you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver".
"Various theories have sought to identify the Teacher with Jesus, claiming
that he was executed by the Wicked Priest. Had that been the case, the text
would not have gone on to explain how God took vengeance against the
priest by turning him over to the 'ruthless ones of the nations'. And
according to this text, the teacher certainly survived the ambush. Indeed
the entire passage is an interpretation of Psalms where the text continues,
"The Lord will not abandon him (the Righteous), into his hand (the
Wicked); He will not let him (the Righteous) be condemned in judgment (by
the wicked)."
Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, pp. 233-234
The author goes on to quote
Pesher Habakkuk
with regard to the Wicked
Priest's intentions and his punishment. He says:
"Ultimately, however, the Wicked Priest was punished: '.. because of his
transgression against the Teacher of Righteousness and the men of his
council, God gave him over to the hands of his enemies to afflict him with
disease so as to destroy him with mortal suffering because he had acted
wickedly against His chosen one'. The Wicked Priest's enemies tortured
him which represents divine punishment for his attacks on the Teacher of
Righteousness. The sufferings of the Wicked Priest are even more
graphically described in another passage: 'and all his enemies arose and
abused him in order for his suffering to be fit punishment for his evil. And
they inflicted upon him horrible diseases, and acts of vengeance in the
flesh of his body'. The one who suffered was the Wicked Priest, not the
Teacher of Righteousness. The enemies of the Wicked Priest, the nation
against whom he had made war, are said to have tortured him, so that his
life ended in mortal disease and affliction."
Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 234
Pesher Habakkuk 9:9-10 reads:
"Its interpretation (Habakkuk 2:8) concerns the Wicked Priest, who,
because of (his) transgression against the Teacher of Righteousness and
the men of his council, God handed over into the hands of his enemies to
afflict him..."
Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence H. Schiffman, p. 119
If we were to read the Gospel of Barnabas, we would find that when Judas
came with the Roman troops in order to betray Jesus (pbuh), God raised
Jesus (pbuh) unto Him and saved him. He then made Judas look and even
speak like Jesus (pbuh) so that the Romans dragged Judas away with them
kicking and screaming that he was not Jesus (pbuh) but Judas. Even the
apostles were totally bewildered.
After the Romans had their fill afflicting Judas with
all manner of abuse
and torture, he was finally taken to trial. He was asked many times whether
he was Jesus (pbuh) and each time he replied that he was not Jesus but
Judas and that Jesus had utilized his black magic in order to alter his form
and make him resemble Jesus. Of course, no one believed him. The most
his pleas succeeded in doing was to convince some that Jesus was a
lunatic. This turn of events appears to be supported by the New Testament
where we find that whenever Jesus was asked, "art thou Jesus?" He would
reply "Thou sayest"(Matthew 27:11, Mark 15:2). This would be a
completely logical response if he was not Jesus but Judas and he had been
abused, ridiculed and mocked to the point that he had
given up all hope of
being believed. In other words, what Judas meant by "thou sayest" was,
"you will not believe me if I say otherwise, so why fight it any more."
Judas' enemies (the Romans) then took him and resumed their abuse. They
mocked him, kicked him, cut him, spat on him, humiliated him, and
tortured him. Finally, they put him up on the cross. It appears, however,
that shortly after they took him down, he disappeared from his tomb
(perhaps to live in disease and torment and die later on if he was not
already dead). The Gospel of Barnabas then goes on to describe how Jesus
(pbuh) returned to the apostles to tell them of how God had saved him
from the hands of the Jews and
the Romans, raised him up into heaven, and
how the traitor (Judas) was taken instead.
Once again this chain of events appears to be supported by the New
Testament where we find that uncertainty regarding the fate of Judas has
resulted in contradicting narrations in it's different books. For example, in
Matthew 27:5 Judas is depicted as having felt severe remorse, handed over
his blood money to the custodians of the great Temple, and then gone out
and hung himself out of shame and remorse. However, in Acts 1:19 far
from displaying remorse, Judas is depicted as having purchased a field
with his ill gotten gains and then one day while he was out walking he
tripped, fell down, and his internal organs burst out. In
this manner, divine
justice took vengeance against the traitor.
Conservative scholars have tried to harmonize these two conflicting
narrations for centuries now, trying to make sense of how in one place it is
Judas who purchased the field himself, and in the other it is the chief
priests who purchased it. Similarly, in one place Judas died by hanging
himself, and in the other he triped and his bowels gush out. In one he was
remorseful and in the other he displayed no signs of remorse. As a partial
solution to this dilemma, some conservative scholars have suggested that
Judas hung himself,
the rope broke, he fell down and then his bowels
gushed out. In other words, they have taken two contradictory accounts,
added in additional details found in neither one, and then come up with a
completely new account supported by neither.
As mentioned previously, it is quite possible that the elusive Q document
which Christian scholars believe to be the source document for the first
three Gospels, (Matthew, Mark and Luke) is indeed the Gospel of
Barnabas. This Gospel, once again, appears to
have had a strong influence
on our current day New Testament, however, the denial of Judas has now
taken on various new forms, for example:
In one (Matthew 26:64), Jesus is taken before the high priest who
commands him to answer
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