With the reward he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood.

//Bible writers often seem to take liberty with facts, relaying a story more for its meaning than for its historical accuracy. This often leads to what we consider contradictions in the Bible, because we have such a habit of reading the Bible literally. But this expectation of historical accuracy is unfair to the flavor of the Bible. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the tale of Judas, where we have two completely different stories, but with a similar portrayal and moral, ending in a possible factoid … a Field of Blood.

Let’s begin with Luke’s tale, as it seems just a bit more plausible. As in Mark and John, here Judas receives an untold amount of money for betraying Jesus. Afterward, Judas purchases a field with the money, but divine justice catches up with him. He falls in the field, spilling his guts (quite literally), so they name it the Field of Blood.

Matthew tells an entirely different story. In Matthew’s version, Judas receives exactly thirty pieces of silver for betraying Jesus, which is clearly meant to bring to mind the story of the rejected shepherd in Zechariah. (Matthew mistakenly attributes the “prophecy” of thirty pieces of silver to Jeremiah, but it was Zechariah.) Lets look at that story now, to see where Matthew is going with this line of thought.

Zechariah’s shepherd takes the money and throws it into the temple, the “house of the LORD.” So, Matthew revises his story of Judas. Please don’t ask why Judas is playing the “shepherd” role instead of the bad guy; I don’t know. But Judas no longer purchases a field with his money. Filled with regret, he brings the money back to chief priests—exactly thirty pieces of silver, of course—and throws it down in the temple.

In Mark’s Gospel, the story of Judas provides a literary reference to 2 Samuel, where Ahithophel is the betrayer of David … just as Judas betrayed Jesus. In that story, Ahithophel hanged himself, and so Matthew reports the same end for Judas.

But that presents a problem for Matthew. How, then, to account for the field of blood? Matthew finds another solution; in his version, the returned money is used by the chief priests to buy the “Potters Field” because it is “blood money.” Thus the field comes to be known as the Field of Blood.

//In Revelation, seven trumpets blare in turn, initiating multiple horrors upon the earth. This verse stems from the third trumpet, which foretells a great star, burning like a torch, falling from the sky. John of Patmos names this star “Wormwood.”

Wormwood is a bitter plant. John gave this blazing star (or perhaps just a particularly large fireball–many have related the imagery of this chapter to the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.) the name “Bitterness.” It may be a reference to the polluted waters from the falling ash. Deuteronomy uses the term “Wormwood” to warn Israel of their destruction if they become disobedient. If this chapter in Revelation truly refers to the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius, then John connects the pestilence caused by its spreading ash to the covenantal punishment described in the books of Moses.

The next trumpet to sound marks a third of the sun being struck, and a third of the day going dark, an eerily precise description of the ashen haze when Vesuvius erupted, as reported by Pliny the Younger: “The sun was blocked out by the eruption and the daylight hours were left in darkness.” Ash from the eruption reached Africa, Syria, and Egypt, causing pestilence. John’s name for the fireball he describes, Wormwood, is perfect.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

//So begins our story of the creation in Genesis chapter 1. Picture a flat earth, unmoving, poking up out of the water. A bowl, or dome, covers and protects the entire earth, which separates the waters below from the waters above. Doors in the heavens (the top of the dome) allow water from above to come through as rain.  If you would like to think of an enclosed dome-shaped snow globe, one of those Christmas scenes you shake upside down and then turn right side up to watch the snow fall, you’ll have the general idea.

The sun and the moon, the two great lights, track across the underside of this dome every day and night to provide light. At night, most people imagined the stars to be either gods or angels, while some pictured them as little holes in the dome for the gods to peek through. Below the waters is hell (Sheol), the realm of the dead.

But here’s the puzzle. What holds the whole thing up? The Bible actually provides several solutions to the puzzle:

Psalm 24:1, For he hath founded [the earth] upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. That’s all fine and well, but what keeps the earth from sinking into the sea, or at least floating away?

Psalm 104:5, Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. Ah! So we have a foundation beneath us, keeping us stabilized. But it’s still not clear what keeps us on top of the water.

1 Samuel 2:8, The pillars of the earth are the LORD’S, and he hath set the world upon them. Here’s the answer. Pillars! Pillars run down from the earth, through the waters, to Sheol, where they hit bedrock. This was a common belief in antiquity, shared between several ancient Mediterranean civilizations, and the earth’s pillars are mentioned multiple times in the Bible. But not everybody believed this; Job has his own idea:

Job 26:7, [God] stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

Perhaps we’ll never know for sure how it all stays afloat.

King David rose to his feet and said: “Listen to me, my brothers and my people. I had it in my heart to build a house as a place of rest for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, for the footstool of our God, and I made plans to build it. But God said to me, ‘You are not to build a house for my Name, because you are a warrior and have shed blood.’

//So, Solomon, David’s son, built the House of God. The first temple. Right? What, then, are we to make of the story of Hannah? The LORD had closed her womb, and she was growing discouraged about having a child. Hannah’s rival, the other wife of her husband, provoked her.

1 Samuel 1:9, Once when they had finished eating and drinking in Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the LORD’s temple. 

Eli and his two sons were priests at Shiloh, tending the temple, which we now see is the “house of the LORD” from the first verse. Here, Hannah prayed for a son and God granted her a son named Samuel.

1 Samuel 1:24, After he was weaned, she took the boy with her, young as he was, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour and a skin of wine, and brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh.

As the story goes, Samuel ministers to God under Eli, the priest. Then begins the story of Samuel’s awakening:

1 Samuel 3:2-3, One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the LORD, where the ark of God was.

Sorry about pounding my point into the table. I’m just pointing out multiple times over that there was indeed a temple, a House of God, in the days of Eli, 150 or more years before Solomon ever became king. This temple was in Shiloh, not Jerusalem. Where did this original temple come from? It dates, perhaps, way back to about the year 1400 BC:

Judges 18:31 to 19:1, They continued to use the idols Micah had made, all the time the house of God was in Shiloh. In those days Israel had no king.

David’s idea of a dwelling place for God was hardly original. He simply wanted that place to be in Jerusalem, not in Shiloh.

//Here’s a healthy treat that you can enjoy even if bed-ridden. In one of Ezekiel’s more questionable stunts, he lay on his left side, bound with ropes, for 390 days, bearing the sin of Israel. One day for each year of their sin. During all these days, he ate only this bread, so it must be nourishing.

You can try this bread yourself, if you wish. Food for Life sells “Ezekiel 4:9″ bread in yuppie markets everywhere.

Do, however, be very careful about which bread you order. You don’t want to accidentally get the “Ezekiel 4:13″ recipe. After 390 days, Ezekiel was instructed to roll over on his right side, and there eat bread for 40 days, representing the 40 years that Judah sinned. This bread was baked with human excrement. Ezekiel protested, and was granted to right to cook with cow manure instead, but I still think the first recipe is preferable.

Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died.

//Methuselah’s claim to fame is that he lived longer than anybody else in the history of the world. But how did he die? The Bible doesn’t say for sure. Let’s trace his life, and see if we can figure the mystery out.

When Methuselah is 187, he has a son named Lamech. (Genesis 5:25)

When Lamech is 182, he has a son named Noah. (Genesis 5:28) Methuselah is now 369.

Noah’s the guy who built the ark. When Noah was 600, the flood waters began. (Genesis 7:6) Methuselah is now 969, the age of his death.

Genesis 7:7, And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood. Poor Methuselah. He wasn’t on the ark. I bet he could have made it to age 1,000.

(Tradition holds, by the way, that Methuselah died seven days before the flood, and that God delayed the flood for seven days of mourning in his honor.)

When the Lamb opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.

//This is the concluding post for our discussion of the four horsemen, and how they relate to the time of John of Patmos. If this historical-critical treatment of Revelation intrigues you, be sure to pick up my book at http://www.thewayithappened.com

The fourth rider brings the expected climax after the famine and bloodshed of prior horsemen: Death. The color of this horse, rendered “pale” in the New International Version, actually denotes a pallid yellowish-green, the color of putrifaction. Again I’ll quote first-century historian Josephus about the Jerusalem war of 70 A.D.: “So all hope of escaping was now cut off from the Jews, together with their liberty of going out of the city. Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine; and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged.” He goes on to describe the stench of the dead bodies and the thick putrefaction occurring around them. Josephus’ estimate of the number of Jews dying from this war is 1.2 million.

Only by grasping the utter horror of the time can we appreciate the context of Revelation. Written in a period before the tension escalated between Jews and Christians, Revelation is a poem of hope offered to the survivors of Judea, encouraging them to remain true to God and promising better times ahead.

When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.

//We continue our historical-critical discussion of the Revelation’s four horsemen with this, the second of four. This horseman, like the other three, relates to the events of the Jerusalem war in 70 A.D.

There is little to say about this horseman except the obvious: red denotes bloodshed. Its rider steals peace from the earth, which refers to the breaking of the Pax Romana, the “age of peace.” Augustus ushered in this time of peace over 80 years earlier, though Origen would later claim that Christ initiated this period with his birth.

But now, war dramatically shatters the peace in Judea. Jewish historian Josephus writes, “[T]he daytime was spent in shedding of blood, and the night in fear.” He estimates nearly 1.2 million Jews perished in the Jerusalem war, most in the final bloodbath that concluded with the destruction of the Temple. Roman historian Tacitus would say only half that many died, which sounds a bit more reasonable, but Josephus’ number shouldn’t be entirely discounted, because the final siege began at the feast of the Passover, when great multitudes of Jews came to worship–for six hundred years, the Passover lamb had always been slain in Jerusalem. By the end of the war, around the Temple mount, according to Josephus, “the ground did nowhere appear visible, for the dead bodies that lay on it.”

//We’re discussing the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and their probable original meaning as they relate to the time of John of Patmos. This verse introduces the first of the four, riding a white horse.

This horseman speaks of a warrior, “bent on conquest.” Because of the color of the horse, many interpreters imagine the horseman to be Jesus himself. Jesus arrives later in Revelation riding a white steed. But Jesus just doesn’t jibe with the atmosphere of the other three horsemen. These horsemen appear like four faces of evil.

In this light, many have wondered if the white horseman intentionally mimics Christ. Could he be the Antichrist? No, that doesn’t quite fit either. You may be surprised to learn that Revelation never once mentions an antichrist; only a “Beast of the Sea,” which later became associated with the Antichrist, or the Son of Perdition. But the white horseman seems in no way related to the Beast.

Who, then? In light of Revelation’s description of the war of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., one name stands out above all others. Vespasian, the Roman general who stormed through Galilee and Judea terrorizing villages as he approached Jerusalem. The Jewish historian Josephus proclaimed Vespasian the Messiah, so John of Patmos seats him on a white horse, mimicking Christ, the true Messiah. Vespasian also imitated Christ as a healer: healing a blind man with spittle, a lame man, and man with a withered hand. These events would have occurred around the year 69 or 70, about the time Mark penned his Gospel describing how Jesus performed exactly the same miracles.

I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals.

//In Revelation chapter six, a mysterious scroll is slowly opened, as Jesus removes seven seals from the scroll one at a time. As each seal is removed, Revelation’s story directs us to the earth and the events happening there. I briefly introduced this mystery scroll in a post a few days ago.

The first four seals serve to introduce four horsemen. This image of terrifying warriors riding horses of four different colors has fascinated artists, storytellers, and hellfire preachers for two thousand years. But what do you suppose John of Patmos was originally writing about, way back in the first century? Let’s take a closer peek at these four horsemen, and see if we can make sense of the images from a first-century perspective.

Scholars have long recognized the unmistakable similarities between the images used here in the seal-breaking and the Olivet Discourse in Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, where Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. War, international strife, famine, and earthquakes occur in the same order in both the Gospels and Revelation. Luke specifically names Jerusalem as the city under siege, and nearly all Bible interpreters agree that the Gospels, all written after the war began, “predict” the war of 70 A.D. These Gospel accounts, often termed the “little apocalypse,” mirror Revelation in other ways as well:

• The Gospels and Revelation both speak of the Abomination of Desolation.
• Both speak of the gospel first being preached to every land.
• Both speak of the Great Tribulation.
• Both say false prophets will arise.
• Both mention the Son of Man arriving on the clouds.
• Both mention a trumpet sounding the end of all things.
• Both mention a darkened sun and moon and stars falling from heaven.
• Both describe birds feeding on the carcasses of the dead.
• Both were to be fulfilled “soon.”

How have we come to believe the Gospels speak of a different event than Revelation? Surely, as John penned his frightening story of four horsemen, he had in mind the events of his day. The “big apocalypse” of Revelation could only be the “little apocalypse” of the Gospels. Over the next four posts, I’ll describe these four horsemen and their role in the first century.