Questioner: If the prophecy of Judas of betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver was…

Hi John-

You may not like my answer, but here goes.

First, there is no “prophecy” in the OT stating that a person named Judas will betray the Messiah for 30 pieces of silver. In fact, there’s no prophecy stating that anybody will betray the Messiah for 30 pieces of silver anywhere in the OT. What in the world was Matthew thinking about? Well, hang on for a sec.

Second, Matthew claims that Judas’ action fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah. But there is no such anticipation in Jeremiah. There is a story in Jer. 32.7-10 about a man who buys a field from his cousin for 17 shekels of silver, but it has nothing to do with the payment of blood money for a burial field and it’s not 30 pieces of silver. And the verbal parallels aren’t even close.

Third, the only mention of 30 pieces of silver being given to a potter in the OT is in Zech. 11.12-13. Unfortunately the Zechariah story concerns a shepherd who is insulted by low wages and who throws them in anger, apparently, at a potter. It’s not blood money at all. And worse still, the Hebrew for potter (yatsar) is very close to the Hebrew for paymaster or treasurer (atsar). The RSV even translates the Zechariah passage with “treasury,” so that there’s no potter at all in the passage. It makes more sense for the man upset about his wages to throw them back at the paymaster than to throw them at a potter. Whether the RSV is justified or not in this translation is a separate issue. Even if it’s rightly read “potter,” you still have serious problems.

My guess is the author of Matthew doesn’t have the Scriptures in front of him and he mistakenly attributes the Zechariah passage to Jeremieh. I don’t know if you can live with that or not. Most evangelicals can’t. It shatters their whole world. I can live with it. If you can’t, then I’m all ears on how we might explain the discrepancy. Evangelicals have typically responded two ways regarding this passage. They’ll say (1) Jeremiah did in fact prophecy what Matthew says he did, but that (a) it didn’t make its way into the text of our Jeremiah (viz., Jeremiah just ‘said’ it, he didn’t ‘record’ it—in which case how did Matthew learn of it?) or (b) the prophecy made it into Jeremiah’s text (perhaps the text Matthew knows of) but was subsequently misplaced by scribes and so is missing in all of our manuscripts of Jeremiah; or they’ll suggest that (2) it was an acceptable practice in Matthew’s day to attribute to Jeremiah prophecies that were not his own. Neither of these apologies works. The second in particular is pretty much fabricated out of thin air.

The only workable explanation on the table is that Matthew has the Zechariah passage in his mind and incorrectly attributes it to Jeremiah.

Lastly, assuming we get clear on the OT passage itself, how in the world does Judas’ action “fulfill” that passage? Neither the Jeremiah text nor the Zechariah passages is ostensibly a “prophecy” per se. So in what sense does Judas “fulfill” anything? Well, here there’s more help, because we do know that “fulfill” had a variety of uses. One very popular application of the concept of ‘fulfillment’ carried the idea of “filling up” or “filling out” an OT event though without any claim being made that the OT passage specifically prophesied the NT event. In other words, the NT event is an example par excellence of the sort of thing a particular OT event is. Thus, JUST AS Zechariah’s 30 pieces of silver represents a failure to recognize the real worth of the Shepherd, SO Judas’ 30 pieces of silver represents the ultimate failure to recognize the ultimate worth of the ultimate shepherd. Judas' betrayal for 30 pieces of silver repeats and fills up the Zechariah passage. But this doesn't mean Zechariah is a "prophecy" of Judas' choice in the traditional sense of the word. Judas might have betrayed Jesus for less or more, or for gold and not silver, and it still be truthfully said that his actions repeat and fill out the Zechariah passage.

The thing about this application of fulfillment is that the original passage is not a prophecy per se. Such applications of OT events in NT fulfillments are conditional. There might or might not occur things that fill out or fill up the OT in this way. So there’s no conflict with the open view.

Tom

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/14/2006 1:12:34 PM (GMT-5)

Post Edited (jefscott) : 8/20/2006 2:12:13 PM (GMT-5)

Hi John,

If you're still checking up on this post, here's an answer that I'd probably give to the question posed on the other board... but please remember that I don't represent all Open Theists (though at this point I think I have a fairly good understanding of it because my husband knows a lot about it and has set me straight many a time), so please keep that in mind.

There are a couple things the person on the other board said that I'd automatically call into question:
 The first statement ending with "...was in fact unknown to God..." doesn't really make much sense. A prophecy that is unknown to God? Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if prophecies are from God, how can a prophecy be unknown to God? Secondly, I'm pretty sure most OT's would disagree with the notion of an event in the future that is settled while God not knowing that it's settled. There might be a small number of OT's that would possibly say this, but most do not. My husband explained 4 of the main differing OT positions on his blog and on prosblogion called Four Versions of Open Theism. You can read his interaction with the comments on both blogs. That might help you understand some of the different positions within OTism a bit better.

The next bit, "God is limited at mans free will", is also something that I'd reword because it leans to a false representation of what OT's believe. This phrase makes it seem that man's free will is stronger than God's potency. I'd say that God has chosen that if we act in certain ways, God will act in a certain way or choose to not act until certain conditions are fulfilled. However, if God delivers a prophecy, I have no problems with the idea of God overriding man's free will in order for that prophecy to take place. Being sovereign, God has the say-so to do so; I think God determined the rules that would be in the rulebook before the game began, so to speak, because God's the ultimate genius.

Lastly, "..., then for the prophecy to be fulfilled GOD WOULD HAVE TO MAKE JUDAS BETRAY JESUS. It makes the prophecy and all prophecy an open confession that God is going to make a person do something for which they have no choice.
In conclusion Open Theism ends up MAKING GOD FORCE MAN TO DO THINGS when in fact the major point of open theism is to show God doesnt know what man will do so the only way God can accomplish his will is to negate the free will of man and enslave him for the moment to a prediction that he must complete." I already explained one possible answer for this, but let me give another answer that also goes along with OT... the most basic claim of OTism is that the future is partly open. Even if most of the future is settled but a small part is still open to go one direction over another, then OT is true (I think...). Thus, if it is already a settled matter that a person would betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, even if it was a settled matter 400 years before the event, God would know it's a settled matter, so there would be no problem with God delivering the prophecy through the prophets. However, I'd disagree with one part of your statement that "God saw what Judas would freely do in the future like we see what we freely chose to do in the past". God wouldn't see what Judas would freely do... God would only see what Judas would do (that is, not "freely"). If it's a settled event, there's no "freely" anymore. It's a semantics game Molinists play, but to me it's incoherent.

But all that being said, I think Tom gives a good argument about the whole interpretation of that passage too. Very interesting and thought-provoking!

Hope this post sheds a bit more light as well!

Post Edited (TGB) : 8/21/2006 10:48:06 PM (GMT-5)

John: 2 good books that will help you on this subject are "Hard Sayings Of the Bible," and "Encloypedia Of Bible Difficulties." I applaud your wanting to give the Bible the benefit of the doubt, rather than simply assume it is in error. Hard sayings sums up the quote as follows:

What we basically have is Matthew quoting at least two texts from Jeremiah and on from Zechariah to show that there was a type of biblical prefiguring of Judas's actions. Given that scriptures in that time were not like ours, Matthew simply gives credit to Jeremiah. It was an acceptable way to attribute the quoting of Old Testament scripture. For example, Zechariah would be part of "The Book of The Twelve," single scroll containing all twelve minor prophets. Further, Hard sayings states that when it came to interpheting the old testament it was common practice to bring passages based on words they had in common. It is very important to take the Bible from its time period and not ours and try to apply our standards, rather than the original time frame.

I hope this helps. Again, I applaud your diligence in your search for the truth.