsessed with the genitalia of their priests and bishops. These are no doubt vicious rumors he has heard, and he concedes this by saying: “I know not whether these things are false.” Whether true or not, he says, suspicion of such things is fairly aroused because of Christianity’s tendency to engage in “secret and nocturnal rites.”

Fronto doesn’t stop there, however. He recounts an initiation rite of novice Christians that he says is “well known.”

An infant covered over with meal, that it may deceive the unwary, is placed before him who is to be stained with their rites: this infant is slain by the young pupil, who has been urged on as if to harmless blows on the surface of the meal, with dark and secret wounds. Thirstily – O horror! – they lick up its blood; eagerly they divide its limbs. By this victim they are pledged together…

Might Christian groups of the 2nd century actually have practiced such things? It is difficult to say with any certainty, but the later Christian writer who quotes these passages from Fronto certainly didn’t think so.

Fronto also speaks of the meal tradition of Christianity. Like the initiation rite of child murder that he says is well known, he says their tradition of meal sharing is spoken of by people “everywhere.”

On a solemn day they assemble at the feast, with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of every sex and of every age. There, after much feasting, when the fellowship has grown warm, and the fervor of incestuous lust has grown hot with drunkenness, a dog that has been tied to the chandelier is provoked to rush and spring, by throwing a small piece of offal beyond the length of a line by which he is bound; and thus the conscious light being overturned and extinguished in the shameless darkness, the connections of abominable lust involve them in the uncertainty of fate.

Again, is it possible that some Christian groups topped off the Lord’s Supper celebration with a good old fashioned orgy? It’s possible, I suppose, but Fronto’s words sound more polemical than historical. In either case, it is clear that Christian rituals, carried on in secret and with esoteric liturgies and mysterious language, aroused suspicion in mainstream culture, and gave rise to all manner of rumor and speculation.

If we can separate polemics from history, these comments from Fronto may allow us to speculate about how some Christian groups practiced their faith in the 2nd century. Take, for instance, Fronto’s comment that Christians “loved the head of a donkey.” One might imagine Christian groups of the 2nd century re-enacting Palm Sunday as part of the Easter celebrations. That re-enactment would no doubt have included ritually riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, as Jesus is said to have done in the Gospels. Perhaps this led Christians to be associated with donkeys – that most Jewish of animals.

As for obsessions with the genitals of priests, it is not out of the question to assume that some Christian groups may have fused ancient fertility cults with Christian practice. As outlined above, this was a charge made against some Christian groups by other Christian groups. Fertility cults, of course, typically engaged in various forms of ritual sex. The erect penis is known as a symbol of fertility cults from across antiquity. Fronto, with his “modern” Roman values, was righteously indignant over such superstition and ancient tribalism, much like we would be today if faced with a similar situation. In that sense, he shared the feelings of Christians like Iranaeus and other “heresy hunters” of the early Christian era.

As for the charge of cannibalism, this was, no doubt, related to the ritual of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood. Perhaps Fronto’s account of cannibalism, mixed with infanticide, is a polemical fusion of the Eucharist, the virgin birth of Jesus, and the story of Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac in the Old Testament. It’s difficult to imagine a Christian group (or any group, for that matter) enacting such a ritual, but Fronto is not the only one who suggests it. Church fathers writing as late as the 4th century made similar charges against some Christian groups, as we will see below.

Finally, we get an intimate glimpse at the lifestyle of some 2nd century Christians from the Christian writer Justin Martyr. Justin wrote around 150 C.E., and he is the earliest of the “Church fathers” for whom we have a significant amount of existing writings. He said the following:

We, who once took pleasure in fornication, now embrace self-control. We, who valued the acquisition of wealth and possessions above everything else, now put what we have into a common fund, and share with everyone in need. We, who hated and killed one another, and would not share our lives with certain people because of their ethnic differences from us, now live intimately with them.

Clearly as late as the mid-2nd century, many Christian groups were still living in the communal style of the earliest Christians a century earlier.

THIRD CENTURY AND LATER

Christian practice through these centuries seems to have mirrored much of the previous eras, though with an increase in regulation and institutionalism. Fringe groups tended to die out (especially those that condemned procreation) and mainstream groups tended to strengthen in numbers, leading to tighter structure and unity.

Discussion raged during these centuries of the nature of Jesus. While some groups insisted Jesus was equal to God, others claimed Jesus was divine in his own right, but still subject to God. Jesus’ humanity, especially, was at issue during this time. Some said Jesus was both fully human and fully God. Others asserted that Jesus was not human at all, but only appeared to be human, because God can’t suffer and die like Jesus did on the cross. Still others argued that Jesus was only human, with God simply working through him in a unique and mysterious way.

It was during this time in the 3rd and 4th centuries that Christians began using the familiar “sign of the cross” – a hand movement meant to symbolize the cross of Christ. It differed, however, from the familiar four-point movement known to Catholicism today. Tertullian, writing in the early part of the 3rd century, says:

In all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross.

This ritual movement crossed only the forehead, not the whole body, and instead of using three fingers, only the thumb was used. Furthermore, the sign consisted of only three points, not four – it mimicked the Greek letter tau, which is known to us as T.

In regards to baptismal rites in the 3rd century, early Christian writers left rather detailed accounts of how this ritual was carried out. Prayer and fasting would precede the day of baptism. The baptism itself would typically take place on Easter, with all new initiates of the previous year being baptized together. The overseer would ask the initiate if he or she renounced the devil and his angels. The initiate would respond three times in the affirmative. After that, the initiates would step naked into the water, up to their necks. The overseer would then ritually call down the spirit of God on those being baptized, and the initiates – having now received the Holy Spirit – would emerge from the water to be clothed in a robe of white linen. They would also be given ritual food – milk and honey – which not only symbolized the food of the Promised Land from Jewish scriptures, but, as scholar Elaine Pagels says, also symbolized “baby food” being given to these newborns in Christ.

During this era, we again see rather outrageous accusations against fringe Christian practice. Epiphanius, writing in the early 300’s, referred to a Christian sect he called the “Borborites” who replaced the bread and wine of the Eucharist with semen and menstrual blood, which they smeared on themselves and then consumed. This practice may have been an extreme form of a God/Wisdom duality, with menstrual blood representing female wisdom, and semen representing male divinity.

Epiphanius also accuses these Christians of infanticide and cannibalism, going so far as to say that they would kill and eat the babies created from their ritual sex acts. This sounds so similar to what we saw above from the pagan Fronto that one wonders if Epiphanius actually got the story from Fronto’s writings. That may be a possibility, but more than likely these sorts of rumors about the more fringe and secretive sects of Christianity were commonplace. It is difficult to know for certain whether they represent true ritual practices or mere rumor and polemics.

CONCLUSION

When we look at the earliest eras of Christianity – a time period spanning several hundred years – we find that Christian practice was as diverse then as it is now. Furthermore, hardly any of it resembles the rituals and liturgies that we take for granted in the modern church. We still baptize, we still eat the Lord’s Supper, and we still celebrate Easter, but our methods for enacting those ancient rituals share only the barest similarities with the earliest generations of Christians.

When I envision the earliest Christian communities – those communities for whom Jesus was only as “ancient” as Wilbur and Orville Wright are for us – I imagine a group of humble believers, separated from mainstream society, living communally and sharing all their possessions and profits with one another, meeting together at dawn on Sunday – the Lord’s Day – for prayer, prophecy, and teachings from scripture, sharing a ritual Eucharist meal each evening, greeting one another as brother and sister, crossing their foreheads in piety as they go about their daily activities, and viewing their entire existence as part of the in-breaking kingdom of God. For these earliest Christians, Christianity wasn’t just a profession of faith, it was an entire way of life, reconciled not to the world, but to God.

Judas Iscariot

Perhaps no other name in Western culture has quite the stigma attached to it as that of Judas Iscariot. Most everyone in the West – Christian or otherwise – can identify this character, and his name has even become synonymous with a backstabber or betrayer in modern language.

Judas, of course, has been the subject of much study throughout the years. In churches he is vilified as the man who handed over Jesus to authorities – the man responsible in many ways for the death of the Savior. Like his name, the thirty pieces of silver he was said to have received have become synonymous with betrayal and treachery.

Christian art and literature have encouraged this characterization. In the Inferno, Dante consigns Judas to the deepest level of hell, where he is to be chewed up for all eternity in the mouth of Satan. His companions there are the two men who betrayed and murdered Julius Caesar. The point couldn’t be more clear – there is no sin more damnable than a betrayal of trust.

In paintings, Judas is frequently depicted with gaunt, prominent features, dark skin and hair, and ghoulish expressions. Consider Da Vinci’s famous painting of the Last Supper.

Judas is seated just to Jesus' right, leaning across the table and looking back toward John. He is wearing blue and green. Click on the picture to see it much larger.

Judas Iscariot is the only one with dark skin, hair, and beard, and his face is long and flat, a reptilian face. He is clearly the most “Jewish” of the bunch, and that is surely no accident.

Or take, for instance, the painting of the Last Supper by Philippe de Champaigne, a 17th century French artist.



Judas is seated in a prominent position, with his toga riding high, revealing his bare leg in startling and rather disconcerting clarity. And while the other disciples look rather aghast (Jesus has apparently just predicted his betrayal), Judas is staring directly at Jesus, a confrontational expression on his face and in his body language.

In Caravaggio’s famous painting of the betrayal of Jesus, Jesus himself has a clear, almost child-like face, while Judas’ head is remarkably larger and rounder, with a broad ridge of forehead and an extremely thick, prominent nose.



He looks like a true Neanderthal brute.

Judas has become, for Christianity, the consummate antagonist, the embodiment of evil to Jesus’ embodiment of holy.

Despite that, some scholars and theologians in recent years have begun to question the authenticity of the Judas story. A few have even gone so far as to say that Judas was likely an entirely fictitious character. From my own study of the issue, I don’t think this is, by any means, a majority opinion among Biblical scholars, but I do find the arguments to be interesting if not compelling.

Judas does not enter the Christian tradition until the Gospel of Mark – written around 70 C.E., or forty years after the death of Jesus. However, the apostle Paul, writing some 10-20 years earlier, does mention a betrayal surrounding Jesus.

1 Corinthians 11:23 – For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed…

This seems, on the surface, to suggest that within 20-25 years of Jesus’ death, there was already a story circulating about Jesus having been betrayed. That might support the idea that the story is, in fact, historically-based and not legendary. The earlier an event is testified to, the more likely it is to be true.

However, there is an issue with Paul’s word use.

The Greek word used by Paul is paradidomi. This word doesn’t actually mean “to betray.” It means to “hand over” or “deliver.” In fact, Paul uses the same word earlier in the very same verse. The phrase translated in that verse as “passed on” is actually a repetition of the same word. More than likely, Paul’s original intent was not to imply betrayal. What the verse is really saying is: “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over…”

There is a different word in Greek for “betray,” and interestingly enough, that is almost never the word used in reference to Judas and Jesus – even by the Gospel writers. Judas is always shown to be “handing over” Jesus, not necessarily “betraying” him.

That might be easy to disregard as mere semantics of language. But there may be more significance to it than what is implied at first glance. Consider the following two scenarios:

Joe and Bob are good friends.
Bob insulted Bill.
Bill went looking for Bob to rough him up.
Joe handed Bob over to Bill.

In that scenario, it would be fair to say that Joe, in handing over his friend Bob, betrayed Bob. But consider it another way:

Joe and Bob are good friends.
Bob robbed a bank.
The police came to Joe looking for Bob.
Joe handed Bob over to the police.

Did Joe’s action in that scenario really imply a wonton act of betrayal? Or was Joe simply doing what was right, cooperating with police? Furthermore, perhaps Joe feared for his own safety if he didn’t cooperate with police.

Could the story of Judas be interpreted in a similar fashion? Consider this:

Judas and Jesus are good friends.
Jesus committed the crime of blasphemy.
The authorities came to Judas looking for Jesus.
Judas, fearing for his own safety, handed Jesus over to the authorities.

While blasphemy may not be a criminal offense to our modern sensibilities, it most certainly was a criminal offense to 1st century Jewish sensibilities. Could it be that Judas was simply cooperating with authorities out of a desire to follow the laws of his land and out of fear that he might be brought down with Jesus if he didn’t cooperate?

It’s an interesting question that might be the first “chink in the armor” on traditional ideas about the treachery of Judas. Even the Gospel writers didn’t claim Judas betrayed Jesus – he merely was the one who handed him over. Having said that, of course, by no means am I arguing that the Gospel writers don’t depict Judas in a basically negative light. But could their use of the word “handed over,” as opposed to “betrayed,” indicate an earlier tradition that knew of Judas only as the one forced by circumstances to hand Jesus over to authorities, and not someone who wantonly betrayed the son of God?

Returning again to Paul’s discussion of the Last Supper and Jesus being handed over, it is noteworthy to point out that Paul does not mention anything about Judas, or make any implication that one of Jesus’ inner circle betrayed him. Paul simply notes that Jesus had a final meal with his disciples on the night he was handed over to authorities. As noted earlier, Judas – as a character – does not enter Christian tradition until the Gospel of Mark.

In Mark, Judas is first mentioned in the list of disciples, where the writer notes that Judas was the one who betrayed (again, “handed over”) Jesus. Judas doesn’t appear again until the actual betrayal scene, where he is shown to seek out the authorities on his own to hand Jesus over to them. Mark says that when Judas came to them, the authorities “were delighted.”

Later, Mark asserts that Judas showed up in the place where Jesus was praying. He brought with him an armed crowd sent by the Jewish authorities. Using a prearranged signal, he kisses Jesus and Jesus is arrested. Jesus questions the crowd about why they have arrived with swords and clubs, and he points out that he has been in full view every day, preaching at the Temple.

This, of course, brings up a salient point. What was Judas’ purpose in all this? The authorities didn’t need someone to hand Jesus over to them. He was preaching at the Temple, exposed to the world, every day. Recall for a moment my scenario above about Joe and Bob. Imagine that Bob robs the bank and then camps out on the sidewalk in front of the police station for the following week. Would the police really need to go to Joe to find Bob?

This is perhaps the second “chink in the armor” for literal interpretations of the Judas story. It just doesn’t seem to add up. Why was Judas necessary? Could it be that the Judas story was originally designed as a metaphor for something else?

Moving on to the book of Matthew, the writer of this Gospel expands the story of Judas. Adding to Mark’s account, he notes that Judas was offered thirty silver pieces for handing Jesus over.

In Matthew’s last supper scene, Judas is specifically mentioned among the disciples who say “Surely not I?” in response to Jesus’ prediction that he will be handed over by one of the Twelve. Jesus responds by saying, “Yes, it is you.”

The betrayal scene itself is more or less identical in Matthew and Mark. But where Judas disappears from Mark’s account after the betrayal, Matthew includes a scene where Judas, overcome by guilt, throws the thirty silver pieces into the Temple and goes out and hangs himself in shame. Thus, the earliest account of Judas’ suicide comes around 85 C.E., or more than fifty years after Jesus’ death.

In Luke, we have the first instance of Judas actually being called a “betrayer” or “traitor.” Although he uses the phrase “handed over” when talking about Judas’ actions, Luke does explicitly call Judas a traitor on this one occasion. This, in other words, shows that as we move forward chronologically among our sources for stories of Judas, we begin to see Judas painted in an every increasingly negative light.

Luke’s increase in vitriolic language does not stop there. When describing Judas’ discussion with authorities about handing Jesus over, Luke asserts that “Satan entered Judas.” Judas is not just doing something bad; he’s now essentially working on Satan’s orders.

Luke’s Last Supper and arrest scenes don’t differ dramatically from Matthew and Mark. However, where Judas kisses Jesus in the first two Gospels, Luke says that Judas only starts to kiss Jesus, but Jesus effectively stops him with a question: “Are you handing over the Son of Man with a kiss?”

As with Mark, Judas does not appear again in Luke’s Gospel. However, Luke wrote a second volume of work that we know as the book of Acts. Judas’ fate is described in the first chapter of that account.

Luke tells us that Judas bought a field “with the reward he got for his wickedness,” and that he “fell headlong” in the field “and his bowels spilled out,” leading locals to name the place the “Field of Blood.”

In this passage, we again see the increase in vitriol directed at Judas. Where Matthew described Judas being wracked with guilt and remorse, going so far as to exclaim that he had handed over “innocent blood,” Luke asserts that Judas kept the money he gained from his “wickedness” and bought land with it. Where Matthew asserts that Judas committed suicide over his guilt, Luke asserts that he simply died in a rather unfortunate and gory accident – getting what he deserved, in other words.

Furthermore, the “bowels” were understood by ancient Hebrews to be the seat of love, compassion, kindness, and good will. Where evil came from the heart, love and goodness came from the gut. There can be no question that Luke’s description of Judas’ bowels spilling out is a metaphorical way of implying that all that was good, kind, and loving about Judas spilled out into this field of blood.

Moving on to the last Gospel of the New Testament era – the Gospel of John – we find the first reference to Judas when Jesus proclaims that one of his inner circle is a slanderer (in Greek diablos, where we get the word “devil”). John notes that Jesus was talking about Judas.

The next appearance of Judas comes in the one and only scene in the Bible involving Judas that is not related to his betrayal of Jesus. A woman named Mary takes an expensive bottle of perfume and anoints Jesus with it. Judas objects, arguing that the perfume could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Lest the reader assume this meant Judas was kind-hearted, John is quick to point out that Judas’ motivation wasn’t altruistic; he asserts that Judas was the “keeper of the money bag” and that he frequently stole from it.

Later, John asserts that Satan entered Judas and prompted him to hand Jesus over. During the Last Supper, Jesus hands a piece of bread to Judas, indicating that Judas is the one who will betray him. John notes again that “Satan entered” Judas when Jesus gave him the bread. Judas then gets up and leaves.

After that, Jesus enters a long teaching discourse, which takes up several chapters of John’s book. None of the previous Gospels include this speech, and none mention Judas leaving the table before the meal was over. That doesn’t seem accidental. Clearly John’s intent was to exclude Judas from this final and all important teaching of Jesus – a teaching that culminates in a long, heartfelt prayer for the disciples.

In the arrest scene, John deviates from the previous Gospels by asserting that Roman soldiers were among those who showed up with Judas. The soldiers arrest Jesus after he more or less gives himself up to them. There is no mention of a kiss or even an attempted kiss. As with Mark, Judas disappears from John’s account after Jesus’ arrest.

When we look at these Gospels accounts of Judas, several things come to light. I have already mentioned how there is a noticeable increase in contempt and hostility toward Judas with each successive Gospel. Luke and John both assert that Judas was working on Satan’s orders, with John making the assertion twice. Luke calls him a traitor. John calls him a thief and depicts him as using charitable concerns as a front for his thievery. Where Matthew paints Judas as remorseful to the point of returning the money and committing suicide, Luke says he bought land with the money, then died in a horribly violent accident, where the source of all his love, compassion, and goodness spilled out of him. John has Judas leave the table of the Last Supper, effectively excluding him from the climactic final teaching discourse and final prayer for the disciples.

Another issue that appears when comparing the Gospel accounts of Judas is the basic disagreement among the four sources on the details.

Mark and Matthew say Judas kissed Jesus, based on a prearranged signal. Luke says Judas only attempted to kiss Jesus, but Jesus stopped him. John says nothing about a kiss, and depicts Jesus as simply handing himself over.

In Mark and Luke, Jesus predicts his betrayal, but does not say who it will be. In Matthew and John, Jesus specifically fingers Judas. In Matthew, he does this simply by stating that Judas is the one. In John, however, he points the finger at Judas by handing him a piece of bread.

In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Judas remains until the end of the meal. In John, he gets up and leaves before the meal is over.

In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Judas is motivated by money. Only Matthew, however, mentions thirty silver pieces. In John, on the other hand, nothing is said about money, and instead Judas’ sole motivation is simple Satan-inspired wickedness.

In Matthew, Judas is full of guilt, returns the money, and commits suicide by hanging. In Luke, Judas – apparently not feeling guilty at all – uses the money to buy land, then has a terrible accident and dies in a gory mess.

These inconsistencies stand out like a sore thumb and practically beg for explanation. Some have suggested that the inconsistencies are to be expected when dealing with human memory. The general thrust of the story – that Judas was the one who handed over Jesus – is agreed upon by all sources. It’s only in the details that inconsistencies occur. Others, however, have suggested that the details of the story frequently changed because it was legendary to start with. With no basis in history to go on, the story was free to morph and diversify at will.

Another issue we see when looking at the accounts of Judas is an increase in detail. In Mark, Judas is introduced in the list of the twelve disciples. He’s not mentioned again until the Last Supper, when it is noted that he agreed to hand over Jesus in exchange for money. Judas leads a crowd to Jesus after the Last Supper, Jesus is arrested, and Judas disappears from the story. Matthew adds in thirty silver pieces, has Jesus specifically call out Judas as his betrayer, and adds in an account of what happened to Judas after the arrest and how he died. Luke brings Satan into the picture in regards to Judas, suggesting that Judas was under Satan’s spell, and gives his own account of Judas’ death. John includes a story about Judas during the ministry of Jesus, noting that Judas was the treasurer for the disciples and a thief to boot, then lengthens the account of Jesus’ actions during the Last Supper in regards to naming Judas as the one who would hand him over.

This general increase in detail seems to support the idea that the story was mostly legendary. Like any legend, the story of Judas was added to and embellished over time, with each successive author adding in his own unique details and exaggerations.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for the argument of a legendary genesis of the story of Judas, is the fact that Judas shared a name with the Hebrew people. Anyone who has studied Christian history is aware of the sharp divide between Judaism and Christianity. While Christianity began as a sect within Judaism, it very quickly separated from Judaism all together and became a religion of non-Jews and ex-Jews. As such, Christianity and Judaism, once in a parent/child relationship, became bitter enemies. Anti-Semitism among Christians was already flourishing even during the Gospel era of the late 1st century.

Is it just coincidence that the betrayer of Jesus – the man who handed the son of God over to be crucified, the man who was said to be a minion of Satan himself, the man who was called a thief, the man who was said to have spilled out all his goodness, love, and compassion upon his gruesome death – is it just coincidence that this man’s name was Judas, a name synonymous with Judah, the nation of the Jewish people? In fact, “Judas” is simply our English transliteration of the Greek spelling of the name. Judas’ name was, in fact, “Judah.”

The character of Judas was literally named after the Jewish people – those same people that the Gospels say had rejected Jesus and had yelled “Crucify him!” when Pilate brought him before them. Just as the Jews were said to have rejected their own son in Jesus, Judas – a member of Jesus’ own inner circle – handed him over to his death.

This leads back to the “second chink in the armor” I mentioned above. Judas doesn’t seem to be necessary. The Gospels quote Jesus as being perplexed about his arrest – he notes that he has been freely visible preaching every day in the Temple. The authorities didn’t need Judas. Could it be that Judas is simply a metaphor for the Jewish people – those people who rejected Jesus and were accused of being responsible for his execution?

The congruence of these two facts – the rejection of Jesus by the Jews, and the name of Jesus’ betrayer being the name of the Jewish people – is difficult to ignore. It is, in my opinion, the strongest argument one can give for asserting that the Judas story is a legendary account. When you add it to the evidence I have already provided, it makes for a very compelling argument.

Despite that, I am not yet fully convinced that the Judas story is completely legendary. I noted at the start of this essay that the majority scholarly position does not seem to support the idea that Judas Iscariot was a fictional character. A number of scholars have indeed argued for Judas’ legendary status, but from what I can tell, those people represent a minority in the scholarly academy.

It seems most likely to me that someone named Judas Iscariot probably was a follower of Jesus. Despite the strong evidence of the name link, it is important to remember that “Judah,” as a male name, was very common among 1st century Jews. In fact, no fewer than three of Jesus’ own twelve disciples were given that name in one source or another (Judas Iscariot, Judas James, and Judas Thomas). Furthermore, another “Judas” appears as the writer of the book we call Jude in the New Testament, and a fifth appears as the name of one of Jesus’ brothers. Finally, the book of Acts names three additional men named Judas (Judas the Galilean who led a revolt, Judas the man whose house Paul was taken to after his Damascus Road conversion, and Judas one of the early Christian apostles who was chosen to deliver a letter to Antioch from Jerusalem). “Judas” was, without question, a popular 1st century Jewish name.

So while it is highly intriguing that Jesus’ betrayer was named Judas, I think it’s at least possible that this was coincidental. Furthermore, while I think it is historically reasonable to say that Jesus had a follower named Judas Iscariot, it may very well be that the story of the betrayal itself is either legendary or at least greatly embellished. Perhaps this Judas left the group on bad terms, thus leading to later vilification; perhaps this Judas fell to the wayside and didn’t continue with the movement after Jesus’ death, leading to hard feelings among the remaining followers; or, as I indicated earlier in this essay, perhaps this Judas was somehow involved in Jesus’ arrest, but it was only out of fear or persuasion by authorities, and not because he wanted to wantonly betray his own teacher.

I once wrote a short story about the rise of Christianity (alas, it was never finished) wherein Judas figured prominently in the resurrection and was the first of the disciples to continue with the Jesus movement after Jesus’ execution.

(Judas speaking to a crowd) “[The priests] are enemies of God because they seek to bind the human soul, to simplify God’s fullness into a formula and a system! Jesus, speaking with the authority of God, taught a different message. A message of freedom from bondage – a message where love for one another is the ultimate expression of God’s will.”

I had intended to develop some intriguing account of how Judas had come to be known as the one who handed Jesus over to the authorities, but as I said, the story was never finished.

If my readers will forgive a moment of stark personal reflection that has no legitimate place in an otherwise historically researched essay, I suppose I have long identified strongly with Judas because Judas was the betrayer, the one who turned his back on the movement, the one who was vilified not because he never believed at all, but because he believed and then (apparently) stopped believing. I often feel that way myself. I grew up in a Christian family, attended church every week, was heavily engaged in church activities, went to a Christian college (I even started out majoring in Church Music), and remained active in the Church for many years after entering adulthood. But then changes began to take place and I started questioning a lot of things that I had always more or less taken for granted. I started being accused by friends of turning my back on Christianity; one friend said I was “venomous and scathing” and said I had become too judgmental; others talked down to me for “losing my faith;” one of my online networking profiles was deemed “scary” by a religious fundamentalist; someone even once called me a “heretic.” This all coming despite the fact that I continue to identify myself as a Christian, regard Jesus as a unique conduit to the presence of a real and living God, and consider the lifestyle of Jesus to be vitally important to living a God-filled life.

So I have a kind of soft spot, I think, for Judas. I like to imagine that he got a bad rap – that maybe he doesn’t deserve all the defamation and character assassination that he has gotten over the years from Christian tradition. I like to imagine that it was something else, some difference of opinion, perhaps, that led to his ultimate vilification in emerging Christian circles.

So I’m no doubt biased, but I think Judas Iscariot probably really existed; I’m just not very much convinced that his portrayal in the Gospels is accurate – and that, I’m sure, is a combination of both textual evidence and a little bit of a soft spot for him.