Judas Iscariot
Judas Iscariot was, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane in exchange for thirty pieces of silver, by kissing him on the cheek and addressing him as "master" to reveal his identity to the crowd who had come to arrest him. In modern times, his name is often used synonymously with betrayal or treason.
The Gospel of Mark gives no motive for Judas's betrayal but does present Jesus's predicting it at the Last Supper, an event also described in all the other gospels. The Gospel of Matthew states that Judas committed the betrayal in exchange for thirty pieces of silver. The Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John and suggest that he was possessed by Satan. According to, after learning that Jesus was to be crucified, Judas attempted to return the money he had been paid for his betrayal to the chief priests and hanged himself. The priests used the money to buy a field to bury strangers in, which was called the "Field of Blood" because it had been bought with blood money. Acts of the Apostles quotes Peter as saying that Judas used the money to buy the field himself, and he " headlong... burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out." His place among the Twelve Apostles was later filled by Matthias.
The Gnostic Gospel of Judas portrays Judas's actions as done in obedience to instructions given to him by Jesus, and that Judas understood the Old Testament God as distinguishable from the true, unknowable God of the New Testament, the Monad or the One. Jesus transcends the domain of the demiurge, revealing deeper truths to Judas. This opens both Jesus and Judas to disclose a broader understanding of the Pleroma, which has inspired artists, writers, and thinkers. The Gospel was denounced as heresy in 180 AD by Irenaeus.
Due to his notorious role in all the gospel narratives, Judas remains a controversial figure in Christian history. His betrayal is seen as setting in motion the events that led to Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection, which, according to traditional Christian theology brought salvation to humanity. Since the Middle Ages, Judas has sometimes been portrayed as a personification of the Jewish people and the Pharisees, and his betrayal has been used to justify Christian antisemitism.
Historicity
Although Judas Iscariot's historical existence is generally widely accepted among secular historians, this relative consensus has not gone entirely unchallenged. The earliest possible allusion to Judas comes from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in which Paul the Apostle does not mention Judas by name but uses the passive voice of the Greek word paradídōmi, which most Bible translations render as "was betrayed": "...the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread..." Nonetheless, some biblical scholars argue that the word paradídōmi should be translated as "was handed over". This translation could still refer to Judas, but it could also instead refer to God metaphorically "handing Jesus over" to the Romans.In his book Antisemitism and Modernity, the Jewish scholar Hyam Maccoby suggests that, in the New Testament, the name "Judas" was constructed as an attack on the Judaeans or on the Judaean religious establishment held responsible for executing Jesus. In his book The Sins of Scripture, John Shelby Spong concurs with this argument, insisting, "The whole story of Judas has the feeling of being contrived... The act of betrayal by a member of the twelve disciples is not found in the earliest Christian writings. Judas is first placed into the Christian story by the Gospel of Mark, who wrote in the early 70s AD."
Most scholars reject these arguments for non-historicity. These scholars note that there is nothing in the gospels to associate Judas with Judeans except his name, which was an extremely common one for Jewish men during the first century. Scholars also note that numerous other figures named "Judas" are mentioned throughout the New Testament and that none are portrayed negatively. Positive figures named Judas mentioned in the New Testament include the prophet Judas Barsabbas, Jesus's brother Jude, and the apostle Judas the son of James.
Life
Name and background
The name "Judas" is a Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Judah, which was an extremely common name for Jewish men during the first century AD, due to the renowned hero Judas Maccabeus. Consequently, numerous other figures with this name are mentioned throughout the New Testament. In the Gospel of Mark, which was written in the mid-60s or early 70s AD, Judas Iscariot is the only apostle named "Judas". shares this portrayal. The Gospel of Luke, however, replaces the apostle whom Mark and Matthew call "Thaddeus" with "Judas son of James". Peter Stanford suggests that this renaming may represent an effort by the author of the Gospel of Luke to create a "good Judas" in contrast to the betrayer Judas Iscariot.Judas's epithet "Iscariot", which distinguishes him from the other people named "Judas" in the gospels, is usually thought to be a Greek rendering of the Hebrew phrase איש־קריות,, meaning "the man from Kerioth". This interpretation is supported by the statement in the Gospel of John that Judas was "the son of Simon Iscariot". Nonetheless, this interpretation of the name is not fully accepted by all scholars. One of the most popular alternative explanations holds that "Iscariot" may be a corruption of the Latin word sicarius, meaning "dagger man", which referred to a member of the Sicarii, a group of Jewish rebels who were known for assassinating people in crowds using long knives hidden under their cloaks. This interpretation is problematic, however, because there is nothing in the gospels to associate Judas with the Sicarii, and there is no evidence that the cadre existed during the 30s AD when Judas was alive.
A possibility advanced by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg is that "Iscariot" means "the liar" or "the false one", from the Hebrew איש-שקרים. C. C. Torrey suggests instead the Aramaic form שְׁקַרְיָא or אִשְׁקַרְיָא, with the same meaning. Stanford rejects this, arguing that the gospel writers follow Judas's name with the statement that he betrayed Jesus, so it would be redundant for them to call him "the false one" before immediately stating that he was a traitor. Some have proposed that the word derives from an Aramaic word meaning "red color", from the root סקר. Another hypothesis holds that the word derives from one of the Aramaic roots סכר or סגר. This would mean "to deliver", based on the Septuagint rendering of Isaiah 19:4. The epithet could also be associated with the manner of Judas's death, hanging. This would mean Iscariot derives from a kind of Greek-Aramaic hybrid: אִסְכַּרְיוּתָא,, meaning "chokiness" or "constriction". This might indicate that the epithet was applied posthumously by the remaining disciples, but Joan E. Taylor has argued that it was a descriptive name given to Judas by Jesus, since other disciples such as Simon Peter/Cephas were also given such names.
Role as an apostle
Although the canonical gospels frequently disagree on the names of some of the minor apostles, all four of them list Judas Iscariot as one of them. The Synoptic Gospels state that Jesus sent out "the twelve" with power over unclean spirits and with a ministry of preaching and healing: Judas clearly played an active part in this apostolic ministry alongside the other eleven. However, in the Gospel of John, Judas's outlook was differentiatedmany of Jesus's disciples abandoned him because of the difficulty of accepting his teachings, and Jesus asked the twelve if they would also leave him. Simon Peter spoke for the twelve: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life," but Jesus observed then that although he himself had chosen the twelve, one of them was "a devil" who would betray him.One of the best-attested and most reliable statements made by Jesus in the gospels comes from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his apostles: "in the new world, when the Son of Man shall sit on his glorious throne, you will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel." New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman concludes, "This is not a tradition that was likely to have been made up by a Christian later, after Jesus's deathsince one of these twelve had abandoned his cause and betrayed him. No one thought that Judas Iscariot would be seated on a glorious throne in the Kingdom of God. That saying, therefore appears to go back to Jesus, and indicates, then, that he had twelve close disciples, whom he predicted would reign in the coming Kingdom."
Matthew directly states that Judas betrayed Jesus for a bribe of "thirty pieces of silver" by identifying him with a kiss to arresting soldiers of the High Priest Caiaphas, who then turned Jesus over to Pontius Pilate's soldiers. Mark's Gospel states that the chief priests were looking for a way to arrest Jesus. They decided not to do so during the feast , since they were afraid that people would riot; instead, they chose the night before the feast to arrest him. According to Luke's account, Satan entered Judas at this time.
According to the account in the Gospel of John, Judas carried the disciples' money bag or box, but the Gospel of John makes no mention of the thirty pieces of silver as a fee for betrayal. The evangelist comments in John 12:5–6 that Judas spoke fine words about giving money to the poor, but the reality was "not that he cared for the poor, but he was a thief, and had the money box; and he used to take what was put in it." However, in John 13:27–30, when Judas left the gathering of Jesus and his disciples with betrayal in mind, some thought that Judas might have been leaving to buy supplies or on a charitable errand.
File:Giotto - Scrovegni - -31- - Kiss of Judas.jpg|thumb|The Kiss of Judas by Giotto di Bondone depicts Judas's identifying kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane
Ehrman argues that Judas's betrayal "is about as historically certain as anything else in the tradition", pointing out that the betrayal is independently attested in the Gospel of Mark, in the Gospel of John, and in the Book of Acts. Ehrman also contends that it is highly unlikely that early Christians would have made up the story of Judas's betrayal, since it reflects poorly on Jesus's judgment in choosing him as an apostle. Nonetheless, Ehrman argues that what Judas actually told the authorities was not Jesus's location, but rather Jesus's secret teaching that he was the Messiah. This, he holds, explains why the authorities did not try to arrest Jesus prior to Judas's betrayal. John P. Meier sums up the historical consensus, stating, "We only know two basic facts about : Jesus chose him as one of the Twelve, and he handed over Jesus to the Jerusalem authorities, thus precipitating Jesus's execution."