The name “Judas” is still associated with treachery today. Judas Iscariot, a follower of Jesus Christ, is said to have sold out his master to the Roman government in exchange for thirty pieces of silver.
The core of the Christian faith is the legend surrounding Judas and Jesus. Historians, however, are not persuaded that this biblical narrative is historically true.
To begin with, aside from his function as the antagonist in Christian mythology, there is no other recorded record of his existence.
According to Susan Gubar of Indiana University Bloomington, “No one has succeeded in locating any sources of Judas independent of retellings of the New Testament narratives.”
“Very few verses are devoted to Judas in the Bible, and they agree only on his being the disciple who gave Jesus over to the Jerusalem authorities.”
Due to the over 2,000 years of Christian literature that have mythologized Judas as the man who betrayed Jesus, any information concerning the real Judas would have been greatly diminished. What, however, is Judas Iscariot’s true story?
The Story Of Judas Iscariot Presented In The Christian Tradition
The story of Judas Iscariot’s betrayal is included in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as well as the Acts of the Apostles, commonly known as the “Book of Acts.” They don’t go into much detail about the individual himself, such as his family history or place of birth or death. However, every story reveals that Judas, who was once a dependable disciple of Jesus, handed him over to the authorities in exchange for a financial payoff for an unknown cause.
Judas consented to turn Jesus over to the Roman authority in exchange for thirty pieces of money, according to Matthew 26:14–27. He was to kiss Jesus to identify him to the Roman authorities. The reason Judas had to kiss Jesus to recognize him is not explained in the four Gospels, but a 1,200-year-old Egyptian manuscript translated in 2013 implies that it was because Jesus was prone to “shape-shifting,” making him hard to differentiate.
Furthermore, according to the Gospel of John, Jesus approached the apostle before the Last Supper and said, “What you are about to do, do quickly,” knowing that Iscariot was going to betray him.
Every one of the four Gospels portrays Judas as evil. Some historians even believe that his surname, “Iscariot,” is a distorted form of the Latin word “sicarius,” which means “murderer.”
According to many narratives, Judas was seized by the Devil’s spirit, while other accounts claim that he was already a cunning individual by nature. Judas served as the apostles’ treasurer, but John claims that he was also a noted thief and that “as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.”
Despite all, Iscariot was nevertheless regarded as a reliable apostle. Matthias, one of the most well-known disciples of Jesus, admitted that Judas “was one of our number and shared in our ministry.” Judas had to have had some sort of affinity for his master because, according to what Matthew says, once he handed Jesus over to the authorities, he was so filled with guilt that he gave up the money prize and hung himself.
Judas’ suicide was even more pitiful, according to the Acts of the Apostles: “With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, ‘field of blood.'”
What, therefore, would have motivated Judas Iscariot to initially betray his master?
Alternative Translations And Theories About Judas
It’s possible that Judas did not betray Jesus in the slightest and that the Bible misread his identification of Jesus to the authorities. According to some historians, a group of radical Jews had intended to challenge the Romans, their foreign oppressors, by using Jesus’ power, but things had gone wrong in that confrontation.
Judas’ last name may also have indicated that he belonged to the violent Jewish fringe faction known as the “Sicarii,” who were affiliated with the extremist Zealot movement. Comparable to political assassins, the Zealots were known to conceal little daggers, or “sica,” under their clothes so they could stab rivals in the street. The Bible claims that Jesus hung out with well-known Zealots like Simon Zelotes.
The Romans had invaded Israel, and the Zealots were in rebellion against them. They may have found in Jesus a chance to topple their captors. “When they [the Zealots] saw his [Jesus’] ability to do whatever he wished by word, they told him that they wanted him to enter the City, destroy the Roman troops, and make himself king, but he took no notice.” the first-century Romano-Jewish historian Josephus said.
It seems that Jesus, as a religious leader who was apolitical, was not inclined to spearhead an extreme Jewish organization. The Zealots believed Jesus may be the messiah, and they wanted to confront the Romans as one. The Zealots needed to put Jesus on trial to decide whether or not he was the true Messiah. The Greek word paradidomei, which means “handed him over,” is used in the Bible to describe Judas’s encounter with Jesus at the Last Supper.
Judas did not betray Jesus; rather, he wanted to see if the martyr could be the one to lead a radical group in rebellion against their foreign oppressors. This is why Judas gave Jesus up to the authorities. The Romans had this prospective opponent executed because they disapproved of him, whether as a Christian crusader or as a supporter of the Zealot cause.
How Judas Iscariot Became Known As The Man Who Betrayed Jesus
Origen of Alexandria was the first prominent Christian writer to address Judas’ betrayal of Jesus.
Origen disputes the assertions made by theologian Celsus, a contemporary, that Judas did not truly betray Jesus in his writings. According to Origen:
“Will Celsus and his friends now say that those proofs which show that the apostasy of Judas was not a complete apostasy, even after his attempts against his Master, are inventions, and that this alone is true, viz., that one of His disciples betrayed Him; and will they add to the Scriptural account that he betrayed Him also with his whole heart? To act in this spirit of hostility with the same writings, both as to what we are to believe and what we are not to believe, is absurd.”
Subsequent authors emphasized this story even more, designating “betrayal” as Judas’ signature quality. As Gubar pointed out, the church fathers frequently used Judas as a symbol of the Jewish people in anti-Semitic discourse.
As St. Jerome noted, “Judas is cursed, that in Judas in particular, was torn asunder by demons — and the [Jewish] people as well.”
This suggests that the betrayal of the Jews and Judas was the same.
These anti-Semitic beliefs were spread by people like Martin Luther, and they still exist today.
“Now, of course, all the 12 disciples, like Jesus himself, were Jews – yet, as this new exhibition shows, it was Judas who western art chose to depict as the Jew, often with the red hair that marked him out as a betrayer, alongside his mysteriously fair-haired, fair-skinned fellow apostles. The power of the Judas story lives on: his name a byword for traitor, the word Jew and Judas almost indistinguishable in several languages, including German.”
Indeed, some academics—like April D. DeKonick, a professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University—think that the demonization of Judas was used as a justification for condemning non-Christians, as journalist Jonathan Freedland stated in The Guardian.
“His story was abused for centuries as a justification to commit atrocities against Jews. I wonder if one of the ways that our communal psyche has handled this in recent decades is to try to erase or explain the evil Judas, to remove from him the guilt of Jesus’ death.”
The Gospel Of Judas
According to DeKonick, the so-called “Gospel of Judas” is a “lost” document that was composed in Coptic Egyptian in 300 A.D. and found in 2006. The Gospel of Judas, discovered in the 1970s and believed to be a copy and translation of a manuscript from 180 A.D., presents Iscariot as a devoted follower of Jesus who carried out his master’s instructions without question.
According to this story, Jesus asked Judas to turn against him. The Gospel describes “eight days, three days before he celebrated Passover,” when Jesus had a secret chat with his diverse group of disciples. During this talk, the martyr chastises his apostles for failing to see his true nature.
The only one who appears to understand Jesus for what he really is is Judas; Jesus is a divine entity from “the immortal aeon of the Barbelo,” a certain heavenly realm. Jesus explains to him:
“Separate from them, and I will tell you the mysteries of the kingdom, not so that you will go there, but so that you will be much grieved. For someone else will take your place, so that the twelve [elements] might be complete in their god.”
After that, Jesus only teaches Judas about the nature of souls and the Second Coming. In a vision, Judas sees himself condemned. Jesus tells Judas that in order to fulfill his mission, he must betray him. Jesus informs him, “But you will exceed them all,” Jesus tells him, “for you will sacrifice the human being who bears me.”
Unlike the New Testament, the Gospel of Judas seems to represent more of an alternate mystical tradition than historical truth, consistent with Gnostic cosmologies that were prevalent in the ancient Near East at the period. It seems that not all communities in antiquity saw Judas as a traitor; rather, some seemed to view him as Jesus’ favorite disciple.
According to Herb Krosney, co-author of The Lost Gospel, who spoke with NPR.
“Judas is a different kind of character. He’s the person who is asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. And that sacrifice is to sacrifice the life of Jesus in order that Jesus may attain eternity and immortality. And Judas is the one who enables all of us to help find that inner spark within ourselves.”
The Gospel of Judas is thus just another version of his biography, and potentially as genuine as the versions put forward in the Four Gospels and Acts. This narrative, one of several accounts of Jesus’ life that circulated around the Mediterranean, has simply not stuck around very much in recent times.
According to Muslim beliefs, Judas only betrayed Jesus to enable him to fulfill his ultimate objective of becoming a martyr, clearing the apostle in the process. According to a different account, Judas died on the cross in place of Jesus.
It’s possible that Judas Iscariot was just a made-up figure in a story intended to strengthen the case for Christianity as a whole. After all, Jesus would not have died and Christianity would not exist if he had not betrayed Christ. It appears that the several incarnations of Judas serve to advance a particular cause and serve as an example of how something is not gospel simply because it is recorded in the Bible.
