{"id":25488,"date":"2014-09-20T09:37:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-20T13:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=25488"},"modified":"2014-09-20T09:37:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-20T13:37:13","slug":"the-case-of-the-severed-ear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/the-case-of-the-severed-ear.html","title":{"rendered":"The Case of the Severed Ear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I\u2019ve been meaning for a while to blog about the story in the Gospel tradition, in which one of Jesus\u2019 followers slices off the ear of the high priest\u2019s servant in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:47 <\/a>\u00a0and parallels). Larry Behrendt had two posts on the subject\u00a0back in August, which I had meant to draw attention to before now.\u00a0The first pointed\u00a0out oddities in the story<\/a> \u2013 for instance, Peter attacks a presumably unarmed slave, and yet the response of the arresting party does not involve the use of a sword against him. The second post considers interpretative options, and suggests that the most plausible explanation is that the incident never happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure I agree \u2013 the difficulties are real, to be sure, but it is hard to imagine Christians, eager to depict themselves and their leader as not violent revolutionaries, making this incident up. Why would they have done so? Is it not more likely that the incident reflects something that actually happened, and the oddities of the story reflect an attempt to reinterpret the event?<\/p>\n

It has long seemed to me that this incident might have had a significant impact on the way things unfolded for Jesus. If the arresting party was hoping to\u00a0reason with Jesus and get him to avoid causing a stir during the feast that might draw in Roman troops, or if they were hoping at worst to lock him away until after Passover, they may well have been trying to avoid an eruption of violence, even when provoked. Moreover, for all we know,\u00a0they may have subdued, or even killed, the person who sliced off the ear (assuming it wasn\u2019t Peter), after which\u00a0Jesus prevented his followers from doing anything further. Perhaps none or very few of the rest of them were armed. And perhaps this incident was a major reason why the authorities persecuted the subsequent Christian movement, more\u00a0than anything they believed about Jesus.<\/p>\n

Being interested in this subject, I was delighted to learn yesterday\u00a0that Dale Martin\u2019s work on it has been\u00a0highlighted in\u00a0Newsweek<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(HT Chris Keith<\/a>). I look forward to reading the journal article mentioned there. Take a look at what he has to say, and what other scholars have said in response.<\/p>\n

What do you think about the story? Did someone slice off\u00a0the ear of the high priest\u2019s servant in the Garden of Gethsemane? Why would someone invent it, if you think it was invented? And if there is a real incident in the background, what might be left unsaid in, or covered up\u00a0by, the story as told in the Gospels?<\/p>\n

\"sliced<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been meaning for a while to blog about the story in the Gospel tradition, in which one of Jesus\u2019 followers slices off the ear of the high priest\u2019s servant in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:47 \u00a0and parallels). Larry Behrendt had two posts on the subject\u00a0back in August, which I had meant to draw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":26245,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[2391,2920,3921,4601,5677,6901,8986],"class_list":["post-25488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historical-jesus","tag-dale-martin","tag-ear","tag-gethsemane","tag-high-priest","tag-jesus","tag-malchus","tag-peter"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Case of the Severed Ear<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've been meaning for a while to blog about the story in the Gospel tradition, in which one of Jesus' followers slices off the ear of the high priest's\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/the-case-of-the-severed-ear.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Case of the Severed Ear\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I've been meaning for a while to blog about the story in the Gospel tradition, in which one of Jesus' followers slices off the ear of the high priest's\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/09\/the-case-of-the-severed-ear.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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