Today, I am reading and commenting on Mark 14-16.

Mark seems to suggest here that Judas chose to betray Jesus in response to how Jesus responded to the woman anointing Him with perfume.  Perhaps it appears that way to me because I want to know why Judas betrayed Him.  Maybe more importantly, I noticed that Mark makes the point that Judas Iscariot is one of the Twelve.  I take this as a warning that we should be careful about what we hear from even the most highly placed people.  This brings me to the way Mark recounts how Jesus sent out two disciples to find the room where He would celebrate the Passover Feast with His disciples.  Mark’s account says that “two disciples” went and prepared the Passover Feast and that Jesus and the Twelve arrived in the evening after the feast was prepared.  An independent reading of Mark’s account would lead one to believe that these two disciples were not part of the Twelve (despite Luke explicitly telling us that they were Peter and John).  This is not because Mark is contradicting Luke.  Rather, Mark wants us to be aware that Jesus had many disciples aside from the Twelve, but the Twelve were His closest disciples.  And that Judas was one of these twelve closest to Him.  Judas was not just one of Jesus’ disciples.  He was one of those whom Jesus had sent out with the power to cast out demons.  As close to Jesus as Judas had been, as much as Judas had seen Jesus’ power, he still chose his own course and betrayed Jesus.  Judas thought he knew better than Jesus what Jesus should do.  The more I think about it, the more I believe that Mark intended to imply that Judas betrayed Jesus at least in part because of the way Jesus responded to the woman anointing His head with perfume.  Judas betrayed Jesus because he did not approve of the way Jesus was carrying out His ministry.  I don’t know if Judas was trying to force Jesus’ hand, to force Him to do what Judas thought was the right thing.  Or, if Judas betrayed Jesus because he believed that Jesus was betraying His calling.  In either case, I am convinced that Judas betrayed Jesus because he thought he knew better what God was calling Jesus to do.  We need to be careful we do not make the same mistake.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I have created a Patreon page for those who would like to support me in writing these blog posts every day: https://patreon.com/AttilaSoldus