Thanks. I seem to be a little out of touch. Can the New Testamental wording be interpreted as »handing over» instead of betraying, or would that be stretching Greek semantics beyond its elasticity?
Oh my, two EFL speakers trading blows. It doesn’t bode well… 
Elaine Pagels writes:
The suggestion in the Gospel of Judas is that Judas alone knew the truth of Jesus and was entrusted with a mission to hand him over to the people who arrested him. It’s interesting that in this book the Greek word that was elsewhere translated into English as “betrayal” is actually a more neutral word that means “to hand over.” The point is that Judas indeed did hand Jesus over to the people who arrested him, but he did so because Jesus had not only asked him but required him to do it.
The Gospels are anything but neutral on Judas. Better for that one had he not been born. Later parts of the New Testament dislike him so much that they kill him off in two different ways! Any suggestion that the early sources are neutral on Judas is just silly. Beyond that, the LSJ suggests that the word can often have a “collateral notion of treachery.” Pagels is just doing what celebrity Bible scholars do: fooling the rubes to get on television and sell books.
Beyond that, a cursory glance at the English translation of the Gospel of Judas suggests that it is late (beyond just the general Gnostic subject matter):
For someone else will replace you, in order that the twelve [disciples] may again come to completion with their god.”
This would suggest someone familiar with Acts (one of the latest books of the New Testament).
…various priest quotations…
There seems to be familiarity with a Christian priesthood here. That’s certainly a feature of Christianity that is later than Mark.
When these people, however, have completed the time of the kingdom and the spirit leaves them, their bodies will die but their souls will be alive, and they will be taken up.
Late theology.
Jesus said, “This is why God ordered Michael to give the spirits of people to them as a
loan, so that they might offer service, but the Great One ordered Gabriel to grant spirits to
the great generation with no ruler over it—that is, the spirit and the soul. Therefore, the
[rest] of the souls [54] [—one line missing—].
This could barely be explained by knowledge of Daniel, but Luke and Revelation seem far more likely.
Paul wrote Thanks. I suppose I was thinking about French comité. Litterature [sic] & litérature, who can remember this stuff… >
> By the way, with “insinuated” you must have meant “hinted” – to insinuate is to “say something bad in an indirect way”. “Are you insinuating that I cheated?”
Timothée used “insinuating” about my post so I thought I would respond. I was trying to be amusing by replacing what seemed an obscure word (dirk) by the even obscurer “sgian-dubh”, although to someone of my generation it doesnt seem all that obscure. Insinuate has nowadays a primary meaning of doing something covert, some kind of devious (subtle?) or underhand suggestion. But I like the more extended meaning from Timothée which suggests something less straightforward than “hinting”. (Edit: for the avoidance of doubt I guess the word he had in mind was the more prosaic “implied”.
As to comity, in the context of groups of different conservative theologians, I had interpreted it as an association or community not a spelling mistake. Rather an elevated register but not incorrect.
So as a native English speaker I thought these words were unusual choices but perfectly understandable. I wouldn’t have bothered posting but it illustrates the difficulty of translation and why I for one welcome the new Brill dictionary. I was reluctant to use the Italian version because of the difficulty of knowing whether one had caught all the nuances when translating into English.
Timothée said: Can the New Testamental wording be interpreted as »handing over» instead of betraying, or would that be stretching Greek semantics beyond its elasticity?
The verb used in Luke seems to be παραδίδωμι which LSJ gives a primary meaning of “give, hand over to another, transmit”. It seems to require other qualifying words implying treachery to mean betray. The relevant entry is this :
- [select] give a city or person into another’s hands, “τὴν Σάμον π. Συλοσῶντι” Hdt.3.149; “ἄλλον ἐς ἄλλην πόλιν π.” Id.5.37; esp. as a hostage, or to an enemy, deliver up, surrender, “ἑωυτὸν Κροίσῳ” Id.1.45, cf. 3.13, Th.7.86; “τὰς ναῦς” And.3.11, etc.: with collat. notion of treachery, betray, X.Cyr.5.4.51, Paus.1.2.1; “π. ὅπλα” X.Cyr.5.1.28, etc.; τύχῃ αὑτὸν π.
I have always had difficulty in distinguishing παραδίδωμι and προδίδωμι (give up) as both have meanings of betray.
I am sure scholars must have worked all this over before. I am not a NT reader so I dont really have much background here.
So ἄγωμεν means “let’s go.” And in context, it seems to be spoken in an urgent manner. Would this punctuation make sense? ἐγείρεσθε! ἄγωμεν! ἰδοὺ ὁ παραδιδούς με ἤγγικεν.
I see no evidence here for the punctuation or the air of urgency that you detect. Jesus seems quite resigned or fatalistic and makes no attempt to evade capture. A quiet stir yourselves, lets go seems just as likely as your more excited reading. I wonder whether the collocation is colloquial.
I agree you shouldn’t read too much into ἄγωμεν – the way I see, it’s not quite an interjection (compare ἄγε(τε)), but almost. I also wonder if it’s colloquial.
I suppose the essential idea with παραδίδωμι is to surrender a person to someone, into someone’s hands.
προδίδωμι is to abandon someone, to give up on someone, so that the person is at his/her own mercy.
Neutral “to hint” and pejorative “to insinuate” are one word in Finnish, which is both Timothée’s native language and mine. As for dirks and obscure guttural utterances, I got your joke; Timothée, I believe, has a special interest in Klingo… I mean Celtic languages.
Joel: Even if/even though the Gospel of Judas is more recent than the Canonical Gospels, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the way Judas is portrayed there is necessarily as recent. We tend to think that everything that isn’t in accord with the Canonical Gospel must be later, derivative “heresies”, but what if the “other Gospels” reflect genuine old traditions?
You’ve already got the Ur-narrative behind the preachy gospels. It’s called Mark, and it’s actually pretty exciting on its own, even without aeons and gundam suits or whatever we’d like to find there.
Thank you for your enlightening replies. Regarding προδιδόναι & παραδιδόναι, I for example find it difficult to see what the difference is between English “give up” and “give in”. I used to think I see the difference (as if “give up” would be more defeatistic), but I’m not so sure anymore. (I apologise—I do know this isn’t English 101 forum!)
Lars Aejmelaeus (professor emeritus of NT exegesis, Helsinki) has said that beyond the New Testament there is only one scripture that can (possibly) add to our understanding of Jesus and his teachings. All the others only reveal later interpretations. I sillily forget what it was but it was one of these famous apocryphal texts, quite possibly the Gospel of Judas. Naturally Aejmelaeus’s views can be contested (and actually already have).
EDIT. It may actually have been the Gospel of Thomas I was deliberating.
I see this thread has been active! Just a few comments.
My parting point about “betrayal” was simply that παραδοῦναι—it’s the same in the Coptic—is in itself a more neutral word than “betray”—just as Pagels says, in fact. (I don’t see anything amiss with what she says in Joel’s quote, which is about the Judas gospel.) παραλαβεῖν is its counterpart, and no treachery need be involved. (seneca: it differs from προδουναι in that it implies a give-and-take kind of transaction, passing something on to someone else, as Paul says, as in a game of Pass the Parcel or Hot Potato—Jesus being the hot potato.) E.g. at Matt.27.2 the chief priests and elders handed Jesus on (παρέδωκαν) to Pilate, followed in the next sentence by the same verb applied to Judas. No-one’s contesting the fact (unless Pagels does?) that the canonical gospels represent Judas’ action as what we would call a betrayal; it’s just that the Greek/Coptic is less specific. When it comes to translated words, I like to think in terms of Venn diagrams.
But I avoid translations as much as possible. Isn’t that why we learn Greek, so as not to have to bother with them and their betrayals? (Traduttori traditori.)
I have no hidden knowledge about the Gospel of Judas. But I do think it’s a fascinating thing. The evidence suggests it’s a 2nd-century text which circulated in Christian or paraChristian communities for some centuries. Inevitably discussion of it has been framed by orthodox Christianity and has been focussed on its unorthodox take on Judas (he’s presented as acting in cahoots with Jesus), but its wider theological and conceptual underpinnings are intriguing. They seem quite crazy to orthodox Christians (and to me), but then orthodox Christian doctrine understandably seems crazy to non-Christian ways of thinking. The circumstances of its publication were rather shameful (James Robinson, who was kept out of the loop, reveals the unsavory details) and led to overreaction and much silliness, but I think it’s great to have texts that fall outside of history as written by the victors.
The “catastrophic” moment of Jesus’ betrayal can be viewed as essential to the fulfilment of God’s will, inasmuch as it activates God’s sacrifice of him. That’s how the Judas gospel presents it, and there are indications of that point of view in the canonical gospels too. Mark’s Jesus himself appears to recognize it in this very scene (e.g. 36 ου τί εγω θελω αλλα τί συ, 49 ινα πληρωθωσιν αι γραφαι), though he doesn’t much like it. Joel said “In Mark, there is a betrayal because there has to be.” Quite so. The inherent problems and paradoxes have tied theologians and philosophers in knots throughout the history of Christianity.
The hothead who attacked the chief-priest’s slave. I offered an explanation in terms of foil, the contrast between his response and Jesus’ own. The episode conforms to a familiar pattern. A mob comes to take the hero captive, someone puts up resistance, but our hero himself offers none (and rebukes the mob for coming with weapons). I think the interpretation of the scene in the other gospels was quite correct. In Mark Jesus pays it no heed; it’s inconsequential; the spotlight is on him.
αγωμεν has affinity with αγε etc. accompanying a more meaningful imperative, as Paul suggests. Attended by a directional phrase (e.g. “to Jerusalem” or “somewhere else”) it can be used by itself, but here it coheres very closely with εγειρεσθε. I’m with seneca and Paul on this. “Stir yourselves, let’s go”—not “go” in the sense of fleeing, or of going anywhere at all really, he just wants them to be alive to the situation now unfolding: ιδου ο παραδιδους με ηγγικεν. He doesn’t want them sleeping through it!
—Timothée, I expect the text the professor had in mind was not the Gospel of Judas but the so-called Gospel of Thomas, which consists of sayings (λογια) of Jesus, not embedded in a surrounding narrative as in the canonical gospels. This or something like it may underlie the canonical gospels, which don’t always agree in their narrative contextualization of the sayings.
EDIT. Robertson corrected to Robinson (James M.), εγειρετε to εγειρεσθε.
My parting point about “betrayal” was simply that παραδοῦναι—it’s the same in the Coptic—is in itself a more neutral word than “betray”—just as Pagels says, in fact. (I don’t see anything amiss with what she says in Joel’s quote, which is about the Judas gospel.)
Quite right. I’m afraid that I’ve been misled into impugning Pagels here. The Wikipedia article from which I found this interview states:
According to Elaine Pagels, Bible translators have mistranslated the Greek word for “handing over” to “betrayal”.
But in the actual interview, she is talking about the Gospel of Judas only. Pagel’s statement is completely accurate about the Gospel of Judas.
Timothée said: I for example find it difficult to see what the difference is between English “give up” and “give in”. I used to think I see the difference (as if “give up” would be more defeatistic), but I’m not so sure anymore. (I apologise—I do know this isn’t English 101 forum!)
Give up … cease to do something Give in … accede to someone’s request. “I gave in and gave up” makes sense whereas “I gave up and gave in” whilst not incomprehensible isnt unambiguous. In other senses “give up the ghost” (I am sure thats in LSJ somewhere I seem to recall it from reading Alcestis recently) makes sense whereas “give in” wouldn’t.
I see that there is a difference between προδιδόναι & παραδιδόναι but many of the meanings for each word given in LSJ are the same. Mwh has helped to clarify the difference. I will try to keep in mind a hot potato.
αγωμεν has affinity with αγε etc. accompanying a more meaningful imperative, as Paul suggests. Attended by a directional phrase (e.g. “to Jerusalem” or “somewhere else”) it can be used by itself, but here it coheres very closely with εγειρεσθε. I’m with seneca and Paul on this. “Stir yourselves, let’s go”—not “go” in the sense of fleeing, or of going anywhere at all really, he just wants them to be alive to the situation now unfolding: ιδου ο παραδιδους με ηγγικεν. He doesn’t want them sleeping through it!
While I can certainly be wrong about ἄγωμεν here, I don’t think that I can accept the ἄγε affinity argument. He surely would have said ἄγετε, and it would have stood out as an anachronism (though no doubt we can make the argument that the Son of Man would have known Homer).
I’ll throw out a different meaning though: Mark’s mental model is of Jesus surrounded by a crowd of unnamed disciples (two of them even make cameos in the next paragraph). For Mark, ἄγωμεν would mean “let us lead them,” a much more normal use of the word – not that is has much bearing on whether Jesus is resigned or urgent here.
A final character argument though: When does Jesus discover whether his “παρένεγκε τὸ ποτήριον τοῦτο ἀπ’ ἐμοῦ” prayer is fulfilled or not? At the moment when he says “ἀλλ’ οὐ τί ἐγὼ θέλω ἀλλὰ τί σύ” – after all, that ἀλλά feels very strong – or is it when he is cut off by Judas: “καὶ εὐθὺς ἔτι αὐτοῦ λαλοῦντος.”
I’ll throw out a different meaning
I think you do well to throw it out.
Most of my ideas deserve to get thrown out. I’m many years from knowing enough Greek. But it struck me that the author had more apropos words to use in Mark 1:38 than ἄγωμεν, if it weren’t for the context of a crowd of people seeking after Jesus.
In fact, these examples in Mark are two almost unique occurrences of a word that usually means “lead,” being used instead as “go,” both in pursuit contexts.
The interesting passage in this regard is John 14.31, where at the end of the notorious paraclete passage Jesus says ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν. But then he just goes right on talking, without a break.
Which is very strange. Presumably it corresponds to the εγειρεσθε αγωμεν we have in Mark and Matthew, but decontextualized and inorganically incorporated; functionally it effects a separation from what he goes on to say (from a difference source?—check Thomas gospel?). It’s only later that they go to the Garden, according to the disjointed narrative.
—Incidentally, it’s John’s worldview that seems to me to have the most suggestive relationship with the Gospel of Judas, as well as with Qumran texts. But I’m out of my depth in this territory.
Don’t quite understand why there is any confusion about παραδίδωμι. Betrayal is a contextual inference only in a few contexts where someone is delivered into the hands of hostile authorities by someone who who is a member of their close associates. Louw and Nida only mention betrayal in one semantic domain 37.111. παραδίδωμι is found in about ten domains.
37.111 παραδίδωμιb; παρίστημιe: to deliver a person into the control of someone else, involving either the handing over of a presumably guilty person for punishment by authorities or the handing over of an individual to an enemy who will presumably take undue advantage of the victim — ‘to hand over, to turn over to, to betray.’
παραδίδωμιb: μήποτέ σε παραδῷ ὁ ἀντίδικος τῷ κριτῇ ‘so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge’ Mt 5:25; ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου παραδίδοται εἰς χεῖρας ἀνθρώπων, καὶ ἀποκτενοῦσιν αὐτόν ‘the Son of Man will be handed over to men who will kill him’ Mk 9:31; καὶ ἀπὸ τότε ἐζήτει εὐκαιρίαν ἵνα αὐτὸν παραδῷ ‘from then on he was looking for a good chance to betray him’ Mt 26:16.
παρίστημιe: παρέστησαν καὶ τὸν Παῦλον αὐτῷ ‘and they turned Paul over to him’ Ac 23:33.
As is the case in English, a number of languages make a clear distinction between legitimate handing over of a presumably guilty person to a civil authority and the betrayal of a person in the in-group to someone in the out-group.
Don’t quite understand why there is any confusion about παραδίδωμι .
Perhaps I didnt make it clear that my confusion arose mostly in prose composition where I could not remember which verb (παραδίδωμι or προδίδωμι) to use as both have overlapping meanings. I am sure the text you quote is helpful for NT readers. As I have said before my interests lie elsewhere.
Actually, it was E. Pagel’s quibble about certain english translations of παραδίδωμι in reference to Judas that created the issue I am addressing. E. Pagels has an ax to grind. Huge ax, much grinding. She was born in Palo Alto, attended Stanford. We probably crossed paths in the mid 50s, perhaps at City Lights book store, where she was attending a poetry reading, “Howl” Allen Ginsberg. An impossible scenario, I wasn’t reading Ferlinghetti until after 1960 when I found “Jam Session” but Ralph Gleason laying in the street in the rain while riding my bicycle home from school. Anyway we were in Palo Alto at the same time. I was on same turf as Ezra Pound a few years before that. Oxon Hill Farm Md, my back yard. This is why I read greek, you every seen Pound’s version of Electra?
I lived in Palo Alto, across the street from Stanford, a number of years after you then. It’s more crowded now, but remains very nice.
What I don’t quite understand is the spleen vented against Elaine Pagels, a highly reputable scholar of gnosticism and early Christianity. I’ve noticed that the bare mention of Pagels or Bart Ehrman is enough to send some people up the wall. They splutter and foam at the mouth, and go completely off the rails. Why such vehemence? What is her ax, and what’s wrong with it?
I still find the Gospel of Judas a very interesting counter-narrative to the orthodox presentation, as I said at the outset. And if I wanted to find out more about early Christian and paraChristian history, I’d turn to her work. Should I not?
So far as I’m aware I was never on the same turf as Ezra Pound, so I can’t claim that’s why I read Greek.
PS I have never lived in Palo Alto. I have friends who do. Does that count?