If you believe all the miracles are true, you'd see Satan entering Judas to tempt him as kind of a big deal. The kind of thing a normal man couldn't really overcome.
> The kind of thing a normal man couldn't really overcome.
Isn't one of the main points in Christianity that people have free will and so Satan wouldn't be entering and controlling Judas, but would more likely be telling him falsehoods and persuading him to sell Jesus out? i.e. a normal man can always overcome Satan by choosing God, even if it's just right at the end of their life.
You're supposed to have free will, but nobody is immune to the temptations of sin and at some point even the holiest men fail. Jesus forgives all if you ask.
The abolition of slavery was almost entirely a Christian effort. So yes civilization my right be "more advanced" without Christianity, but it wouldn't be a civilization I'd want to be in.
>If you believe all the miracles are true, you'd see Satan entering Judas to tempt him as kind of a big deal. The kind of thing a normal man couldn't really overcome.
So Judas was setup by God? Give him a test that he will fail?
I also hate the story where God allows Satan to kill some extremly good person children to test him and later to reward him the "good" God gives the man other children( f that God, he kills your children, you pass the test and he is so heartless or impotent to restore your children - an average human would not be such cruel)
It's almost as if the whole thing is just stories based on the knowledge and values of the vocal population at the time - women and children being property, mixing crops or fabric being an offense, pigs being off-limits because the parasites killed (depending on your local variation of abrahamism), etc.
My "favorite" part of this is the section of the Old Testament/Torah about "sexual immorality" - if a man violates an unbetrothed woman, the punishment is a fee to the father and marriage to the poor girl. If betrothed, both man and woman is stoned to death (unless it was outside the city), as the woman being guilty for not screaming loud enough to get others to stop the act. Oh, and the reason you shouldn't take your fathers wife is to not "uncover your fathers nakedness" - nothing to do with the woman itself. (Deutoronomy)
The Judas story marks the biblical transition from the Bad Drunk god that was violent, arbitrary, and demanding of human sacrifice (eg. Isaac, Jesus) into the Feudal Manor Lord god that bestowed the divine right of kings. Many a Roman empoeror or medieval European king gained a throne through the betrayal and sacrifice of others following that model and it was justifiable because it had divine precedent.
>So Judas was setup by God? Give him a test that he will fail?
Yes. My theology is rusty, but that is supposed to be what sin is. Nobody is free from it, everybody is tempted and fails.
Judas' great crime wasn't selling Jesus for forty silver, Peter is supposed to have committed the same crime by thrice denying Jesus (that never made sense to me, but it's what I was told). Peter realized what he had done, repented, and returned to Jesus while Judas realized what he had done and let his guilt drive him to suicide. He "betrayed" Jesus' forgiveness.
Like many distinctive parts of the Gospels, the Judas betrayal is included in the story because it lends credence to the idea that Jesus is fulfilling the Hebrew Messianic prophecies from David et al.
