Judas Iscariot

Judas Iscariot (died c. 30 ce) was one of the Twelve Apostles, notorious for betraying Jesus. Judas’s surname is more probably a corruption of the Latin sicarius (“murderer” or “assassin”) than an indication of family origin, suggesting that he would have belonged to the Sicarii, the most radical Jewish group, some of whom were terrorists. Other than his apostleship, his betrayal, and his death, little else is revealed about Judas in the Gospels. Always the last on the list of the Apostles, he was their treasurer. John 12:6 introduces Judas’s thievery by saying, “as he had the money box he used to take what was put into it.”

He disclosed Jesus’ whereabouts to the chief priests and elders for 30 pieces of silver. They provided the armed guard that he brought to the Garden of Gethsemane, near Jerusalem, where Jesus went to pray with the other 11 Apostles after the Last Supper. There he identified Jesus with a kiss, addressing him as “master.” Matthew 26:14–16 and John 12:6 designate Judas’s motive as avarice, but Luke 22:3–6 ascribes his action to the entrance of Satan into his body, paralleling John 13:27, where, after Judas took the bread at the Last Supper, “Satan entered into him.” Jesus then says, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” This is the culmination of John 6:70–71, which, after Jesus says, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve, and one of you is a devil?” discloses that he meant “Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was to betray him.”

There are variant traditions about Judas’s death. According to Matthew 27:3–10, he repented after seeing Jesus condemned to death, then returned the silver and hanged himself (traditionally from the Judas tree). In Acts 1:18, he “bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out,” implying that he threw himself down, rather than that he died accidentally. Apocryphal gospels developed the point in Acts that calls the spot of his death the place (field) of blood. The 1st/2nd-century Apostolic Father Papias is quoted to have given macabre details about Judas’s death, presumably to show that Gospel prophecies were literally fulfilled. His account appears in numerous legends, particularly in Coptic works, and in medieval literature. In Dante’s Inferno Judas appears in the deepest chasm of hell with Julius Caesar’s assassins, Brutus and Cassius.

Although his name subsequently became associated with traitor (a Judas) and treacherous kiss (a Judas kiss), not all depictions of Judas portrayed him as betraying Jesus. In Muslim polemic literature, Judas ceases to be a traitor; instead, he supposedly lied to the Jews in order to defend Jesus (who was not crucified). The 14th-century cosmographer al-Dimashqī maintains that Judas assumed Jesus’ likeness and was crucified in his place. The 2nd-century apocryphal Gospel of Judas, a gnostic text written in Greek, depicts him as a collaborator and close confidant of Jesus. According to the gospel—a Coptic translation from circa 300 was discovered in the 1970s and published in 2006—Judas was the only apostle who understood Jesus’ message. In the account of the gospel, during the celebration of Passover, Jesus takes Judas aside and reveals secret knowledge about God and creation to him, declaring that Judas is greater than the other Apostles. Jesus seems to instruct Judas to report him to the authorities, so that Jesus’ spiritual self may escape from the material body in which it is trapped. See also gnosticism.