Ben C. Smith wrote:
You stated somewhere that you have trouble imagining why John might add a cohort of soldiers to the narrative, but might it not merely be to highlight Jesus' complete control over the situation? Might it not be the Johannine equivalent of the twelve angelic legions in Matthew 26.53? Jesus could have defeated (and did briefly defeat in 18.6) an entire contingent of trained soldiers (just as he could have summoned a heavenly army to his aid), but he chose instead to go to the cross willingly.
I am very interested in seeking out the potential undercurrents of sedition in the gospels, as in this thread of mine about Bermejo-Rubio's recent work:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2203. But that means I am also interested in eliminating the false positives. Why should this detail from John not be considered as a false positive: a Johannine detail added precisely in order to pay off in 18.6?
There is much to say about this, and many angles to it. First of all, as I've said before, I don't deny that there are literary and supernatural aspects to the Gospel stories, and that many things can be interpreted in several ways. In fact that they SHOULD be interpreted in several ways. After all, the New Testament is sacred text, with a religious purpose. But it is also history.
Is it ever only one or the other? I'm sure that's the case. But the more time I've spent on this, the more I have come to the conclusion that almost nothing is stated in the the Gospels or Acts without a reason. And whenever we cast aside a statement -- as being illogical, or misinformed, or anachronistic, or simply impossible to understand -- the more we should stop, and try to figure it out. Because that which looks illogical is often meant to look illogical. Or rather: to disguise a revelation.
I've earlier brought up Acts 5:33-37. It is so full of "mistakes" and contradictions, that our first instinct is to scratch our heads, and say that that guy Luke (or whatever his name was) sure as heck didn't know much about history. First he says that Theudas -- who did work similar to the Apostles -- had already been killed when the Apostles are brought to the Jewish Council, when in fact everyone knows Theudas was killed much later, in 44-46 CE.
Then he makes an even stupider mistake, by saying that Judas the Galilean -- who also did similar work -- came AFTER Theudas, when in fact everyone knows Judas started his rebellion against the tax census already in 6 CE. The author of Acts even says Judas came "in the days of the census"! So doesn't he know when the census was??
We scratch our heads, and we shake our heads, and we cast the whole thing aside.
But we shouldn't.
Because not only has the author of Luke/Acts just thrown in the names of two of the major rebel leaders of the first century, he has also told us that the Apostles, and their movement, belong to the same category as that of Theudas and Judas -- who were militant rebels. And he has, on top of that, yet again, provided information telling us that Jesus and the Apostles are active later than we think, that they come later than Theudas.
But then he shows he knows nothing ... by stating that Judas the Galilean came even later ...
This pattern of revelation, followed by disguise, repeats itself again and again in the New Testament (and we can discuss different examples of this).
Now why did I bring all this up? I did because I want to put John 18:3-12 in context. No, I don't believe it's only sacred text. And the reason I don't believe it, is that the story of Jesus and his disciples meeting a Roman cohort on the Mount of Olives fits. It fits not only with Josephus's tale of "the Egyptian", but also with the other Gospel narratives. All four Gospels are at pains to tell us of the use of swords on the Mount -- and of Jesus
admonishing his disciples to bring swords up there (Luke 22:36-38). And then they throw in the word "robber", when Jesus meets his adversaries there (“Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a robber?”). But just before then, to make sure we don't start thinking he is
really a robber, the author has Jesus say: ""Put your sword back into its place; for all those who take up the sword shall perish by the sword." (And there, again, we have the contradiction/disguise. Hadn't Jesus just told his disciples that "the one who has no sword must sell his cloak and buy one"?).
One can turn it around: yes, the synoptic Gospels are ambiguous and contradictory when it comes to the combative aspects of the meeting on the Mount of Olives. But the Gospel of John is not.
But if the story in John -- about the battle -- fits, or at least is not contradicted by, the other Gospels, it fits like the last piece of the puzzle when compared with Josephus's story of the final battle of "the Egyptian", on the Mount of Olives (discussed in the beginning of this thread). If Jesus engaged in battle on the Mount of Olives -- and if this in reality happened after Theudas was defeated, 44-46 CE -- I think it's almost impossible to look at the two tales next to each other, and not think that they are awfully similar.
Especially in light of the fact that so many other of the parallels between the NT and Josephus seem to be placed by Josephus in the 40s and 50s. AND that there are a number of non-biblical references to Jesus having spent time as an adult in Egypt.
Now with regard to John 18.6: if this is a description of true combat, then what that sentence says is that the battle raged on, and at some point it looked as if Jesus and his men might win.
Don't forget that in
War, Josephus says that "the Egyptian" had thirty thousand men!