Maurice Ryan, “Creating Judas Iscariot: Critical Questions for Presenting the Betrayer of Jesus,” Journal of Religious Education 67 no. 3 (October 2019), 31.
Matthew’s account of Judas’ actions after handing over Jesus demonstrates an aspect of Matthew’s theological agenda: Judas, the betrayer immediately recognises the innocence of Jesus and the injustice of his deed. A similar theme will play out in Matthew when Pontius Pilate, after interrogating Jesus, likewise can see no fault in Jesus and absolves himself of any responsibility: “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves” (Matthew 27:24). For Matthew, if Jesus’ betrayer sees Jesus as innocent, if the one who condemns him to death does likewise, then the only guilty parties remaining are the Jerusalem priestly authorities and the Jewish crowds who urged them on. The priestly authorities do not allow Judas to atone for his actions. In this sense, Judas is used by Matthew as a foil to advance his agenda. He seeks to shift blame for the execution of Jesus onto the Jewish people and their leaders and away from Roman officials.
The Amateur Exegete 
Obligatory link to the Last Supper scene from History of the World, Part I: https://youtu.be/dMsnqITDho4?si=Kc2bjAXH1cyVbfs-
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Perfection!
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After reading the quotation you posted from John Kloppenborg, “James and Temptations from God,” I wanted to ask for some clarification. Is it possible that, when James says that God “tempts no one,” the author is specifically denying that God seduces anyone into sin, rather than denying that God might send external trials or tests? In other words, do you think the author of James could have had in mind a distinction between a divine test (which produces perseverance) and temptation to evil (which arises from human desire)? That seems more coherent to me.
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After reading the quotation you posted from John Kloppenborg, “James and Temptations from God,” I wanted to ask for some clarification. Is it possible that, when James says that God “tempts no one,” the author is specifically denying that God seduces anyone into sin, rather than denying that God might send external trials or tests? In other words, do you think the author of James could have had in mind a distinction between a divine test (which produces perseverance) and temptation to evil (which arises from human desire)? That seems more coherent to me.
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I think that’s what James is doing, but Kloppenborg is pointing to other Jewish traditions wherein God *does* tempt people to do evil (which is, of course, a kind of a test). James seems to be a reaction to that older view. Dale Allison discusses this further in his commentary on James. (I cannot recommend Allison’s commentary enough. It is fantastic!)
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In what sense does Kloppenborg understand the word “tempt”? Does he mean it in the sense of seducing someone to sin, or in the sense of testing? I think this is where the problem lies. In Job, God is clearly testing, but He is not manipulating Job to sin. I also don’t think James denies—at least not explicitly—that God tests. I think James’s point is that God does not induce anyone to sin. Of course, there are passages where God incites someone to sin, like David and Pharaoh, but these occur in a context of judgment.
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I wanted to (respectfully) provide an outline of questions in response to the post above:
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(Continued from Above)
3. In contrast to divine command ethics, there are Christians (e.g. philosopher Gottfried Leibniz) who historically have thought that God desires morally good actions based on a sort of separate already-established standard and wants us to choose good once we have ascertained what it is. One critique of divine command that Leibniz himself gave (if memory serves) is that we would not be able to tell a godly command from an evil one from the devil, since God’s orders would “overrule” any known laws or legal codes by default. Does Leibniz’s understanding of ethics “square better” with presentation the census (where David seems to be expected to “know better”) but stand at odds with scripture when what would seem to be a temptation is actually presented by the Bible as an divine inducement to the “right” course of action (e.g. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac or orders for extermination of entire cities)?
4. Does James think that people who incite others to sin could be actually be “inspired” to test others on God’s behalf? How would we tell if someone was acting in this way or whether God might be calling us to give another person “a trial” of some sort by presenting them with a possible situation in which they could sin?
5. Why would God need to “persuade” people to be participants in their own punishment or that of others? If David had not succumbed to the incitement to census-taking, would God have effected his will for someone in the kingdom to be punished for their sin through some more direct means? Why wasn’t this the original course of action all along?
6. Doesn’t the fact that one version of the census account has God inciting David to “count the people” while the other has a “satan” (whether or not sent from God) doing the temptation suggest that the Bible’s authors are not entirely sure or disagree on who is ultimately responsible for temptation? Since an omnipotent God necessarily gives “Satan” authority to do what he actually does, isn’t it best to understand the biblical understanding of temptation as fragmentary or inconsistent between authors like whoever wrote James and authors of the historic books of the Old Testament?
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Just so I can understand better: when you mention those Jewish traditions in which God tempts people to do evil, which texts or examples do you have in mind? I’d like to study this more.
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Alright, cool. The passages referred to above were the following (sorry for all the long posts):
[Before continuing below, I did want to offer the clarification that my questions were regarding temptation in passages within the Hebrew Bible rather than in James and that the passages used above were just my examples rather than those of Kloppenborg. (Not having read Kloppenborg like Ben has, it wouldn’t be my place to comment on what his interpretation of James is.) I would only offer that James might be interpreting passages in the Old Testament in a way contrary to the intentions of their authors.]
a. 2 Samuel 24:1-17 (First Account of David taking the Census and a Resulting Pestilence)
There are plenty of unusual aspects about this passage such as the first verse of the chapter implying that God had been angered by something Israel had done in the past, David’s being presented with three choices for how God will conduct punishment, and God ignoring David’s entreaties to cease the plague until He has had “enough.” What seems most problematic is that David is “enticed” to count the people by God and later admits he sinned. The verses don’t seem to suggest that there was a possible way for David to resist the inducement or that David was merely being tested. Also, God proceeds to send a pestilence that results in the deaths of 70,000 of his countrymen and the earlier part of the passage says He was angry with “Israel” before David even took the census. If either party (David or the general population) was responsible, why lure David into an apparently sinful census-taking rather than punishing those who were really guilty to begin with? If hypothetically David hadn’t succumbed to what the author of 2 Samuel sees as a great sun, would there have been 70,000 dead or would God have had to punish someone else for his “chosen” king’s sin? (The notes in my Oxford Annotated Bible (New Revised Standard Version) suggest that part of the original preceding background for this passage might have been the events of 2 Samuel 21:1-14 in which God is upset with the Kingdom on account what Saul did during his lifetime and has David talk to the Gibeonites who proceed to have him execute some of Saul’s remaining family members. If this were correct, the meaning of 2 Samuel 24 might be that God wanted more vengeance on the whole kingdom for Saul’s actions and was merely using David as a tool to his ends.)
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(Continued from Above)
b. 1 Chronicles 21: 1-17 (Other Account of David taking the Census of his Kingdom)
These verses feature what the New Revised Standard Version translates as “a Satan” or “adversary” enticing David to conduct the census rather than God directly as in 2 Samuel. (The notes in the Oxford Annotated Bible argue that the being in question doing the tempting is some sort of “power” or “force” and not “the devil” in a later Christian sense.)
c. Genesis 22 was the passage with the command for Abraham to offer Isaac and Deuteronomy 20:10-18 is a prime example of verses that condone the enslavement or wholesale extermination of opposing populations.
While perusing my Bible, I also noticed some unusual passages where God has a more direct role in sin like 1 Kings 22: 19 -23 (in which the prophet Micaiah tells king Ahab that God has “put a lying spirit” in the “mouths” of opposing seers) or 1 Samuel 12: 6-8 (where Nathan tells David that God “gave him” Saul’s ex-wives rather than merely saying that He was condescending to David’s desires or simply allowing him to take multiple wives.) (What’s also kind of odd is that the Hebrew Bible never counts David’s polygamy as a sin while his affair with Bathsheba is condemned.)
(Also, apologies for the long philosophical digressions in my earlier post but I think that many Bible passages present ethical problems if read in context or have problematical implications. My personal perspective is that the Bible can’t be a sole authority on ethics or questions of life and is best seen as a sort of influential work in western civilization to be read or studied like the so-called Great Books of the west such as the works of Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, or, for a slightly more recent example- and one of my personal favorite thinkers- J.S. Mill.
While I am a no longer a believer, there are books, articles, or other resources by professing Christians such as Peter Enns, Dan McClellan, and Greg Boyd that offer perspectives on the Bible that acknowledge or even embrace a form of scriptural errancy. From what I’ve read Enns thinks the Bible encourages “questions” rather than “answers”, and McClellan argues there is no single authoritative “literal” interpretation of scripture so we must decide how the Bible is to be relevant in light of our current valuers. While to my mind Boyd goes too far in seeing the New Testament as superior to what he thinks is the “obsolete” “Warrior-God” mentality found in much of the Hebrew Bible, he is more than willing to conceded that biblical authors often had flawed mentalities that would not be acceptable in modern society.)
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I wanted to ask everyone to disregard the two posts above. Just saw that the questions from the above commenter might have been addressed to the Amateur Exegete/Ben; my apologies for the misunderstanding.
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