From the San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, 1 April 1994
(No, this is not an April Fool's joke)

SOME BIBLE SCHOLARS SAY JUDAS WAS INNOCENT

By Don Lattin
Chronicle Religion Writer

Christians are told his story every year around this time, but his
name -- unlike Mary's, Matthew's, Mark's or John's -- is rarely given
to their children.

Judas, the mysterious apostle who allegedly betrayed Jesus for 30
pieces of silver, may have gotten a bad rap.  In fact, some Bible
scholars say, he may not have even existed but is just an ancient,
anti-Semitic myth.

"Judas" is a Greek way of spelling "Judah," the ancient Jewish
kingdom.

"Everything about Judas just screams out that this is a
late-developing legend to transfer the blame of Jesus' death from the
Romans to the Jews," said Episcopal Bishop James Spong, author of the
new book, "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?"

Spong's work is among a flood of books about "the historical Jesus,"
many of which portray Jesus as a teacher of wisdom, peasant
revolutionary or social critic -- but not the resurrected savior and
Messiah talked about in most churches.

Today, when the church gathers to remember the crucifixion of Jesus,
Spong and others are suggesting that Christians take another look at
the story of Judas Iscariot.

"It is highly unlikely that there ever was a traitor named Judas,"
said Spong, a popular author and the Episcopal bishop of Newark, NJ.
"And this is a tragedy of enormous dimensions."

Spong delivered these remarks at a recent meeting in Santa Rosa of
the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars re-examining the Bible and
other ancient evidence in an attempt to separate the historical Jesus
from the theological savior.

After discussing Spong's theory, the scholars concluded that the
story of Judas probably arose about 40 years after Jesus' death.

During that period, which saw the destruction of the Jewish temple in
Jerusalem, the early Jewish-Christian sect was struggling with other
Jewish leaders over whether Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah.

JUDAS AS SYMBOL "Judas became the symbol for all Jews who rejected
Jesus," said Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminar.  "The story
subsequently served as the basis for gentile anti-Semitism."

Funk's band of scholars have recently published "The Five Gospels --
What Did Jesus Say?"  It concludes that no more than 20 percent of
the sayings attributed to Jesus were actually uttered by the
carpenter from Nazareth.

Many conservative evangelicals are not impressed with the spate of
new Jesus books and what Christianity Today called "the new,
unimproved Jesus."

"If nothing happened after Jesus' death, then any first century Jew
would have said what many have said since: He was another deluded
fanatic," scholar and evangelical N.Thomas Wright wrote in a recent
cover story for the respected evangelical monthly.

"That is why, as a historian, I cannot explain the rise of early
Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind
him."

In recent years, conservatives in the church have criticized Spong
for his liberal views on gay clergy, Biblical fundamentalism and such
cherished doctrines as the virgin birth.  Spong insists that he
"really cares about the Bible."
