A NEW THEORY REGARDING THE CRUCIFIXION
The Qur’an states:
And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger—they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. (Surah 4, verses 157-158, Pickthall)
It is said that there is an explanation of the meaning of this which can be indirectly traced to The Prophet:
Ibn Abi Hatim recorded that Ibn `Abbas said, “Just before Allah raised [Jesus] to the heavens, [Jesus] went to his companions, who were twelve inside the house. When he arrived…he said, ‘There are those among you who will disbelieve in me twelve times after he had believed in me.’ He then asked, ‘Who volunteers that his image appear as mine, and be killed in my place. He will be with me (in Paradise).’ One of the youngest ones among them volunteered and [Jesus] asked him to sit down. [Jesus] again asked for a volunteer, and the young man kept volunteering and [Jesus] asking him to sit down. Then the young man volunteered again and [Jesus] said, ‘You will be that man,’ and the resemblance of [Jesus] was cast over that man while [Jesus] ascended to heaven from a hole in the house. When the Jews came looking for [Jesus], they found that young man and crucified him. Some of [Jesus’s] followers disbelieved in him twelve times after they had believed in him….’” This statement has an authentic chain of narration leading to Ibn `Abbas, and An-Nasa’i narrated it through Abu Kurayb who reported it from Abu Mu`awiyah. (Kathir I. , Tafsir Ibn Kathir, p. 771, as quoted in “Jesus, The Prophet Who Didn’t Die”)
This is hardly a radical new idea started by Muslims. Several Gnostic cults proposed something similar during the early days of Christianity. The important thing, though, is not what they specifically believed. The devil is in the details. Let us start with the Carpocratians:
In the second century Gnostics were especially fond of [The Gospel of Mark]. The Carpocratians liked it because of its emphasis on secret teaching; followers of Basilides apparently used it to show that Simon of Cyrene, not Jesus, was crucified (reading Mark 15:21-4 with severe literalism). According to a letter of Clement discovered by Morton Smith, the Carpocratians had their own version of the gospel, while the church of Alexandria used not only the ordinary version but also an esoteric document based upon it. (source)
If these people had their own version of Mark which apparently nobody living has ever seen then how can their reason for holding this belief be a literalistic reading of the
normal version of Mark? That’s extremely faulty logic. Let’s hear more about this Basilides guy though, as well as some other Gnostic groups:
According to Basilides, Christ seemed to men to be a man and to have performed miracles. It was not, however, Christ, who suffered but Simon of Cyrenes who was constrained to carry the cross and was mistakenly crucified in Christ’s stead. Simon having received Jesus’ form, Jesus returned Simon’s and thus stood by and laughed. Simon was crucified and Jesus returned to his father (Irenaeus, Adv. Char., 1, xxiv). According to some apocrypha it was Judas, not Simon the Cyrenean, who was thus substituted. Hippolytus describes a Gnostic sect who took the name of Docetae, though for what reason is not apparent, especially as their semblance theory was the least pronounced feature in their system. Their views were in close affinity to those of the Valentians. The primal Being is, so to speak, the seed of a fig-tree, small in size but infinite in power; from it proceed three Aeons, tree, leaves, fruit, which, multiplied with the perfect number ten, become thirty. These thirty Aeons together fructify one of themselves, from whom proceeds the Virgin-Saviour, a perfect representation of the Highest God. The Saviour’s task is to hinder further transference of souls from body to body, which is the work of the Great Archon, the Creator of the world. The Saviour enters the world unnoticed, unknown, obscure. An angel announced the glad tidings to Mary. He was born and did all the things that are written of him in the Gospels. But in baptism he received the figure and seal of another body besides that born of the Virgin. The object of this was that when the Archon condemned his own peculiar figment of flesh to the death of the cross, the soul of Jesus—that soul which had been nourished in the body born of the Virgin—might strip off that body and nail it to the accursed tree. In the pneumatic body received at baptism Jesus could triumph over the Archon, whose evil intent he had eluded. (source)
I want you to note two details here which you might otherwise have overlooked: the mention of Judas Iscariot, and the use of the phrase “the accursed tree”.
To be sure some Muslims have in the past gone for the Simon of Cyrene theory. A lot of them have also promoted the idea that Judas Iscariot had his form switched with Jesus’s as a punishment for his betrayal plot. (That a lot of Muslims believe that “The Gospel of Barnabas”, a book which does not understand Islamic teachings or theology at all, is authentic, does not help matters much.) The problem with the latter? There never
was any betrayal plot. The pre-New Testament source known as “The Q Document” (or in all likelihood one of
multiple Q Documents) says, going by the International Q Project’s translation and combination of verses, “You who have followed me will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Assuming that the sentence is correctly attributed it is very much in keeping with Islamic doctrine: Jesus could be saying, “When I’m king of the world come the endtimes you’ll all be among the lords of my court.” But if Jesus were really saying it at the particular time reported by Matthew 19:28 and Luke 22:30, when one of these twelve apostles was very soon to betray him, the sentence wouldn’t make much sense. The
implication that all twelve are going to live is obviously there, anyway. For an even clearer piece of evidence I’d like to refer you to the words of 1 Corinthians, St. Paul being yet another early source from well before the rest of the New Testament:
[Jesus] was buried…was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and…appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (Chapter 15, verses 4-5)
Excuse me?
How many apostles did he appear to?
Paul does, however, mention a betrayal:
I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night in which he was betrayed took bread. When he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in memory of me.” In the same way he also took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink, in memory of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks the Lord’s cup in a manner unworthy of the Lord will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread, and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, if he doesn’t discern the Lord’s body. For this cause many among you are weak and sickly, and not a few sleep. For if we discerned ourselves, we wouldn’t be judged. But when we are judged, we are punished by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. Therefore, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait one for another. But if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home, lest your coming together be for judgment. The rest I will set in order whenever I come.” (1 Corinthians 11:23-34)
It seems from this early text, then, that Paul is not only the originator of this idea of a betrayal plot but also the entire tradition of the Eucharist. “I received from the Lord that which also I delivered to you.” And considering that this is the same guy who said he’d still be alive when Jesus came back (read 1 Thessalonians chapter 4) I think I can feel justified in questioning him as a source of genuine divine revelation. One way or another Judas clearly didn’t die.
Paul made one more remark which really piqued my interest. In fact it largely inspired this whole theory. It is this:
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” (Galatians 3:13)
This verse, which oddly brings to mind all that stuff the Valentinians said about an accursed tree, is a reference to the book of Deuteronomy. As is customary for the New Testament’s treatment of the Old the original passage, when seen in context, has nothing to do with anything and does not look prophetic in the slightest:
If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him the same day; for he who is hanged is accursed of God; that you don’t defile your land which Yahweh your God gives you for an inheritance. (Chapter 21, verses 22-23)
But it’s not like Paul’s use of the word “tree” is unique and done only for the sake of the allusion. The book of Acts does the very same thing, several times over. Take this, for example:
Though they found no cause for death, they still asked Pilate to have [Jesus] killed. When they had fulfilled all things that were written about him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead, and he was seen for many days by those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses to the people. (Chapter 13, verses 28-31)
In fact two different places in Acts explicitly use the very phrase “hanging him on a tree”, word for word.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed, hanging him on a tree. (Chapter 5, verse 30)
We are witnesses of everything he did both in the country of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they also killed, hanging him on a tree. (Chapter 10, verses 39-40)
Although the Greek word “xoolon” could in theory be translated in multiple ways almost every rendering I ever see says “tree”. When I look up Galatians 3:13, Acts 5:30 and Deuteronomy 21:22 I see that King James, Revised Standard, World English, Weymouth, Young’s Literal and Basic Bible all say “tree” each time. Even when The New Living Translation renders the phrase in Acts 5:30 as “on a cross” it still adds a footnote saying, “Greek ‘on a tree’”. Now if that ain’t the livin’ end. No, I’m afraid there’s no doubt as to what any of these verses are trying to say. So he was hanged on a tree, eh? What a funny way of putting it. Now who else do we know who you’d think of as hanging from a tree? Speaking of which let’s take a look at those infamously inconsistent passages on the matter:
Judas, who betrayed him, when he saw that Jesus was condemned, felt remorse, and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood. But they said, “What is that to us? You see to it.” He threw down the pieces of silver in the sanctuary, and departed. He went away and hanged himself. The chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said, “It’s not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is the price of blood.” They took counsel, and bought the potter’s field with them, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field was called The Field of Blood to this day. (Matthew 27:3-8)
[Judas] obtained a field with the reward for his wickedness, and falling headlong, his body burst open, and all his intestines gushed out. It became known to everyone who lived in Jerusalem that in their language that field was called Akeldama, that is, The field of blood. (Acts 1:18-19)
Does
any detail there match? These two passages don’t agree on how Judas died, they don’t seem to agree on whether he was remorseful, and they don’t agree on how the Field of Blood got its name. They don’t agree on whether Judas kept the money or what ended up happening to it in the end. They don’t agree on who bought the field. Every single thing about each passage is in contradiction to ever single other one. But the really interesting thing about the Acts account is not so much how inconsistent it is. What fascinates me more is how
abruptly the whole thing comes across. It just randomly mentions a horrible, gory death and then nonchalantly moves on to the next point of business. Nothing to see here, folks: it’s just that a guy buys a field and then his intestines spill out of him, that’s all. It seems pretty obvious that the author was rehashing what must have been an already well-traveled story or else he would have offered at least a word or two of explanation. You don’t just go, “Oh did I forget to mention he burst open? Yeah, I guess I must have left that part out. Anyway there were these two guys named Joe and Matthias…” Especially when this is the same author who brought the story to a halt for no apparent reason to tell us all about Joseph of Arimathaea in Luke 23:50-51. No, this business about Judas’s death must have been
worth going over only in passing. The average reader already knew the whole thing by heart.
So what
is the full story? Why
would his guts have fallen out of him like that? Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know. Papias did elaborate on it once in his “Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord”, writing of Judas either swelling up with some sort of ridiculous disease or perishing in a wagon accident, depending on which version of the text you trust, but I’m hesitant to quote either one of these since I don’t know how reliable a source the man is. Papias claimed a lot of insider information he probably didn’t have. In fact something about the guy smacks to me an old man wanting attention. In the end, though, it may not matter very much what the exact cause of the disembowelment was—just so long as it was nasty enough not to make anyone want to ask any more questions. The author of Luke and Acts didn’t want to ask any more of them, now did he?
We were talking about the Gnostics earlier. There is yet another work of theirs, “The Gospel of Judas”, which depicts Jesus as…well, from what I can tell, he sort of talks Judas into turning him over. I’m not kidding. Although the manuscript exists only in fragments the gist of it is that on the eve of the crucifixion Jesus takes Judas aside, tells him a very peculiar creation story, and then goes, “Well, time to do your thing. It was meant to be, old buddy.” (Then again in all fairness it is awfully hard to ascertain for sure what the Gnostics or their scriptures were
ever talking about. What was it with these people and the word “secret”?)
All right, we’ve seen a lot of information by now and I’ve probably been annoyingly cagey so far. Let’s go ahead and collate and codify what we have, shall we?
There’s no agreement as to any of the details of Judas’s death, or even if he died at all. According to some people Jesus went up on a cross; at the same time others have had him hanging from a tree. Others still seemed to depict Judas as the one hanging from a tree. (Well, have
you ever pictured his hanging any other way? Has it ever been
portrayed any other way? How else would he have done it?) And yet there never was a betrayal plot in the first place. Note also that the more gruesome account of Judas’s death seems to have been the more widely spread version at the time. Meanwhile some Gnostics depicted Judas as planning things out with Jesus, or at least talking them over beforehand. Other Gnostics said that someone took Jesus’s form and was crucified in his stead. Others still said something wildly different but nonetheless dropped a reference to an accursed tree. If we put this all together instead of considering each piece of evidence individually then it’s not too hard to see what happened here.
Jesus did indeed ask an apostle to volunteer to switch forms with him. And that apostle
was Judas.
No really, think about it. Is there any other possible way to fit each puzzle piece into place?
Here’s what happened. Jesus made a lot of the Jewish elders murderously mad, as you’ll find the Gospels repeatedly saying. As a result these guys tried to frame him as a revolutionary and get him crucified. I don’t know exactly what it was he said that finally did the trick but in the end it always boils down to the same thing, for each prophet: “We follow the way our fathers did: we don’t want you here!” God told Jesus that He was going to spare him the trouble, and that someone would get a free ticket to the highest heaven out of it if they helped out with the task. So Jesus asked his disciples who among them was willing to volunteer, Judas spoke up, the two of them miraculously switched forms, and Jesus ascended to heaven (probably not literally through a hole in the roof: I think people would have seen).
I suppose that the whole “Judas’s guts spilling open” thing, whatever the exact details involved, was either a cover story to explain Judas’s disappearance in a way where people wouldn’t want to inquire too far into the matter or a silly false rumor made up about him in his continuing absence. At some point, however, word still somehow got out anyway that Judas had indeed been hanging on the “xoolon” and this led to a lot of wild speculation about what he had done. All people really knew was that it involved something that had transpired between him and Jesus. Then again it’s also possible that Paul made up the whole business about a betrayal entirely by himself and needed no word of mouth to help him out on that front. I don’t know what the meaning was behind Jesus’s statements to his apostles during their final meeting about how some there will disbelieve in him after believing in him, or how it apparently ended up turning into that hugely overblown dramatic episode in the Gospels about Peter denying him three times just before the cock crows at dawn. Nor do I know how Jesus assuring Judas that he would be his companion in Paradise ended up turning into a statement that the other guy on the cross would share the same fate, although that one isn’t very hard to imagine.
I don’t see how else to explain it all. Judas was involved
somehow, wasn’t he? Judas is the source of all this hullaballoo. It certainly couldn’t have all stemmed from a small fry from Cyrene who shows up for a single verse and immediately disappears. There was just too much confusion and too much focus on Judas. As a result ever since his own time people have always believed different things about him. Everybody came away with a little bit of the truth, it just seems that nobody has come away with all of it. Have I?
Notes on writing: All quotations from The Bible in this article are from the World English Bible. When typing I elect to say the usual benedictions following the names of prophets or of my Creator only out loud or in my head so as not to bog down my writing with undue length or repetition.