In my debate with Fernando Bermejo-Rubio, he defended the theory that Jesus can only plausibly have been historical if he was an armed militant who was later whitewashed as a pacifist. I argued that that might be plausible in concept, but not when we look at the evidence. My overall argument, which I adapted into chapter three of Jesus from Outer Space, is simply this: Bermejo-Rubio’s theory requires the authors of the Gospels to have behaved extraordinarily strangely for ancient authors; and since that is not likely, then neither is his theory. Authors do not (and in antiquity never did) include material they could omit and didn’t want. Yet Bermejo-Rubio requires them to have needlessly kept material against their agenda. And that is simply not credible.
Bermejo-Rubio “epicycles” his way around this by proposing that the Gospel authors “editorially modified” all this supposedly self-defeating material to suit their agenda; but in none of his examples do they actually do that, nor does that explain why they bothered. Why include material undermining your agenda at all? There was no force requiring them to include things they didn’t have to include, yet at the same time leaving them the liberty to change it. That is a self-contradictory proposition. I provided examples, including how all his examples have far better explanations in mythmaking. But one that has vexed exegetes all around (posing weird difficulties even for Bermejo-Rubio) is why Luke tells a story about Jesus instructing his disciples to buy swords, and the Disciples reply “we already have two,” and Jesus weirdly replies, “That’s enough.” WTF?
The first rule of literary interpretation is to follow the trendline. Prior probability measures what usually happens in similar contexts—so, what do these authors usually do, across all the Gospels (even apocrypha)? The answer is: fabricate fables and parables as teaching tools. So the prior probability favors that weird story being of like kind. The next question is: what does the evidence favor in that specific case? Does it reverse the prior to the opposite conclusion? Or does it extend the prior to an even more definite conclusion that this, too, is just a myth?
Fernando Bermejo-Rubio’s latest treatment of this specific question, which I will henceforth be referring to, is in his discussion “Changing Methods, Disturbing Material: Should the Criterion of Embarrassment be Dismissed in Jesus Research?” Revue des Études Juives 175.1 (2016), pp. 1–25 (18–19). It has been fairly well refuted by Justin Meggitt, “Putting the Apocalyptic Jesus to the Sword: Why Were Jesus’s Disciples Armed?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 45.4 (2023), pp. 371–404 (384–90). But Meggitt treats the story as historical; so he still does not discern its actual meaning—the actual reason Luke includes it. So exploring that will be my goal today.
The Role of Priors and Evidence
All the occasions where the Gospels mention militancy or violence are designed to denounce those things (On the Historicity of Jesus, pp. 407–08, 416–17, 433–35, 444–53; cf. 72, 154–59, 376–77, 612; Jesus from Outer Space, pp. 53–59). Hence all the times the Disciples suggest or engage in violence while Jesus denounces it are simply parables that fabricate an opportunity for the Gospel authors to have Jesus push that agenda. The triumphal entry? Implausible historically, even narratively. Fabricated out of scripture. Never happened. The clearing of the temple? All the same: implausible in every way; fabricated from scripture. There is no credible “real history” behind these things, militant or otherwise. They were invented by the Gospel authors to sell their points. For example, the clearing of the temple is surrounded by the magical withering of the fig tree, and the combined sequence sells the idea that God let the heathen destroy his temple because it was no longer the season for it to bear its fruit. Jesus was now the way; the temple was discarded as obsolete, “killed” by elite Jewish corruption. For the details see On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 433–35), which briefs R.G. Hamerton-Kelly’s “Sacred Violence and the Messiah: The Markan Passion Narrative as a Redefinition of Messianology,” in The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity.
As I wrote before:
Jesus’ use of war imagery is likewise all symbolic fiction, teaching by parable and using physical warfare as allegory for spiritual warfare, just as with the two thousand pigs named “Legion” that drown from their own folly. That’s no more history than any of these other details are. So there’s no way this is a “remembered” event in a militant Jesus’ life. It’s made up. So who made it up? And why is this made up story being included by writers selling pacifism? If you can’t answer those questions, you don’t have a plausible theory.
Jesus from Outer Space, p. 53–54
Hence Bermejo-Rubio doesn’t have a plausible theory, once we actually look at the evidence that is supposed to support it. There were no two thousand pigs possessed by an evil force named Legion drowned in a lake by spirit magic. That simply represents militancy as doomed. It’s a tall tale. A fable.
The Two Swords
The passage in question is Luke 22:35-38, which ends the story of Judas’s planned betrayal (22:1–23, surrounding the Eucharist myth) and Peter’s unplanned betrayal (22:24–34, surrounding the ironic squabble between James and John to sit at Jesus’s right or left that would be answered by the two common criminals who end up there instead: 23:32–33). The following sequence is the Gethsemane prayer, the Arrest, and trial before the Sanhedrin. Sandwiched between those two bookends is this interjected scene that seems wholly unconnected to either of those:
Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
“Nothing,” they answered.
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’. And I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”
The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”
“That’s enough!” he replied.
So the NIV. But the Greek is actually more clear in some respects, and less clear in others.
The adjective hikanos, “enough” definitely only ever means “sufficient, adequate,” and not some kind of admonishment to stop (as some exegetes have tried to imagine it must be). And the sentence “It is written” definitely is causal: the Greek literally says because it is written (lit. “For I say to you that this that has been written must be fulfilled in me: ‘and he was counted with the lawless’. And indeed the things concerning me are coming to completion”), paraphrasing Isaiah 53:12, “he was counted with the transgressors,” or in the Septuagint text, καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀνόμοις ἐλογίσθη, “and he was counted among the lawless,” a prophecy that Luke’s source, Mark, originally had fulfilled by the men he was crucified with (which Luke expands into yet another fable of his own construction: Luke 23:39–43).
By contrast, the word translated “cloak” is misleading (a himation was more of a shawl or shoulder blanket than a cloak), and the word translated by the NIV as “sword” is not so clear either (a point I’ll get to in a moment), nor is the actual grammar rendered by the NIV: where it reads “if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one,” that is actually a highly presumptive interpretation of ho echōn ballantion aratō homoiōs kai pēran kai ho mē echōn pōlēsatō to himation autou kai agorasatō machairan. The sentence appears, instead, to say, “whoever has means, let him take up a bag, and also a purse; and whoever does not have means, let him sell his cloak and buy at the market a blade.” Which quite changes the sense—and thus how we understand what Luke is actually having Jesus say.
Why Is This Here?
This story does not exist in any other Gospel. It therefore is most probably invented by Luke. We therefore should ask why. Even if he got it from somewhere, we still have to ask why did he include it—and why here? What message is Luke intending to convey with this? It cannot be that Luke “had” to include the story (yet could get away with freely changing it), because Mark and Matthew had no trouble excluding it. So did John, who even knew Luke’s Gospel, but chose to drop quite a lot from it. Whereas the best explanation of Mark and Matthew excluding is that it didn’t exist yet for them to include. Bermejo-Rubio’s explanation makes no sense of this data. He cannot say Luke “had” to include it. So Luke wanted to include it. It therefore must convey some meaning Luke wanted to add to the story. And if that’s the case, it would just as well serve that purpose entirely as a fabrication. So no case can be made that any of it is true. There is no evidence it was any kind of lore going back to Jesus in any form at all. So what is Luke doing with this story?
It’s not like this is unusual. Exegetes wonder at why Mark has Jesus get angry at a fig tree and cast a withering spell on it for the inexplicable crime of “not bearing figs out of season,” or why the demons named Legion have to occupy an army of thousands of pigs and then drown themselves inexplicably. And so on. These are myths. They have strange things happen that are clearly in no way historical—so they require no historical plausibility at all. But when you discover the symbolical, allegorical meaning, the weirdness goes away. Jesus had to curse the fig tree for not bearing figs “out of season” to communicate the idea that it was no longer the season for the temple cult to bear its fruit. In the context of the allegory, the story is logical. Outside that context, it is patently illogical. Likewise the pigs: a herd of swine rather than sheep is chosen as the symbol of the unclean; their name conveys the allegorical meaning, as representing the way of armies; and their suicidal drowning symbolizes the suicidal fate of war as a solution to anything. Even the number has significance: two thousand pigs marching to their inevitable death not coincidentally matches the two thousand men of Cyrene that Jonathan convinced to try fighting Rome again (“the occasion of their ruin,” as Josephus later put it) immediately after Judea’s destruction (thus not learning their lesson).
In the two swords tale, Luke references a change he made to his sources: he cross-references here Jesus having told his disciples (Luke 10:4) to go on missions without “purse, bag or sandals” (not even sandals!), and then has Jesus change that rule now. Now they are to carry a “purse and a bag” and instead of mentioning sandals, Luke adds that they are to “sell their cloak and buy a sword.” But this all makes no sense. Jesus can’t have instructed travelers to go shoeless; that is ahistorical. And we doubly know this because Luke’s source has Jesus say something far more plausible: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt” (Mark 6:8-10; note “extra shirt” is actually in the Greek “two shirts”), because they are to live on charity (as the ensuing verses explain; which reifies a continuous point made by Paul, because Mark is reifying Paul). This gets transformed in Matthew to: “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts—no bag for the journey or extra shirt, or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep” (Matthew 10:9-11; preserved somewhat by Luke 9:3, where Jesus says “no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt”). So we’ve lost the sandals and the staff now, an impractical command (as their function cannot be replaced with charity). Luke just carries this distortional trend one step further, paring it all down to the silly and obscure “take no purse, bag, or sandals.”
We’re so far from historical reality at that point that we can be confident these are not the words of Jesus. Yet those words are integral to Luke’s invented tale of the two swords—which means that tale comes from him, and not any real thing Jesus said. Luke has spun it out of the “no sandals” thing, which is thoroughly distorted. This also means Luke is referring to himself: these are Luke’s words; not those of Jesus. This is his version of the sandals saying. That Luke’s own words appear now in the tale of two swords is further evidence that that tale is Luke’s contrivance, too. It means something to him. We thus have only to determine what Luke meant us to understand by it.
Do We Actually Mean ‘Sword’?
Part of the debate concerns the ambiguity in the Greek that the NIV conceals: the word for “sword” used here is in fact machaira, which means any large knife. Whereas the word one would choose to be sure to signal only a proper sword is xiphos (or skiphos); or for longswords or broadswords, rhomphaia (as Luke 2:34-35 chooses for an allegorical reading of prophecy). The word machaira was commonly used to mean a short-sword, but that would be today like our saying “they had two blades,” which is not at all clear whether sword is meant. The most common sword terminology employed xiph– as its root form; unlike machair– as a root, which far more rarely found such application in Greek before the Middle Ages. In other words, Luke chose to be vague; or at least, one cannot argue Luke “definitely” imagined swords being discussed here. Maybe he did. But he isn’t that specific. It is true that no one is specific, across the whole New Testament; Paul, Hebrews, the Synoptics, they all use this generic word “blade” where swords could be meant (or at least included). But that’s still vague.
Bermejo-Rubio tries to get around this by straw-man: he chooses to attack Paula Fredriksen’s suggestion that a sacrificial knife is meant (an idea that comes even from John Chrysostom, Homily on Matthew 84.1), the very thing Jews would be carrying around at Passover, and which would have allegorical resonance in exactly this context (Luke 22:7–8 even refers to the fact that Peter and John prepared the lamb that day, which entailed slaughtering and carving it). I do not think that is the intended meaning here, but for very different reasons than Bermejo-Rubio’s. I think the allusion to the sacrificial knife is intended only in Matthew, when a disciple uses a machaira to cut the high priest’s slave, which tale lifts almost exact wording (and much of the implied symbolism of the entire scene) from the myth of Abraham’s almost sacrificing his firstborn son Isaac but being given an animal to sacrifice in his place (Genesis 22:8–18: compare Gen. 22:10, esp. in the Greek, with that of Matthew 26:51). Which was the legendary founding of the temple cult’s Yom Kippur substitutionary sacrifice, and which Jesus’s own death represented a deliberate reversal of (substituting a “firstborn son” back in for the animal: Historicity, pp. 213–14). But this parallel only exists in the text of Matthew; the matching wording is not in Mark, and Luke did not adopt it either.
Justin Meggitt doesn’t need this point, however, to refute Bermejo-Rubio’s apologetics. He demonstrates, with evidence and examples, that literally any short blade can be meant, and probably was meant, by Luke in this passage. And Meggitt actually agrees this is a historical event, so he’s not even siding with me that it is a mythical parable. Meggitt notes, for example:
[T]here is substantial written and visual evidence that carrying such bladed implements for convenience as well as personal protection in cities was not illegal [as Bermejo-Rubio suggested] nor uncommon in everyday life throughout the Empire. … [And] excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum have turned up very few military weapons but plenty of bladed implements of various sizes and kinds.
…
[From textual evidence] it is clear that μάχαιρα was a catchall term and could be used for anything from a small knife to a military sword, but there were plenty of other bladed implements, readily accessible and widely employed, that could be considered μάχαιραι and would fall between the two extremes. And these implements were not necessarily originally made to be weapons but had the potential to be used as such, should the situation require it. It is therefore unsurprising that some of Jesus’s disciples possessed such objects.
…
[Indeed] it is unlikely that a ‘sword used in battle’ … could be purchased for the equivalent of a peasant’s cloak, as Lk 22.36 seems to assume.
Meggitt, “To the Sword”
Meggitt says much more on the point, but I quote these as representative of the problem. Bermejo-Rubio has no leg left to stand on after this. It indeed is not very believable that a sword (a fine piece of expensive steelwork) could be purchased for a commoner’s shawl (a himation was just a block of cloth, a cheap woven textile, more accurately translated as “shawl” or “shoulder blanket”). Machaira commonly meant just any blade; and people carried such blades in cities all the time. And so on. So there is nothing specifically indicative here of a military armament.
So, Luke might mean sword, or just any killing weapon. Rather, we should be asking why Luke made the choices he made here. Why is Luke connecting all this with Jesus’s previous command (fabricated by Luke himself) that they not even keep bags or sandals? Why the reference to their lacking nothing then? What does that have to do with needing bags and swords now? Why does Luke weave in Isaiah 53:12 here? Why sell a cloak (himation), specifically an outer garment, rather than a shirt or sandals or a donkey, or something else? Why a machaira and not a xiphos? And why are only two “enough”? You couldn’t even rob a decently-guarded merchant with a mere two swords, much less defeat the Roman Empire—or even a mere squad of the temple guard.
No matter how we translate machaira, the whole story makes no sense as some misremembered armament program. And since Luke is choosing every detail to include—remember, like Mark and Matthew and even John, he could have excluded any of it—it follows that the only way to understand this story is to understand why Luke has Jesus say two blades are sufficient. Sufficient for what?
Other Approaches
Meggitt surveys various approaches, and doesn’t like any of them. And so he comes to the illogical conclusion that, if we can’t think of what Luke’s point was, it must be historical. This violates the Law of Priors (as I just noted), which dictates that, for texts like the Gospels, it is always more likely that we are ignorant of the point than that “it had no point” and Luke included it “because it was historical.” That is not how any ancient author operated, least of all the Evangelists. See my discussion of this kind of misstep of logic in Mark Goodacre on the Historicity of Jesus’s Execution, and in Historicity, pp. 450–56 (cf. 505–06).
Meggitt provides a helpful bibliography for anyone who wants to pursue what has been suggested:
- Adolf von Schlatter, Die beiden Schwerter: Lukas 22, 35-38; ein Stück aus der besonderen Quelle des Lukas (Gütersloher: Gerd Mohn, 1916).
- Geoffrey Lampe, “The Melchorites and Münster,” in Roth and Stayer, A Companion to Anabaptism and Spiritualism, 1521–1700 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), pp. 217–56; and “The Two Swords (Luke 22: 35–38),” in Moule and Bammel, Jesus and the Politics of His Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 335–52.
- Kevin Moore, Why Two Swords Were Enough: Israelite Tradition History Behind Luke 22:35–38 (Denver: University of Denver, 2009), 4–60.
- Christopher Hutson, “Enough for What? Play Acting Isaiah 53 in Luke 22:35-38,” in Restoration Quarterly 55.1 (2013), pp. 35–51.
- David Matson, “Double-Edged: The Meaning of the Two Swords in Luke 22:35–38,” Journal of Biblical Literature 137.2 (2018), pp. 463–80.
Of these, only Moore gets to a plausible explanation of Luke’s choices. None of the others make plausible arguments or explain why the number of swords should be two, or why Luke connects the swords with shawls and his previous invention of a prohibition on even sandals, and so on. But Moore unlocks the real intention here: Luke is riffing on the Old Testament. Two texts are being brought together here: Isaiah 53 and Genesis 34. And once you see that, it all makes sense.
The Murderous Rebellion of Simon and Levi
To understand the connection with Genesis 34, we have to note the background to Luke’s use of Isaiah 53 in this sequence. Luke embellishes Mark’s reification of Isaiah 53:12 in Luke 23:39–43. Isaiah 53:12 says, in total:
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great [or “many”], and he will divide the spoils with the strong [or “mighty”], because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
Just as Matthew “fixes” Mark by having Jesus implausibly ride two donkeys into Jerusalem (Historicity, p. 459), Luke “fixes” Mark by having Jesus “make intercession for one of the transgressors” crucified with him, the one who repented—and not the one who mocked Jesus, by suggesting Jesus effect an armed escape (“Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”). Luke thus transformed this detail into another parable denouncing militant messianism. And this is one Luke invented (it’s not in his sources and has no historical plausibility). By adding in as well the tale of two swords, Luke gets Jesus to fulfill Isaiah 53:12 three times: in the two swords tale, where Jesus announces the fact (where he has two armed “soldiers” in his retinue); and then when he is traded for the criminal Barabbas (where we have two condemned criminals, and one is innocent); and then when he interacts with his deathmates (where we have two condemned criminals, and one is forgiven). The tale of two swords might already be starting to make more sense to you. But it gets better.
Isaiah 53:12 mentions sharing the spoils. This is the pertinent reference for the two-swords story. The Barabbas reference lines up with Jesus giving his life and bearing the sin of many (since that story establishes that Jesus is, secretly, the goat of atonement); and the blessed felon reference lines up with making intercession for the transgressors. That leaves the spoils. How is that being played on in Luke’s tale two swords? After all, he has Jesus quote only the part that all three references share: his being assessed with criminals. The other two references don’t quote the passage; they allude to it in narrative form. The same is happening in the tale of two swords. The hidden question Luke wants you to ask is: who really is Jesus sharing the spoils with?
An attentive reader can already deduce what Moore found by simply reading Genesis 34:24–31, which relates the outcome of two of Jacob’s (hence Israel’s) sons seeking violent revenge for the rape of Dinah by Shechem, Prince of the Schechemites, after deceitfully persuading the Schechemites to make penance by converting to Judaism by circumcision and sharing their lands and goods (in other words, by establishing a covenant with them, a treaty uniting their peoples). The story then proceeds:
All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised. Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male. They put Hamor and his son Shechem to the sword and took Dinah from Shechem’s house and left. The sons of Jacob came upon the dead bodies and looted the city where their sister had been defiled. They seized their flocks and herds and donkeys and everything else of theirs in the city and out in the fields. They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”
But they replied, “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”
Note the obvious parallel elements: on the third day (contrasting this behavior with what Jesus means to result instead on the third day hence); two men take up swords, hence two swords (and yes, the Septuagint text has machaira here, at 34:25); and those men even have the names of Disciples, Simon and Levi. Note the less obvious parallel elements: in Luke, Levi is a tax agent, hence morally tainted with concern for trade and exchange, buying and selling (like, say, selling cloaks to buy swords), and money generally, via “taxing” wealth and goods, analogous to the looting of Simeon and Levi; and one of the two Disciples named Simon was “Simon the Zealot,” a representative of militant messianism, and thus of murder and rebellion (Luke 6:15; following Mark and Matthew).
Why Luke Wrote This In
What could Luke’s point be by alluding to this Hebrew myth? In context, it is clear: the way of money and war (the “revenge” looting and killing of the two sons of Israel) only leads to doom; likewise the breaking of oaths and treaties (as those two sons of Israel did). The Hebrew myth has murder and rebellion being chastised as foolish; yet also has the pursuers of it indignant at the suggestion they did any wrong (“Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”). The solution in the ancient myth was to get the hell out of Dodge and settle in God’s House (Bethel: Genesis 35:1), an obvious metaphor for “You better flee that shit and get with God.” This is already clear in the Hebrew mythology: Simeon and Levi, in fact their entire lineages, are indeed condemned and doomed to obliteration for this crime, and its self-righteous violence and betrayal (Genesis 49:5-7).
Luke makes the critical interpretation of this ancient myth even more certain by adding his allusion to it (the two swords tale) where it would juxtapose with the coming choice between Jesus and Barabbas (a “rebel,” hence breaker of oaths and promises, and a “murderer,” hence a killer of men even for supposedly righteous reasons) and the two criminals crucified with Jesus. Notice that Luke adds the claim that Barabbas’s rebellion took place “in the city.” This is not in his sources, Mark or Matthew. He has thus added to his allusion to the Dinah myth, where indeed Simeon and Levi’s murderous rebellion took place “in the city” (of Schechem). Just as the people choose Barabbas, and just as Jesus snubs the criminal who mocks him with the expectation of armed resistance, we now see Luke’s critique of Simeon and Levi in clear relief: they are being compared to those guys. Hence Luke has Jesus essentially call his two armed Disciples “criminals,” like Barabbas and the mocking felon. Two swords are all Simeon and Levi had. That was enough to sin against God; enough to choose the wrong path. Enough for murder and rebellion, which required no army to effect. Anyone can sin this way. All it requires is self-righteousness, and seeking vengeance or violence in any way, to any end.
Moore secures this interpretation with an extensive exegesis and an analysis of other passages Luke has tweaked. He also shows that other Jewish interpretations of the Dinah episode went against the intended sense of condemning it, converting it into an action to be praised as heroic. And he shows this was very common and popularly discussed, so Luke is not referencing an obscure text or point, but one that would be well known to anyone familiar with popular Jewish exegesis. Luke’s thus contrasting his own, quite contrary view of it, one that restores its original sense (as a story of villainy to condemn and avoid, not heroism to praise and emulate), makes entire sense in his historical and literary context, and in light of his agenda.
For example, in the popular novel (likely of the time), Joseph and Aseneth, we find this:
Behold, have you seen these swords? With these two swords the Lord God punished the insult of the Shechemites, by which they insulted the sons of Israel, because of our sister Dinah, whom Shechem the son of Hamor had defiled.
Jos. Asen. 23:14
“See, Lord, here are two swords.” It’s almost a verbatim lift from this text. Yet this text represents the story as heroic; Luke is reversing the sense, by relating it to Isaiah 53:12 and its echoes elsewhere in his passion narrative, representing it as villainy, exactly on a par with Barabbas and the mocking felon, a triad of examples of the wrong path, the doomed way of messianism. Luke is expanding on the Markan notion of abstaining from personal vengeance (and leaving it to God: Mark 6:10–12; Luke 10:10-12; cf. 9:4-6), by criticizing it as criminal. Hence “Jesus’ apostles and disciples are not to retaliate against those who reject their message. They are not to avenge. Instead, final judgment against” any such people “belongs to God, not to them” (Moore, Two Swords, 255).
Moore has thus explained why it’s only two swords, why that’s “enough,” and why Jesus evokes Isaiah 53:12 to condemn something he supposedly just commanded:
The possession of two swords—and no more—is appropriate neither on legal grounds nor for any military or pragmatic considerations, but rather because the apostles believe they live in a divinely ordered realm. They will defeat their adversaries with two swords because the Lord is with them just as he was with their ancestors Simeon and Levi.
Moore, Two Swords, 276–77.
Jesus is testing his disciples (as he has already done three times in this same chapter, with Judas, Peter, and James and John), and as in every other case in this chapter, they have failed, here now seeing themselves as Simeon and Levi—and thus fail to grasp Jesus’s point (a standard device across all the Gospels). There is a clincher here, too. Although Moore opposes the idea of reading Jesus’s command as instructing those with means to take up a purse and bag (and presumably sandals) and those without means to instead sell their shawl and buy a blade (Two Swords, 258–60), Moore overlooks the actual significance of this: Jesus is saying it is now time to put our money where our mouth is and invest monetarily in the evangelical mission; whereas those who collect nothing to invest should sell even what resources they have and take up a sword instead. This statement emphasizes the foolishness (and doomed outcome) of his directive: those with means should not take up the sword; those who perceive themselves as bereft (despite, apparently, having a shawl to sell, worth enough to purchase expensive steelwork, when they had already been instructed not to even have two shirts) should alone resort to swords.
In a modern guru’s speech, we would recognize this would-be proverb as dark sarcasm. Only the enlightened are meant to understand. The juxtaposition of the two prepositions, “those having” (echôn), seems then in this context to be a double entendre: it appears as though Jesus is saying “having means” (yet he never mentions actual money, just bags and purses that one could collect it in, inaugurating money-collection for the Christian mission), but really he is saying “having sense or understanding; having listened, paid attention” (sense §A.9 in Liddell & Scott). In other words, scholars have been mistranslating this passage as meaning exactly the opposite of what Jesus actually said—making the very same mistake Luke has the Disciples make.
The key sentence should be understood as exactly written: alla nun ho echōn ballantion aratō homoiōs kai pēran kai ho mē echōn pōlēsatō to himation autou kai agorasatō machairan, “But now, one who has [understanding] should take up a bag and likewise a purse; and the one without [understanding] should sell his shawl and buy a blade.” And the Disciples who fail to understand are the ones who fail to realize Jesus is speaking of having “understanding” and not “material means.” And they will demonstrate this failure in the next scene when they draw one of these swords to attack someone—and Jesus denounces and reverses what they did:
When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.
Notice all the things Luke has added to this story, embellishing on his sources, which contain no such details. Compare Mark 14:47, which doesn’t even say it was a Disciple who attacked; and Matthew 26:51–54, which elaborates with a message like Luke’s, but Luke uses none of that, adding different details instead, which link the message to his two swords tale. Alone in Luke’s narrative, the Disciples ask Jesus if they “should use their swords” (plural), signaling the author’s awareness of their misunderstanding Jesus’s earlier instruction. And now Jesus responds with “No more of this” (eate heôs toutou), or perhaps more accurately, “Permit only this,” as in “go only this far,” which is more like the “Enough!” that modern exegetes tried to extract out of the two swords tale, signaling the author’s awareness of the juxtaposition of those two senses. In both places, Jesus’s actual instruction was to use violence no more.
So this is how should understand the message Luke intends Jesus to have conveyed. When both the two swords tale and an actual use of those swords are compared, the one who “has” an understanding will know Jesus meant that the path of “dividing the spoils” with Jesus is not that of Simeon and Levi (worldly violence for worldly goods, in the guise of pursuing justice), but that of the peaceful missionary, gaining money only by charity, and using it only for the mission. Those who “get” it, take bag and purse; while those who “don’t” get it will sell even what they have for a weapon of violence, the way of Barabbas and the mocking felon, and of Simeon and Levi, which all leads to destruction, not to the spoils of God’s Kingdom.
Once you see all this, it becomes obvious that this is Luke’s intention. We have thus explained what this entire bizarre aside is doing here, and its every strange element. Other theories (including Bemejo-Rubio’s) do not, and thus have very low likelihoods (they do not make the content of this tale expected and thus probable). Moore’s theory (especially as here extended) does, and thus has a very high likelihood (it makes the content of this tale expected and thus probable). Combining a high likelihood ratio with a higher prior probability gets us to an even greater certainty that this inserted tale of Luke’s own devising is a myth, designed to sell an exegetical message; it has no historical background at all.
Conclusion
The “two swords” tale is a good example of why historicism is a broken paradigm. By assuming there “must” be something historical to extract, historians go on wild benders of implausible twisting to explain why any passage exists in a Gospel, in the form we find it. Whereas if we assume the Gospels are wholly myth (as ample evidence establishes—in contrast to historicity: there are hundreds of well-established mythical tales in them; there are no clear-cut or even plausible historical ones), then we are looking finally in the right places to understand their contents.
By understanding Luke’s fable of the two swords on its own terms—every word, every point, every sentence, every component chosen by Luke for a reason—we get to a far more plausible explanation of why Luke put this here, and why he alone thought to, and why it has the bizarre form it does, which makes no historical sense at all. You can’t fight any band of enemies off with a mere two swords; you can’t plausibly buy a sword with a commoner’s cloak; no one followed this instruction to buy swords anyway; and it goes against Luke’s entire agenda to even suggest (much less “remind” anyone) that Jesus would order such a thing. But it does make sense as mythic allegory, another example of the Disciples misunderstanding Jesus’s cryptic lessons. It then fits its context, and Luke’s particular trends in parable-composing. And all its features are explained.
heretofore -> henceforth
Gathsemene -> Gethsemane
dodge -> Dodge [City]
Thanks! Fixed.
My old philosophy rival, Tim Hsiao suggested in one of his papers that said cloak was like 300$ in today’s money or something like that. Do we know for sure that it was a cheaper cloak?
It’s hard to know what he thinks he means. I’d need to see what his source of that information is.
First, a himation, as I note, is a shawl, not a cloak. So they would need to make sure they are looking up the price of the right thing.
Second, costs of garments varied by orders of magnitude depending on their quality, and thus the social class of the wearer (coats or shawls for the rich could cost more than a house; but for the poor, nothing close).
Third, when amateurs talk ancient prices, the most common mistake they make is they find Diocletian’s Decree on Maximum Prices, and use that as if it was usable that way. But that Edict represented massive (and I mean massive; orders of magnitude massive) inflation; they therefore do not correspond even remotely to first century prices. The list also mainly focuses on luxury prices (top market prices), not common ones, and thus rarely includes the information we want.
Sometimes the Edict can tell us about earlier prices in relative terms. For example, if sword and shawl were on that edict—alas, they aren’t—we might be able to say their relative value would be similar to what it once was, but even that is not certain, because the Edict followed a massive collapse of the Roman economy, and fifty years of civil war that devastated Roman industry and the skilled labor market.
So different conditions might have altered the relative cost of things like steel (heavily dependent on mined ore and wood fuel and personnel with more particular skills and of greater interest to the military) vs. textiles (dependent only on more widely and readily available and sustainable agriculture or husbandry, and personnel with less particular skills and of wider interest than to the military). For example, practically every extended household or community made its own textiles, from local material; almost none forged steel, or lived anywhere near an iron mine.
And that’s three possible sources of error even before we get to the tendentious question of how you convert any of this into modern American dollars. And one has to ask what their metric is for that. For example, a common but erroneous method is linking grain prices (dollar for denarius), but those are absolutely non-commensurate across both societies. A more applicable metric is to compare minimum wages (as economic forces tend to keep those at least close to comparable in all functioning societies, albeit not identical). But hardly anyone who makes price claims on the internet thinks to do that (or uses applicably current values).
The second problem is calculating the relative value of a sword. Shawls may have cost a lot. But the same as swords?
The closest I can find for a shawl is a pay slip for a linen soldier’s tunic from the siege of Masada: 7 denarii. A tunic would entail more labor to produce than a shawl, and not much less in raw material.
A price list from 5th century B.C. Athens assigns 4 drachmas as the price of a common himation; although that article cites evidence of more usual prices ranging from 10 to 30 drachmas, and on up to 200, that’s for people of means. And drachmas and denarii stood close in value. I would estimate a commoner’s shawl, then, to cost less than 5 drachmas.
And that’s assuming you could sell it retail; wholesale, you’d get less, because the merchant has to turn a profit. So you couldn’t “trade” it for a sword at its full value. You’d have to go find some guy who wants to buy your shabby shawl, and at full market price; then go find a merchant who sells swords. But let’s assume they could expect to pull off that elaborate system of transactions and collect the full 5d.
One drachma was six obols, and a standard minimum wage in the first century was three obols per day (Science Education, 52–53). In the United States currently, national minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, or approximately $58 per day. 58/3 = $19. So a first century obol may have been about $19 in today’s buying power. That makes a drachma worth $114. Five drachmas would then be $570. For an affordable but nicer 10d shawl, $1140.
Okay. Now what about a steel sword?
The production costs there were enormous. The Edict says just sharpening an already-used sword could cost around 25 drachmas and thus $2850; likewise, another 100d for just a scabbard to put it in, which is $11,400!
But those are massively inflated prices. However, the Edict’s “minimum wage” is 25 drachmas, so we can try a conversion (assuming the caveats noted above don’t change too much in this case). 25 x 6 = 150 obols a day, 150/3 = an exchange rate of 50 obols to 1. So if we divide the prices by 50, maybe we will be in the ballpark: $57 to sharpen a sword and $228 for a scabbard to carry it, for a total of $285; and we don’t even have a sword yet.
A papyrus of 117 A.D. reports a “bargain” price of 80 drachmas for “a so-called Italian sword,” which is an unknown referent, but assuming it means a spatha (longsword), and that a gladius (shortsword) would cost half as much, then we can guess maybe a sword ran for 40 drachmas.
Another papyrus mentions 50 drachmas as the cost to arm someone. Though the language could mean arms and armor or just armor, it is not believable that armor (much less arms and armor) would cost less than a single longsword, so the reference is probably to replacing a sword (for which the writer needed a loan).
So let’s say 40 drachmas. And let’s say it comes pre-sharpened. That’s still $4560. Without a sheath to carry it. That’s five times the cost of even a nice 10d shawl; ten times the cost of a commoner’s shawl. And not a bill any poor American could pay without a loan. They certainly aren’t going to be able trade even their “best” Sunday shawl for one.
This “getting it” could work in a spanish translation, as “quien tenga capacidad” meaning “who has capacity/capability” can imply monetary and physical means, but also mental or intellectual understanding.
Interesting how in the attempt to expand reach through translations, meaningful wordplay and phrasing gets lost.
Thank you. That’s a good example of the point.
Overall, I do not understand the authorial intent in making a pacifist parable by having Jesus call for buying swords. There was no historical Jesus parable meant to fool the historical disciples. Why should Luke devise a parable that confuses the reader? And there is not even a pacifist parable if Jesus wasn’t even commanding the purchase of swords at all! Didn’t ancient authors want to be clear for their readers. I mean, historically there have been cloaked terminology to hide political dissent that is or could be read as rebellious by the authorities, but this interpretation here is that there is none of that in Christianity. Why, given such conscious artists relying on complex creative work, so insistent on probing a non-existent sore tooth, namely any real world involvement in rebellion? Why play around with images like this? Why not be content with Jesus healing the ear?
In particular, I do not understand how the examples of the condemned lineages of Simeon and Levi are meant to stand for the….condemned heritage of the disciples Simeon and Levi? Except I thought Luke was declaring that disciples would share in Paradise etc., the opposite? Maybe that’s the same as Barabbas, the Son of the Father, symbolizing the rejection of God? But then, I do simply do not understand how you choose the name “Legion” to symbolize Zealots and other anti-Roman rebels. Roman legions being destroyed by the Word seems to be a possible natural allegorical reading a committed pacifist writer would want to forestall? For that matter, if as this interpretation says, the two lestai (if I remember correctly what I’ve read was the Greek work for the criminals crucified with Jesus) are to be understood as primitive revolutionaries, one of Hobsbawm’s bandits, is the one who is bitter about the failure of the Revolution the one who repents of being a rebel?
My prior about Peter’s “betrayal” is that’s more likely an issue of church politics, a story to denigrate whatever rivals “Luke” had that talked of Peter as one of their authorities. And if there is a literary function it has possibly more to do with “explaining” how the writer supposedly knows anything about what happened in the Antonia (or whatever the reader supposed it to be.) Or possibly even to portray that denying being a Christian in the face of Roman authority could be forgiven. The Donatists apparently didn’t read this as a proof text, but my experience has been the proofiness of a proof text is solely in the eye of the beholder and no one need agree, much less give a reason for not agreeing.
If there was a historical Jesus, my guess is whatever this person taught was basically lost in the destruction of Jerusalem. Paul admits, even brags, he had no direct knowledge, after all. Ananbaptists after the episode with Jan of Leiden changed their names, Mennonite for one and adopted a pronounced pacifism. Quakers after the wilder days of the Puritan Civil War also adopted an ostentatious pacifism. I believe the historical record of the Mormons (LDS if you insist) shows a very different attitude on separatism or resistance to civil authority from its earlier days in Nauvoo and later, when they found it pacific to revise the tenet of plural marriage.
He didn’t. That’s my point.
Luke has Jesus say something cryptic that can be misunderstood (this is a common device across all the Synoptic Gospels; Mark explicitly describes its methodology in Mark 4:11-13). That’s not the same thing. When you read what he wrote, he actually says the opposite: that those who “have” understanding should not buy a sword. Just as his men should “not” have slashed a man’s ear. But they misunderstood him as saying that. And that’s why we have to do better than them in understanding what Jesus says.
This actually was a common device across all counter-cultural wisdom literature. For example, it is used a lot in the Lives of Aesop, where Aesop says something that can be taken as saying two different things, and the audience choosing the wrong one. For example, Aesop’s master asks why men turn to look at their bowel movement after, and he answers “They fear their guts might have fallen out,” where the word for “guts” (as in English) means both innards and courage. The master mistakes him as meaning his entrails, not the loss of his courage.
The Gospels have this in many places, for example “he said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days,” mistaking his meaning (he would remove the relevance of the temple and replace its role in three days, by destroying the temple of his body and raising that anew in three days).
That is not the point. The point is that their way is the doomed way. It is not being used literally. It’s not about the Disciples or the tribes of Simon and Levi. All this is being used figuratively, as an allegory for a concept (the chosen path of righteous violence, and it’s being wrong and bad).
I think you are confusing how literature works with some concrete historical statement about specific tribes or Disciples. Those are just characters in a parable, whose only function is to draw attention to the comparisons and their point; they are not literally existent things of any kind. There was no Simon or Levi. Anciently or recently. They are fictional stand-ins for concepts.
Only if they reject the way of violence—and thus “have” understanding and thus do not buy a sword; and do not expect Jesus to violently resist his murder, as the second criminal does, whom Jesus does not promise paradise to; and do not resort to rebellion and murder, as Barabbas represents the people “choosing.”
That is literally the entire point. Why it is concealed in a cryptic wisdom format is the same reason all the rest of the Gospels are. The reasoning is explicitly explained by Mark (see previous link). In cultural context, outsiders were supposed to not understand these books; only insiders would be given the correct interpretation. That is why all their information is in code, in every chapter.
Incorrect. Choosing Barabbas is choosing “insurrection and murder.” It is choosing violent messianism. That is why it leads to doom (the scapegoat is famously thrown off a cliff and killed; it thus goes to destruction, not eternal life).
You must not have read my book. I cover all these points in Historicity (cryptic mythography, the meaning of Barabbas, the division between militant and non-militant messianism, and so on). With examples and precedents. You would do well to read it.
Legion, as an allegory, simply means Army. It does not refer to Romans. It symbolizes military solutions to problems. It is not saying “war is doomed only when Jews do it.” It is saying “war is doomed no matter who is doing it.” Hence the pigs are chosen because they are unkosher not because they represent Gentiles, but because they are analogs to unkosher things generally. It’s “war is not kosher,” not “the Roman legions are not kosher.”
This device is standard in literature, then as now. Google “simile,” “metaphor,” “analogy,” “synecdoche,” and “metonymy.”
These devices are used all over the Gospels. Nicodemus, “Victory of the People,” does in John what his name says: stands up for the people. He does not represent Democracy or Revolution. He is not literally Victory of the People. Rather, by metaphor he represents the common man’s plight and (through its opposition) elite disregard or disparagement of it.
Legion isn’t destroyed by Jesus. Read the story. Legion kills itself; its own choice leads to its death. That’s the lesson.
It’s not a real story. No such thing happened. It’s just a parable about what happens when unclean minds take on unclean goals and make unclean choices: they go to their own destruction. They do not obtain victory or escape.
By adding in references to military action (the name Legion; the number two thousand; and Mark’s placement of this story in apposition to Moses’ defeat of the Amalekites, cf. Historicity, 418), Mark identifies the specific target of this story’s critique (the bad choice it is about) as war (of any kind, by any one).
No. They are only to be understood as generic criminals: sinners. In Luke’s version, they are not lêstas (armed robbers, looters, pirates), but have become kakourgoi (kako-ergos: doers of evil). And he has one sinner expect a military messiah (not that he himself would be one, but that he would benefit from Jesus being one); that is the wrong choice that dooms him. The other sinner’s rebuke of that one then earns Jesus’s promise of eternal life. Read the story to understand what I mean.
Mark invented that anti-Petrine narrative, not Luke. Matthew then softened Mark’s critique of Peter, turning him into a man who undergoes failure but then God-ordained redemption; and Luke adopts and develops Matthew’s approach (in spades with Acts). There thus isn’t much original about Luke’s use of Peter as a literary device in his Gospel.
That even Matthew preserved the descent and ascent narrative (Peter fails and is redeemed) is telling here, because Matthew is a pro-Petrine Gospel. So Matthew did not see or use Peter’s denial as a criticism of Peter but a standard instantiation of a hero’s journey. Ditto, Luke.
I have no idea what you mean here. What Antonia? And how is Luke explaining a source-authority by anything?
Donatists didn’t exist when Luke wrote. Nor even for another two hundred years. So he can’t be commenting on anything to do with that. Likewise Anabaptists or anything else.
The Gospels (as also the Epistles) allow anyone to be forgiven who repents (blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the only exception, and it is debated what that refers to). This has no particular relevance to Romans or anything else.
“What Antonia?” The Antonia fortress.
“And how is Luke explaining a source-authority by anything?” Obviously not a literary person at all, but I’ve read many fictions purporting to be from previously unknown witness or witnesses telling us what really happened. It’s more less the fake memoir. The gospel writer is pretending not to just be making up what happened at Jesus’ trial, he is repeating what Peter learned. There are numerous incompetent readers like me who read purportedly factual reports and ask, “How do they know that? Who’s the witness?” Absent any internal explanation, bad readers like me tend to think it’s like winking at the reader, openly acknowledging it’s all just made up.
Rather that seemed to me to be a possibility. You tell me that in fact “Peter” is an allegorical figure and no gospel writer ever meant to imply there was a historical witness to a historical event. Effectively none of the gospels is comprehensible and requires a teacher to reveal the esoteric meaning hidden by scriptural references couched in
““simile,” “metaphor,” “analogy,” “synecdoche,” and “metonymy.”” And as per Mark 4:111-13 we lay people can only know the true meaning when taught it.
And where is that mentioned in Luke?
Do you simply mean “the fictional scenes involving Pilate as a character”? If so, which scene, and what are you trying to say about it?
Sure. But where is Luke doing that that is relevant anywhere? And what does that have to do with anything?
That fictive authors invent sources for their fictions does not make those fictions historical. And since Luke is not referencing any sources in the scenes we are talking about, that cannot have been their function. Luke never revisits that point after his preface.
Incorrect. Wow. You really did not read the article, did you? The Simon being implicated in the two swords tale is not Peter, but the other Simon, Simon the Zealot. Who is indeed probably fictional. No such Apostle is ever mentioned in Paul (unlike Simon Peter, who was real; though the Gospels are probably making up everything they say about him).
Also not what I said. They did not mean for insiders to take these stories literally. But they may have meant outsiders to, to thus ensure outsiders don’t discover their real meaning until they become insiders. See my discussion of the double truth procedure as described by Origen and others in On the Historicity of Jesus.
All literature in antiquity used ““simile,” “metaphor,” “analogy,” “synecdoche,” and “metonymy.”” And especially mythologies like the Gospels. Indeed, no mythology can be understood when taken literally. They were all designed to signal deeper meaning, not to portray literal events; except, again, to confound outsiders who don’t deserve to know the real meaning of the stories.
There is an exception: the final redaction of the Gospel of John (not its original edition) explicitly subverts this model and insists its stories be taken literally. But most of those stories were written without that admonition; the admonition was added later (which proves the point: that its last editors knew they had to do this is their acknowledgement that it wasn’t how prior Gospels, even the original Gospel of John, were intended). See my discussion of this and how it differs from the Synoptics in Historicity, Ch. 10.7. And see Establishing the Biblical Literalism of Early Christians for how and why this changed after the Synoptics.
It is astonishing that this topic was not properly explored, at any time in the past two millennia, by people who had what they considered compelling reasons to understand it properly.
If I were to guess, that would be because no one caught the key referent Moore did. Which is understandable because it requires a highly improbable coincidence (familiarity with the two-swords polemic in Judaism and its link back to interpreting Genesis 34 and familiarity with the difficulty explaining this one passage in Luke).
I suspect Moore discovered it by, first, researching the other thing (probably that was his original dissertation proposal or idea), and only then realized it solved Luke 22. I can compare it to my own case: I could not think of what the solution was, only that none made sense, not even Bermejo-Rubio’s, until I saw Moore’s study and not only its exegesis of Gen. 34 but also of the “two swords traditum,” as he puts it, in other Jewish literature. I don’t think I would ever have found that, because it would never have occurred to me to look in those places for a contextual referent for this passage.
I suspect a lot of unsolved conundrums are like that: just waiting for someone to catch the contextual link (if it even still survives in our records). For example, the numerology of the loaves in Mark and of the pots in John. Absolutely that’s mythical numerology of some kind. But what exactly? In Historicity I make the same point regarding the precious nard oil poured on Jesus—clearly no detail of that is historical, yet many weird details are there (including an exact valuation of its market price, and the contradiction of a famous unnamed women). A solved example is “an invalid for thirty-eight years” in GJn: someone finally noticed “‘picking up your bed and moving it’ on the Sabbath is the thirty-ninth prohibition of labors in the Mishnah” (Historicity, 506). That took someone to actually notice the latter fact and then realize that that story is entirely about that commandment.
A list of such unresolved conundrums seems like a valuable resource, especially if coupled to a list of lately solved ones to demonstrate that progress is possible and what it looks like.
It would be. But it would take a decade of (unpaid?) work to accumulate. I don’t see anyone fronting the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to make that happen. So we’re stuck back where we are. Alas.
Thanks for the thought provoking article. Please comment on why Luke felt the need to address the issue of the use of violence as a missionary tool. In particular, does the two-swards tail indicate that there were Christians willing in to use violent force, political pressure or the law to coerce conversion at the time. Would this imply that Luke’s gospel was written at a time when the demographics of Christians had reached a point where they felt they could throw their political weight around? Would this help constrain the date of the composition of Luke’s gospel?
Luke inherited that theme from Mark. Mark’s Gospel is full of the argument that militant messianists are wrong and doomed and the humble self-sacrificing approach of Jesus is the one true way. For example, Mark invented the Barrabbas narrative to teach this very point (Historicity, index, “Barabbas”). Likewise the swine calamity. And so on.
So Luke is simply carrying forward the same argument.
The reason these Gospel authors were on to this argument is that they (and Christians generally) are competing in a religious market with militant messianic Jews and thus have to sell their non-militant religion as “better” and as “not them” and as still truly endorsed by the same Jewish God.
So this rhetoric is targeting not just prospective and actual Jewish converts, but Gentile ones as well, who are watching this debate play out and might even resist joining or staying in Christianity if they fear it is too closely associated with a violent rebel movement. This also assuages Roman leadership (“we’re not those guys!” a point even explicitly inserted by Luke into his narrative in Acts, where he has Roman magistrates specifically point that difference out). And leverages the Jewish War in their favor as a recruiting tool (“See what that got them! We have a better solution now, one that doesn’t even need the violence-begettimg temple cult at all!”).
And so on.
This doesn’t help date Luke much. Mark was already on this message in the 70s AD, and it was still relevant in the early 2nd century, as tensions between Christians and messianic Jews continued to play out and even start to create problems for Christians, forcing them to distance themselves from the Jews. That divorce was sealed early-mid-second century by the bar Kochba revolt (the culmination of that simmering tension), but all four of our Gospels were already published by then.
Incidentally, combined with an overwhelming influx of Gentile adherents and leadership, this same thinking also became the origin of the growing anti-Semitism in the Gospels, and thence Christianity afterward: the need to distance themselves from the perceived public enemies of Rome, and start throwing stones (figuratively and literally) at the same people the Romans were, on the same principle of “the enemy of my enemy must be my friend.”
A militant Jesus may seem like an option, but on closer inspection is mere redaction.
The cleansing of the temple with the whip of cords in John 2:15 is an obvious Roman redaction; did John really use the Latin loanword flagellum (φραγέλλιον) for the whip that Jesus allegedly made in order to cleanse the temple?! He fashioned a genuinely Roman whip from just a bunch of cords? The man must have been a true artisan
And did Mark – really now – use the verb construct φραγελλώσας for the whipping of Jesus? And didn’t Matthew see any problems in copying that Latin loanword? No? Most mysterious then, how every single prediction of that event uses the native Greek μαστιγόω. And the redaction of John is so very late that they use the native Greek – the texts tell so much, it is wondrous how that escapes most. Then again most must rely on the translations, that are dogmatic, biased and sometimes outright falsified
Regarding the daggers: they do suffice, going by Bezae’s variant οι δε ειπαν· ιδου κ̅ε̅ δυο μαχαιραι ωδε ο δε ειπεν αυτοις αρκει, from ἀρκέω, “II.to be strong enough, to be sufficient, to suffice”
Your analysis is correct, and so is your conclusion – yet why of all people is it Luke who has to carry this message? Because the intended audience is that of the original gospel, *Ev, the Chrestian gospel (aka “Marcion”). “Stand down, be peaceful” is the message that Christianity sends to the followers of the movement that it hijacked. Luke must function as a pacifier
61 parallels between Luke and its ultimate source; 57 of which are in *Ev. And if you read that ultimate source, it shows a “Jesus” (IS) who is unaware of anything Christian, that knows of no baptism, no death of Jesus let alone a resurrection (a fine Markan invention), and certainly no birth of any kind.
There is no historical Jesus at the end of this alleged rainbow; all there is, is an IS with quite the amount of sayings – yet it is a most anti-religious IS, and one that most certainly is anti-Judaic.
And the text is one in which the disciples are ridiculed, rejected and rebuked from start to end – I am sometimes reminded of a satyr choir, where their entire point is to not get it.
Well, do note, the militant hypothesizers would say the whip thing was fiction, a redactional layer covering up an actual army attacking the temple. What’s improbable about their hypothesis is their hypothesis, and not what incidental details seem made-up.
I see that in his more recent book (“They suffered under Ponyius Pilate”, 2023), Bermejo-Rubio quotes a lot from the Avalos’ book, The Bad Jesus, to corroborate his own view about the presence of a Gospel tradition of violence. I see that also you quotes Avalos positively. The BR’s point is that it is sufficient the recognition of the presence of this tradition of violence to conclude that it derived probably from seditious origins of the sect, which makes alone the presence of a rebellious historical Jesus more probable than not. Do you agree with this implication, given the fact that you seem to agree with the premise?
Thanks in advance for any answer.
No. I think that is a poor inference. It fails on both priors and likelihoods.
The material I and Avalos show for the bad Jesus actually relates to apocalyptic morality, not armed militancy. This is heavily favored by prior probability on background evidence alone; and carries a far stronger likelihood ratio (i.e. it makes more evidence, more probable) than the militancy hypothesis.
Only some of the reasons for this are included in my debate material, which until the debate gets an English edition (in the works), you can see briefed in my third chapter of Jesus from Outer Space.
Bermejo-Rubio relies on the same fallacies as Christian apologists, such as: omitting data; relying on possibiliter fallacies and a plethora of ad hoc suppositions; and failing to consider the best alternative explanations. He’s trying to make the evidence fit his hypothesis; rather than actually (properly) testing his hypothesis against the evidence.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68221243.amp
Sorry its not relevant to the post but it appears they cracked the Herculaneum scrolls. Happy days
More recently, anther scroll seems to have revealed the location of Plato’s burial.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/platos-elusive-grave-located-after-bionic-eye-penetrates-2000-year-old-papyrus-180984221/
Is there any evidence of interpolation here? It has always seemed to me that the sword passage is out of context where it sits. The context seems to abruptly change from verse 34 to 35:
33 But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.”
34 Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”
35 Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
It seems to me this is a later redaction, as removing it does not seem unnatural, while its inclusion doesn’t seem to be relevant to the rest of the chapter. Originally reading would have been:
34 Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.”
39 Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.
To me, his prediction for Peter feels like a hard stop on the conversation and theme being addressed prior, as if Peter and the others would have been left speechless. To suddenly change the subject seems out of place. Thoughts?
(Gold Member BTW)
My article identifies why it is here. It is perfectly arranged in parallel structure and completes a series of similarly-focused critiques of the Apostles (and, by implication, the various ways any Christian can fail). It also motivates several other changes Luke made to the following scenes (the arrest, Barabbas, the robbers). That is all extremely unlikely to be an accident; so this cannot be an interpolation.
To be clear, the Passover section is arranged to illustrate four modes of failure (betrayal, haughtiness, cowardice, and wrath) like this:
Every transition from one section to the next is abrupt (compare the sudden switch from v. 23 to v. 24, and then v. 30 to v. 31). So that is clearly Luke’s intended style here, not something out of place.
I’m thinking that parthenogenesis is the best possible explanation for the Virgin Mary.
What do you think?
The best possible explanation is that it was made-up. Just like the labors of Hercules and the parting of the Red Sea.
Richard is right, of course, but you need to know that parthenogenesis in humans can only result in female offspring.
Article referencing your good self; from Aeon, There was no Jesus by Gavin Evans.
https://aeon.co/essays/why-the-son-of-god-story-is-built-on-mythology-not-history
Quite a good overview article for the most part – but it completely drops the ball as soon as it tries to grapple with Carrier’s arguments in even the most minimal detail.
Bizarre indeed : a probabilistic approach developing probabilities for its conclusions.
Or rather, which illustrates quite precisely the wooliness of the available evidence.
Bzzzzt. There’s copious evidence they believed he was human. The question is ‘where’.
Bzzzzt. At least the author got ‘made’ right regarding David – but (allegorical mothers aside) why ‘born’ of a woman here, when Paul uses the same word in both cases?
But of course, no mention that Carrier counts both of these as evidence for historicity.
Bzzzzt. Brother of ‘the Lord’. Like all Christians, including Paul himself. And once again counted toward historicity.
Bzzzzt. There’s also good evidence Paul understood Satan to be a historical figure.
Bzzzzt. There’s nothing in Mark that makes it ‘certain’ its author(s) thought their Jesus to be a historical figure, rather than a character in their fiction.
And that second last sentence is where the author shows that he hasn’t read OHJ, nor even a reasonable summary of its arguments. He’s going by Ehrman’s shabby rebuttal, which misrepresents Carrier’s arguments in almost every respect.
Poor show, even for an overview article such as this.
Jeremy has pretty well nailed it.
This is typical I find. They don’t actually read the text they claim to be responding to or describing, and what they skim in it they make no effort to even understand. The result is impertinent timewastes like this. In all the precise ways Jeremy just documented.
The question now is: why is this all that we ever get across an entire ten years at bat?
There does not seem to be any honest defense of historicity to make.
And that alone pretty much kills it as a sound model.
It’s a zombie theory now. In every real sense dead, but still shambling along.