And after the shot, Satan entered into him

And after the sop Satan entered into him. ...

-- John 13:27

LOL, Christianity Today features female contributor who simply ignores the slave language of the New Testament, saying she's no servant

 Human Beings Are Stewards, Not Slaves to God

I’m not merely an inglorious servant to the divine . . .. 

 

She also ignores The Fall in the Christian origin story, which is her topic, and Eve's role in it.

 

What a shock, right?

None is able to serve two lords, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to the one, and despise the other; ye are not able to serve God and Mammon.

 

-- Matthew 6:24

So you too, when you do all the things which were commanded you, say, 'We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.'

 

-- Luke 17:10

 

Truly, truly I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him.

 

-- John 13:16

 

No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.

 

-- John 15:15

 

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ.

-- Galatians 1:10

Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, having been set apart for the gospel of God.

-- Romans 1:1

For the one who was called in the Lord as a slave, is the Lord's freed person; likewise the one who was called as free, is Christ's slave.

-- I Corinthians 7:22

For though I am free from all people, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may gain more. 

 

-- I Corinthians 9:19

 

. . . just as you learned it from Epaphras, our beloved fellow slave, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf.

 

-- Colossians 1:7

Tychicus, our beloved brother and faithful servant and fellow slave in the Lord, will make known to you all my affairs.

-- Colossians 4:7

Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ . . ..

-- Titus 1:1

James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, To the twelve tribes who are in the Dispersion: Greetings.

 -- James 1:1

Jude, a slave of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are the called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ:

-- Jude 1:1

And a white robe was given to each of them; and it was told to them that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow slaves and their brothers who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also.

-- Revelation 6:11

And they sang the song of Moses, the slave of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying . . ..

-- Revelation 15:3

And a voice came from the throne, saying, 'Give praise to our God, all you His slaves, you who fear Him, the small and the great.'

-- Revelation 19:5

Then I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, 'Do not do that! I am a fellow slave with you and your brothers who have the witness of Jesus. Worship God! For the witness of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.'

-- Revelation 19:10

I, John, am the one who was hearing and seeing these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed me these things. But he said to me, 'Do not do that! I am a fellow slave with you and your brothers the prophets and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!'

-- Revelation 22:8f.

John is the gospel of believing in Jesus, the Synoptics are the gospel of actually hitting the road with him

While the concepts of a personal call to "believe in me" and to "follow me" both appear in the Fourth Gospel, the Synoptics do not feature a Jesus who comes up to you and says "believe in me" like John does. In John the disciple is now one who believes, because Jesus in his resurrected glory is no longer possible to follow in the Synoptic sense.

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 

-- John 14:1

Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards.

-- John 13:36

The Fourth Gospel in fact is replete with phrases involving personal "belief" in Jesus whereas the Synoptics contain relatively few involving belief, let alone commands by Jesus to "believe" in him. And we do not have in the Fourth Gospel either what could be called a robust memory of the tradition involving "following". This is because the eschatological urgency involved in the command to follow has disappeared for the Fourth Gospel. 

It is the Synoptics which feature a Jesus who calls people to come with him on the road as the distinctive feature of discipleship. The old world is imminently passing away in judgment. The few who answer his call to follow will be saved. But in John discipleship is now open to the many, to anyone in fact who reads the book and believes, which is the new meaning of following.

But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. 

-- John 20:31 

 

When Jesus himself wasn't just poor, but poor in spirit

Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. -- Matthew 26:38

And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. -- Mark 14:34

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ... Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. -- Matthew 27:46,50

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ... And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. ... And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God. -- Mark 15:34, 37, 39

And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost. -- Luke 23:46

When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. ... Jesus therefore again groaning in himself cometh to the grave. ... -- John 11:33ff., 38

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour. ... Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. -- John 12:27, 44

When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me. -- John 13:21

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not! -- Luke 13:34

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, -- Luke 19:41

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly fear. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; -- Hebrews 5:7f.

Judas had the bag: How poor were Jesus and the Twelve?

 

 

 The Fourth Gospel is the only evidence we have that Jesus and the Twelve had a common kitty.

This "bag" was presumably the equivalent of the small box such as might store and protect the reeds/mouthpieces used by musicians in their wind instruments.

This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

 

-- John 12:6

For some of them thought, because Judas had the bag, that Jesus had said unto him, Buy those things that we have need of against the feast; or, that he should give something to the poor.

 

-- John 13:29

Otherwise in the Synoptics we have references to the personal belt, which was hollow and could store money (Mt. 10:9, Mk. 6:8), personal money bags for coins (Lk. 10:4, 12:33ff.) and provision sacks in which to carry a variety of travel supplies, generally understood, analogous to backpacks or saddlebags (Mt. 10:10, Mk. 6:8, Lk. 9:3, 10:4, 22:35f.). All these feature in Jesus' missionary instructions to his disciples where we learn that they are to carry no money and no supplies whatsoever. This is in keeping generally with the call to discipleship in the first place, to say goodbye to one's possessions (Luke 14:33) and follow Jesus.

Presumably, however, Jesus and the Twelve, being thus poor and preaching poverty, were recipients of charity, and it had to be someone's job to thus be the banker. But such money as there was can't have gone very far and did not amount to very much.

The story of the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 provides a ceiling limit for what Jesus and the Twelve might have imagined to be a lot of money. In it the disciples express incredulity at Jesus' expectation that they come up with the cash to feed so many, knowing as he must have that coming up with such a sum was pure fantasy.

He answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, and give them to eat?

 

-- Mark 6:37

The penny here is the denarius, in Matthew 20 famously considered fair pay for a full day's labor or for even much less than a day's labor, which seems rather over generous (see below).

The parallel in John 6:7 indicates that 200 denarii would allow 5,000 to eat only a little and not be satisfied:

Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.

It should be stated that not even a Roman soldier would have this kind of walking around money.

At the time of Jesus, a Roman legionary received base pay of about 0.6 denarius per day (10 asses), from which the soldier had to provide for his own arms and food. That's 224 denarii per year, from the time of Julius Caesar. So try to imagine that sum in the bag Judas had, and it is not at all credible.

A soldier received other intermittent pay, boosting the base pay on average to as much as 1 denarius a day, and of course out on the perimeters of the Empire he had a reputation for intimidating the locals for additional gain, which would make sense in Palestine given the poor agricultural conditions which drove up the price of daily bread.

And the soldiers likewise demanded of him [John the Baptist], saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.

 

-- Luke 3:14

Content with your wages.

 

Theoretically, the cost of a one pound to one and half pound loaf of bread at this time could be as high as 2 asses or as little as 1, but double this on the poor soil of Palestine. So 200 denarii would feed at the outside 1,600, or as few as 800, with say 1,400 calories each. The conundrum with even 200 denarii means the 5,000 would have to get by on 224 to 448 calories each. While the problem in the story sounds about correctly imagined, the prospect of the availability for purchase of such a great quantity of bread as well as of solving the logistical and distributional problems implied seems as utterly fanciful as the notion that they might have had the means to purchase so much bread in the first place.     

On the other end of the scale it makes sense that the bag which Judas had could often be quite empty, necessitating scrounging operations on the part of Jesus and the Twelve themselves just to survive.

At that time Jesus went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were an hungred, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat.

 

-- Matthew 12:1

And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.

 

-- Mark 2:23

And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields; and his disciples plucked the ears of corn, and did eat, rubbing them in their hands.

 

-- Luke 6:1

The needs of Jesus and the Twelve at a minimum subsistence level of 1,400 calories daily would mean in the hardest of times requiring as much as 3.25 denarii a day (4 asses for one loaf of bread X 13 = 52 / 16). Charity must have played an outsized role in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples.

Hence the centrality of daily bread to the Lord's Prayer, and the fame and survival of the bread sayings generally throughout the Gospels.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

 

-- Matthew 6:25

John's Jesus Sometimes Talks as if He Weren't a Jew Himself, Nor His Disciples

"Little children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall seek me: and as I said unto the Jews, Whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you."

-- John 13:33