I'm also atheist, but I don't have a problem with the Judas story. Firstly, I don't think that the miracles happened as depicted, so a real-life Judas may have thought "I bet he switched the wine and water flasks" or "I know there's just submerged rocks under that water".
Alternatively, if he truly believed in Jesus as a god, then he might think "how could they kill a god?" and would want the silver as he'd expect it to be funny when the Romans couldn't kill him.
It's unlikely that miracles happened as described in biblical texts due to the length of time between the events and the recording of them. I'd also expect people to exaggerate or even fabricate stories to boost other narratives, so there's a whole bunch of uncertainty surrounding them.
I can imagine Judas hearing someone recounting a miracle and he'd be shaking his head and thinking "I was there, that's not what happened at all".
> It's unlikely that miracles happened as described in biblical texts due to the length of time between the events and the recording of them. I'd also expect people to exaggerate or even fabricate stories to boost other narratives, so there's a whole bunch of uncertainty surrounding them.
I don't think that does justice to the historical weight of the New Testament accounts. We have multiple eye witness accounts of the events surrounding Jesus' life, recorded within a few decades of the events themselves and emerging from an oral tradition that placed a premium on verifiable accuracy. The early Church writings we have (for example Eusebius) make it clear how concerned the first Christians were to ensure the historical reliability of their teaching, and how strongly they opposed the spreading of stories that were of doubtful veracity. In fact, the New Testament itself repeatedly tells its original readers to verify its accounts by asking other eye witnesses (e.g. Luke 1, 1 Corinthians 15).
Of course He did, it's recorded in 3 of the 4 gospels the He exorcised demons quite frequently, and He even empowered others to exorcise demons. Indeed people exorcise demons in His name to this day. Just because the gospel of John doesn't mention Him exorcising demons doesn't mean there's any sort of discrepancy - he simply didn't feel a need to include it because he was more focused on the nature of Jesus than His specific actions.
As far as I am aware there are no contradictions on the Bible. People often point to the sorts of cases claiming a contradiction, when really it is two authors describing different aspects of a thing that are all simultaneously true.
More apropos would be the accounting of Judas's death: Matthew describes him as hanging himself, whereas Acts says he burst open in a field. However this isn't a contradiction either: it may simply be the case that he hung himself in a field, then over time grew bloated and burst open.
My point is that out of all the inconsistencies and bizarreness of various bits of the bible, I find the Judas story itself to be plausible and I don't have a problem with it. I don't think the miracles happened as described and most likely have mundane explanations for them (c.f. magic tricks where many audience members can believe in disappearing elephants), but it's likely that Jesus did exist as there's good evidence that he existed as a historical figure (e.g. evidence of his brother's grave).
I think that was the point of the person you're replying to. Either Jesus performed actual miracles, but then the Judas story doesn't make sense; or Jesus was an ordinary mortal, but then Christianity doesn't make sense.
I have heard a story that Judas didn't actually betray Jesus willingly. It had to happen this way and Judas just played his role. Makes the story more tragic and less black and white.
> Either Jesus performed actual miracles, but then the Judas story doesn't make sense; or Jesus was an ordinary mortal, but then Christianity doesn't make sense.
The assumption here is that people will unconditionally believe and follow a person who performs miracles. But human beliefs and actions are more complex than that. People regularly refuse the evidence of their own senses, or that of knowledgeable authorities, if it contradicts their prior world view. They also regularly act contrary to better knowledge if they think it's in their interest.
So I think it's perfectly plausible that Judas experienced all of Jesus' miracles, but out of a mix of personal disappointment (Jesus not living up to Judas' expectations) and greed decided to betray him nevertheless.
If the Jesus miracles happened as described, then it's possible that Judas may have considered Jesus to be unkillable (who can kill a god?) and thus would accept the silver as he could then laugh at the romans' attempts to kill the unkillable - that would certainly explain his regret when Jesus does die for a while. Alternatively, maybe Judas was told to play along with his betrayer role by Jesus as it was part of the divine plan.
There's too many alternative explanations to say that either the miracles were false xor the Judas story was false - I don't see that they're necessarily connected.
> I mean miracles like reviving a person that was dead for days, curing blind people, extremely ill people
I would consider those miracles to have the most plausible explanations. There's any number of medical conditions that can make a person appear to be dead for days and that's the reason that coffins were sometimes fitted with a bell that could be operated by the "dead body" in case they'd been buried alive after being mistaken for dead.
Blindness can be caused by neurological conditions and presumably be cured by a person encountering someone that they believe to be a representation of their god. The problem is that medical knowledge at that time was limited to say the least, so even assuming that the reports are 100% accurate, there's still a lot of uncertainty as to the conditions that were cured and indeed if they were permanent cures.
Personally, I don't think it likely that we have accurate representations of the miracles described in the bible, so it's somewhat meaningless to dissect the stories that were transmitted orally for centuries before being written down (biblical scholars may be able to show that modern bible descriptions have been changed from the original source documents during translation etc. as well).
Have you read the Bible? The walk on water is explicitly described as being very far from the shore on a lake they were all very familiar with, and further it is written that Peter walked on water as well when he had faith, but when his faith faltered he began to sink. That is not how rocks work.
Alternatively, if he truly believed in Jesus as a god, then he might think "how could they kill a god?" and would want the silver as he'd expect it to be funny when the Romans couldn't kill him.