by Tom Bissell
Equally amazing is that “Twelve Apostles,” a phrase that today has the resonance of a beloved hymn, appears exactly once in the New Testament, in Matthew 10:2. Its familiarity is rather the result of a kind of synthesis. Matthew’s use of “apostle” in the above-mentioned passage is the only time the word appears in his gospel; he prefers “the twelve” or “the twelve disciples.” Mark, too, uses “apostle” only once. It is Luke’s frequent use of “apostle” that allowed the term its later prominence, though he uses “the twelve” relatively infrequently. John prefers the catchall “disciple,” never uses “apostle” (though he does refer to a “sending” [apostellein] in 4:38), and contains only four mentions of “the twelve.”
If their differing labels and names were not enough, the gospels offer portrayals of the Twelve that are sometimes difficult to reconcile with one another. In Matthew, Jesus does not call the Twelve until after he has begun his public ministry to Israel. He sends them out across the land “like sheep into the midst of wolves….Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.” As in Mark, special attention is given to the “authority” Jesus grants the Twelve over “unclean spirits.” Matthew’s Jesus tells the Twelve this: “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the highest housetop.” John’s Jesus, too, shuns secrecy, telling the high priest of Jerusalem, “I have said nothing in secret.” According to Luke, however, the Twelve are told by Jesus “sternly” not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah.
Both Mark’s and John’s gospels seem to view the Twelve, and especially Peter, in an unenthusiastic light. In Mark, the Twelve are chronically unable to understand his teachings. “Do you have eyes, and fail to see?” Jesus asks them. “Do you have ears, and fail to hear?” One scholar sums up Mark’s bizarre portrayal of the Twelve “as moving from a lack of understanding to complete failure to understand.” Mark even writes of the apostles’ hearts being inexplicably hardened against Jesus after witnessing one of his most astounding miracles!
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Within the canon of the New Testament, the apostles are rarely described as fully formed characters, but then few characters in first-century texts were. The few members of the Twelve lavished with any attention at all are often represented by certain iconic traits. The rest are, to modern readers’ frustration, absent of personality. The Twelve are often depicted in the gospels and Acts as speaking as one and then in ways that disappoint Jesus, such as when he asks them, in Mark, “Who do people say that I am?” “They” answer him: “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” Jesus presses them: “But who do you say that I am?” It is Peter, the most discernible of the apostles in all of the gospels, who answers: “You are the Messiah.” This is followed by one of the New Testament’s most puzzling moments: Peter rebukes Jesus, which in turn moves Jesus to publicly liken Peter to Satan. The brothers Zebedee, James and John, are shown to be aggressive and quick to anger, such as when they ask Jesus if he would like them “to command fire to come down from heaven and consume” a Samaritan village, thereby earning Jesus’s scolding; they later demand to know if they can sit at his right and left hand in Heaven. Thomas, of course, doubts Jesus’s resurrection, and the conniving Judas betrays him. The rest of the Twelve are largely anonymous, mouthing dialogue of no distinction.
There is also the matter of the odd doublings of their names: the two Simons, two Jameses, and two Judases among the Twelve (to say nothing of the numerous other Simons and Jameses strewn throughout the gospels) have long confused even the gospels’ most brilliant readers. Christianity’s appeal is largely fueled by its claims of historical legitimacy: these events happened at this time before these eyewitnesses. Yet the existence of the faith’s most crucial eyewitnesses is uncertain, for nothing outside the New Testament confirms the Twelve’s existence as individuals.
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It is apparent from the simultaneously idealized and obscure account of early Christian history in Acts that very early something happened to the Twelve that either broke their fellowship or diminished their authority. When Paul first visits Jerusalem, no fewer than four years after the death of Jesus, he speaks of meeting not the Twelve but rather only “apostles,” among whom he seems to include James the brother of Jesus. By his next trip to Jerusalem, a decade later, these apostles have vanished. In their place are what Paul now calls Pillars, of whom he has not much good to say. The title “apostle” itself had faded from use, which indicates it was probably intended to refer only to the Jerusalem circle of Jesus’s original followers.
In the early 40s CE, James son of Zebedee, the brother of the apostle John, was supposedly executed, for reasons unknown, by Herod Agrippa I. It is the only recorded martyrdom of one of the Twelve in the New Testament. The ruling authority of the Twelve can, within the narrative context of Acts at least, be judged to have begun to end around this time. When Judas dies, according to Acts, the Eleven recruit community members and restore themselves to Twelve by drawing lots. Yet James’s death merits no such emergency restoration, and the Twelve is no longer Twelve. Because James’s death “pleased the Jews,” Agrippa has Peter arrested. Peter escapes from Agrippa’s prison with angelic assistance, and after leaving instructions to tell the other apostles what has happened, “he left and went to another place” and is mentioned again in Acts only once.
An ancillary explanation for the Twelve’s diminishment has to do with the growing prominence of Christians with little or no connection to the Twelve. In 1 Corinthians, written between 50 and 60, Paul takes issue with growing factionalization within Corinth’s Christian community. “ ‘I belong to Paul,’ ” he writes in scornful mimic, “or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ.’ ” (Note that only one faction attaches itself to an apparent member of the Twelve.) There was also the challenge of absorbing a growing number of Gentiles into what was still a sect of Judaism. The author of Acts plays down the trauma of Gentile impact on the early church, but Paul’s letters suggest that eager Gentile entrants into a Jewish sect created problems that not every prominent early Christian knew how to deal with. The Twelve Apostles are said to have enjoyed the personal instruction of Jesus himself. Despite that, the Christian community they led was, according to scripture, confused about and sometimes even bewildered by the issue of Gentiles. This may be why record of the Twelve’s prominence within the early church is so fragmentary and uncertain, for history does not record a single member of the Twelve, with the possible exception of Peter, as having had any particular impact on early Christianity. It is only Christian legend that tells us otherwise.
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Even after I lost my religious faith, Christianity remained to me deeply and resonantly interesting, and I have long believed that anyone who does not find Christianity interesting has only his or her unfamiliarity with the topic to blame. I think, in some ways, I wrote this book to put that belief to the test.
With few exceptions, the biblical quotations throughout these pages are from the New Revised Standard Version; the translations I have used for other keystone texts (Eusebius, Josephus) can be found in the bibliography. I avoid using the word “Gnostic,” a blanket term that scholars who study the diverse theological variations within early Christianity have largely abandoned; instead, I refer to “heterodox” Christianity. For early Christian beliefs in line with those that, in the second, third, and fourth centuries, became the foundation of Christian orthodoxy, I use the scholar Bart D. Ehrman’s term “proto-orthodoxy.” In matters of dating, I have opted for BCE (before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era). Unless it is within an appropriate theological context, I refer in these pages to Jesus rather than Jesus Christ.
Finally, as a nonspecialist writing about one of the most complicated and widely studied subjects in all of humanity, I do not doubt that this book contains mistakes of fact and interpretation. I have done my best not to distort the biblical, historical, and theological scholar
ship that now informs my understanding of early Christianity. Thus, any and all mistakes should be blamed on the tares of the Devil, he who does not sleep.
—TCB
Los Angeles
January 4, 2015
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* The numbers seven and seventy recur throughout scripture. In this case, seventy apparently mirrored a concomitant Jewish belief related to the number of languages thought to have been spoken around the world; by coincidence or design, it was also close to the number required to assemble the supreme administrative Jewish council known as the Sanhedrin.
JUDAS ISCARIOT
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Hakeldama: Jerusalem, Israel
KIDRON & HINNOM • HELL ON EARTH • THE FIELD OF BLOOD • THE PILGRIMS OF NEW ULM • “FRIEND, DO WHAT YOU ARE HERE TO DO” • THE HORRIBLE DEATH • NAZAR THE SHEPHERD • THE DE QUINCEY THEORY • THE MYSTERY OF THE BETRAYAL • STREET FIGHTING
I.
The first apparent mention of Jerusalem is found on a piece of thirty-eight-hundred-year-old Egyptian pottery. For the vast majority of time since, Jerusalem has been perceived as a remote, baffling place—a kind of world-historical Salt Lake City. Much of its soil is friably poor, and the nearest meaningful river or harbor is a journey of many miles. That this tactically worthless city became the Finland Station of monotheism was one of history’s stranger accidents. God would never have chosen Jerusalem, and so Jerusalem chose God.
Topographically, Jerusalem has nothing to recommend it other than two pretty, undulating valleys, known as Kidron and Hinnom, on its southern and eastern flanks. Both are deep and desertic, stubbled with little merkins of shrubbery and lined with low gray trees that look squashed and drained of chlorophyll. While these naturally occurring moats offered Jerusalem’s early inhabitants considerable protection against invaders, later epochs would nullify their efficacy, allowing Jerusalem to become one of the world’s more frequently occupied cities.
The sun did strange things to the landscape here, vivifying the dominating grays and sands, weakening the greens, and walling off thousands of hillside houses behind shimmering heat-haze force fields. Somewhere ahead of us, the Hinnom valley crossed the Kidron valley, which had a storied past. David traversed the Kidron valley in flight from his traitorous son Absalom. A young Galilean healer named Jesus navigated his donkey along the Kidron valley during his initially triumphal journey up to Jerusalem. Located within the Kidron valley were many of the first century’s most spectacular surviving burial sites—columnar audacities carved directly into the valley’s rock walls—along with the supposed tombs of the prophets Zechariah and Isaiah.
The Hinnom valley—which begins on the western side of the Old City, close to the Jaffa Gate, and turns sharply to slither along the base of Mount Zion—emanated more sinister historical vibrations. According to a fairly obscure verse in 2 Kings, the Hinnom valley is where children were apparently burned alive as offerings to stubbornly enduring Canaanite gods. Jeremiah goes further, quoting the Lord’s fulmination against those who spill the “blood of the innocent” in this “valley of Slaughter.” Later it was used as a place to dump things considered unclean (a rather overarching category for ancient Jews), whereupon all such refuse, including unclean corpses, was burned. These fires’ greasy soot and smoke, some of it redolent of barbecued human flesh, blew through the streets of Jerusalem, dirtying cloaks and staining buildings.
By the first century CE, the Hinnom valley was no longer used as an open-air furnace, but apparently certain associations proved difficult to shed. In Greek, Hinnom becomes Gehenna, a word employed several times in the New Testament. In the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus claims it as a place the “scribes and Pharisees” will be unable to escape, while in the Gospel According to Mark, Jesus refers to its “unquenchable fire.” Here was the rare religious tradition whose creation could be tracked virtually step-by-step. Begin with a site, at the base of a city, associated with child sacrifice and municipal incineration. End with a fiery transdimensional prison imagined as being located beneath the physical world. The Hinnom valley was a place where you could literally, rather than figuratively, walk through Hell.
It was also home to a site of profound but ambiguous importance to early Christianity, though its precise location was becoming increasingly difficult to verify. Jay and I peered together at our foldout map. On it, the boldfaced place-names (Herod’s Gate, Solomon’s Stables, Dome of the Rock, Western Wall) were packed together so plentifully it invited despair of ever seeing them all. Down near the bottom of our map, however—stark and alone but for an italicized HINNOM VALLEY—was our destination: HAKELDAMA. We had been looking for it for close to an hour. Jay suggested we try yet another path. This was his first visit to Jerusalem. It was mine, too, but he was a historian, so I followed him.
A shin-high wall of pale brown stones lined the new path. Some of the previous paths we had explored were blacktopped; this one was not. Not many feet had been this way: the path’s gravel was still loose and crunchy. To the left was the base of Mount Zion, the southern face of which was bare and undeveloped. To the right were rocky cliffs, atop which were quite a few sandstone apartment buildings. That morning it had rained. In a few places, thick spouts of collected runoff rainwater drained into the valley, as though someone were emptying a series of high-capacity pitchers. Along the path were several shallow caves, most of which were barred. We passed a few apparent dig sites fenced off with thin wire barriers. These little excavations all had an ongoing, archaeological neatness to them, but there were no archaeologists working here this afternoon who could help us find Hakeldama.
Jerusalem’s Old City is a place in which even the alleys claimed sites of world-changing historical consequence. Most of such sites are purported at best. Hakeldama was one of the few places named in the New Testament whose present-day location scholars are reasonably sure is accurate, and yet there were no plaques that commemorated it, no signs that announced it, no obvious paths that led to it. Only caves, mud, and bushes.
From where we now stood, we could see at least ten pathways through the Hinnom valley. All of them were empty. Jay, far ahead of me now, found a sandal and, a few steps later, a rubber ball. We jumped off a small ledge onto an exceedingly thin trail that led muddily toward a new clearing. Finally, Hakeldama. Exposed stones the shape of mandibular canines stuck up out of the clearing’s weedy grass. A dead tree, a rampike as gray and hard as concrete, stood near the middle of the clearing, all of its naked branches pushed one way, as though arranged by millennia of wind. A Palestinian woman in a white head scarf and carrying a plastic shopping bag was walking along the ridge above us.
Very little of the Old City could be seen from Hakeldama. We could see the Mount of Olives, whence Jesus is said to have ascended to Heaven and which was crowned with a glittering salt-white diadem of over 150,000 Jewish tombstones. Parts of the mount’s slope were striped with tall, shaggy spears of cedar and blotted with shorter, rounder olive trees, but large portions of the mount were bare. (The Romans cut down nearly every tree in the region during the Jewish War [66–73 CE] in order to build siege engines; the mount had apparently never fully recovered.) Jesus was arrested somewhere on or at the base of the Mount of Olives, in the Garden of Gethsemane, the present location of which is at best an informed guess. According to Christian scripture, one of Jesus’s own disciples guided the arresting party to Gethsemane, and Hakeldama was traditionally believed to be the place where that betrayer met his end.
II.
In the various ancient copies of the New Testament texts that mention it, Hakeldama goes by many names: Akeldama, Acheldemach, Akeldaimach, Haceldama. It is a transliteration from the Aramaic haqel dema and means “field of blood.”
The Gospel According to Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles (universally credited to the evangelist Luke) are the only New Testament texts to mention the Field of Blood. They offer contradictory etymologies of its name, but the apostle Judas, Jesus’s betrayer, is
central to both versions. Papias of Hierapolis, one of the early second century’s most prominent Christians,*1 also linked Judas to a field and described its ineradicable stench, though he did not refer to it as the Field of Blood.
Something happened to the disciple who led the authorities to Jesus. It had something to do with a field. Two thousand years later, Jay and I stood in the middle of a place that had a reasonably valid claim of being that field. Here, many believed that a mysterious and calamitous fate laid its word across the most despised betrayer in human history. Yet once the initial frisson of its notoriety had passed, Hakeldama was lonely and unendurably dull. This was disappointing, but so was much else about Jerusalem.
The zonated nature of the city was perhaps its most alienating feature. No one is allowed entrance to as much as a coffee shop without being passed over by a security guard’s explosive-detecting wand. This is expected, of course. Less expected are the church doors hung with signs that read ABSOLUTELY NO FIREARMS and the Israeli police horses whose agitated eyes were shielded by wraparound Plexiglas visors. The city’s people, meanwhile, lived in something short of obvious amity. Jerusalem’s crowded streets had the phobic, elbowy feeling of a convention no one was particularly happy to be attending. Greek Orthodox priests in black robes and rope belts sullenly ate ice cream beside glum Franciscan priests in sunglasses and floppy hats. Hasidim and head-scarfed Arab women hurried through the streets as though in flight from modernity itself. On King David Street, vendors stepped out into the passing crowd, found someone with whom to make eye contact, offered unbidden directions, then demanded as a reciprocal favor that their new friend look inside their stores and spend fifty dollars.