Thursday, December 07, 2023
JUDAS: NOT GUILTY
Just think of it. 2000 years. That is how long Judas has been waiting to have his name cleared. Almost all scholars consider Luke 6:16 the strongest piece of evidence against him. That verse is the only place in all the Gospels which uses prodotes, the Greek word for traitor, to describe Judas. But it is both illogical and immoral to use this evidence that way. In a court of law today, it would be called leaping to a conclusion. The witness claiming this would be instructed to testify only to concrete facts (what they saw or heard). And just to be perfectly clear, for example, testifying that the defendant murdered the victim is also leaping to a conclusion. We need the details of how it was done.
The use of prodotes at Luke 6:16 is evidence that some people way back when drew this conclusion, but it is not evidence that he actually betrayed Jesus. Luke gives us no details as to how they reached this conclusion.
This is not the place to go over all the evidence concerning Judas. I do that in
the first chapter of my book True Jew j(the book is more about Jesus than about Judas).
Suffice it to say that this is more than a matter of picking apart the case against Judas. It is also about proving what actually did happen, and it certainly was not betrayal.
Leon Zitzer
zitzerleon@gmail.com