Mazel tov to President Obama for Passover

President Barack Obama reportedly will be the first president ever to attend a Passover seder, celebrating at the White House with staffers.

Besides the Jewish ethnicity of David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel, Obama also has a black Jewish rabbinical connection from Chicago.

Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism

In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul gives us the first extant written account of the Lord’s Supper.

He starts with the well-known phrase, “On the night our Lord Jesus was betrayed…”

But, “betrayed” may well not be the right translation.

Many Greek verbs have three voices — the active and passive ones we know in English, and a “middle” voice, a sort of reflexive voice.

Now, the Greek verb παραδίδωμι looks the same in middle and passive voice. But, it has different meanings. looks the same in middle and passive voice. But, it has different meanings.

In the passive, it does mean “betray.” But, in the middle, it normally means “hand over,” as in hand over someone to authorities. A similar meaning is “hand up.”

Critical New Testament scholarship believe this is what Paul means. He never, in the epistles he clearly wrote, talks about a Passion Plot, a Roman arrest, or the melodramatic literary angle of a turncoat named Judas.

That gets us to the first “pseudo-Paul.” In addition to it being quite certain that Paul never wrote the “Pastoral Epistles” of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus, which weren’t written until the end of the first century CE, or even early in the second, an earlier pseudo-Paul (or two) is believed to have written Colossians and Ephesians. Relations between these two books are unclear, but both likely were written no later than 30 years after Paul’s genuine books, by someone closer to the Pauline mileau than the Pastoralist of another 20-40 years later.

Well, both Colossians and Ephesians discuss what can certainly be called “esoterica,” whether they are talking about issues that can clearly be labeled Gnostic or not.

In Colossians 2:20, “Paul” tells his readers, “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world….” The word in Greek, στοιχειον, is a word with plenty of use in Gnosticism, although it has plenty of pre-Gnostic use as well. As an “elemental principle,” it can be understood as a stage to be overcome by the Gnostic initiate’s battle to return to the All.

So, tying together Colossians and 1 Corinthans, did Paul mean that Jesus was actually “handed up” to the “elemental powers”? In other words rather than the soteriology of the Pastoral Epistles, themselves connected with similar soteriology stances of dying-and-rising eastern Mediterranean savior gods, was Paul instead talking about Jesus as a sacrifice to Gnostic powers?

How, then, did we get to Mark,. the first Gospeller, creating the "betrayal" story?

A combination of misreading Paul plus creative reading of the Old Testament, namely something like Psalm 69:22-28, and Psalm 109:6-12.

Peter allegedly took these verses that way in Acts 1.

In Gnostic and semi-Gnostic Christianity, the idea of Judas as Jesus' twin, as in Judas Thomas (Aramaic for "twin") certainly added to Gnosticizing takes on the idea of Jesus' betrayal.

It seems likely. Mystery religions, after all, we know had their own mystery-fellowship dinners, from which it is believed Paul borrowed ideas that he fused into Passover concepts to produce his “Last Supper.”

If that’s the case, the genuine Paul was more a proto-Gnostic than later followers, let alone conservative Christians today, might want to accept.

Also, if that’s the case, pseudo-Paul of Colossians either didn’t understand the genuine article that well, or else thought that others’ interpretation of him had gone too far, or else did understand him well and deliberately reinterpreted him.

As for "who was Judas"? Well, his second name, "Iscariot," has caused critical scholars puzzlement as well. It has sometimes been considered to be "Ish Kerioth," or "man of Kerioth." Problem — that is a village in what is today the Kingdom of Jordan, or biblical Transjordan, and all of Jesus' other disciples are described as coming from Galilee. Others claim it derives from the Latin "sicarius," which in the plural came to be used for dirk-wielding Jews knocking off Romans and collaborators and hoping to start the revolution. After all, all three Synoptics have Simon the Zealot as a follower, one of the Twelve. ("Cananaean" in Mark is simply the Aramaic word for the Greek "Zealot," and either an indication that Mark was trying to hide something, or, along with some of his geographical befuddlement, an indication of how clueless he was.) Problem — Josephus says the Sicarii didn't arise until the late 50s CE. However, Mark could have used it anachronistically.

In any case, it should also be noted that Paul created the Eucharist. And, he had no Judas in it. And, Jesus likely wasn't betrayed.

Irony alert – New York Philharmonic

The NYPhil is tonight, on its national concert broadcast series, playing Bach’s “St. Matthew Passion,” as conducted a few years ago by Kurt Mazur.

But… Easter was last week. And… Passover hasn’t yet happened.

Will we get Stravinsky’s “Abraham and Isaac” next week? The NYPhil may not even have played that in the past 20 years for all I know.