Secrets of Judas

by James M. Robinson

  In the whole of the New Testament, the literal term traitor is applied to Judas Iscariot only once, in Luke’s naming him as the last in the list of the Twelve (Luke 6:16): “Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.” Is this a mistake on Luke’s part?

  JUDAS ISCARIOT GAVE JESUS OVER TO THE JEWISH AUTHORITIES

  There have been a lot of efforts to define in theological detail what it was that Judas “betrayed” about Jesus, such as the fact that Jesus was the Messiah. But the record is clear in this regard: Judas did not reveal anything about who Jesus was or what he taught or did. Judas simply revealed where Jesus was. Mark makes this quite clear (Mark 14:1–2):

  It was now two days before the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him; for they said, Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people.

  This in turn is a flashback to an earlier comment at the cleansing of the Temple (Mark 11:18–19):

  And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

  Klassen’s main point is that for Judas to turn Jesus in to the proper Jewish authorities is not necessarily a hostile “betrayal,” but rather a proper procedure in the Jewish world of the day. He comes to the following conclusion:8

  What precisely was Judas’s contribution? I submit that in the grand scheme of things, it was quite modest. In discussions with Jesus, he had often heard Jesus criticize the Temple hierarchy. When Judas reminded Jesus that his own advice had always been to rebuke the sinner directly, Jesus may have said that an occasion to confront the high priest directly had not appeared. Perhaps at that point Judas offered to arrange it, hoping that the process of rebuke would work. At the same time, he may have questioned Jesus about his own faithfulness to his mission. All of this could have led to a plan whereby Judas would arrange a meeting with Jesus and the high priests, each agreeing to that meeting on their own terms and with their own hopes for the outcome. This role in the “handing over” was later transformed into a more sinister one, especially after Judas died at his own hand. Whether the reader is able to accept this interpretation of the earliest tradition available to us, I submit that it is at least as plausible as the very negative view of Judas that still pervades the church but rests on a very shaky foundation.

  This alternative is of course fleshed out with undocumented speculation about what might have gone on between Jesus and Judas, and therefore is hardly a convincing argument. Yet it does illustrate the other alternative to the standard view, that Judas was radically disloyal and simply betrayed Jesus. And it does show how The Gospel of Judas could, without too much fantasy, have made Judas into the hero of the story.

  THE SUICIDE OF JUDAS

  Whereas the Gospel of Mark reports nothing more specific about Judas’s fate than Jesus pronouncing woe on the one who turns him in (Mark 14:21), Matthew proceeds to describe in some detail Judas’s remorse and suicide (Matt. 27:3–10):

  When Judas, the one turning him in, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, “I have sinned by giving over innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.” After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.”9

  Rather than this story being a strikingly exact fulfillment of a prophecy from the Old Testament, it is, like several other details in the passion narrative, more likely to be the other way around: the prophecy engendered the detail in the story. The Old Testament was considered a thoroughly reliable source for facts fulfilled by Jesus. One need only read Zechariah 11:12–13:

  Then I said to them, If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them. So they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. The Lord said to me, Throw it into the treasury—this lordly price at which I was valued by them. So I took the thirty shekels of silver and threw them into the treasury in the house of the Lord.

  For example, the detail that those who crucified Jesus “divided his clothes among them, casting lots to decide what each should take” (Mark 15:25), comes from Psalm 22:18:

  They divided my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.

  Such details from the crucifixion story probably do not reflect eyewitness reports. But only in modern times have historians changed their methods enough to question the factuality of details derived only from Old Testament quotations.

  Luke also writes that Judas committed suicide, in a report that diverges slightly from that of Matthew (Acts 1:15–19):

  In those days Peter stood up among the believers (together the crowd numbered about one hundred twenty persons) and said, “Friends, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit through David foretold concerning Judas, who became a guide for those who arrested Jesus—for he was numbered among us and was allotted his share in this ministry.” (Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. This became known to all the residents of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Hakeldama, that is, Field of blood.)

  These two narratives of Judas’s suicide would seem to confirm the fact that he did indeed commit suicide, though the specifics of the two stories are mutually exclusive. In Matthew, he hangs himself, in Acts, he falls forward and ruptures himself. Both reports associate the suicide (in different ways) with the place name “field of blood” purchased with the thirty pieces of silver, but in one instance it is purchased by the Jewish authorities with the money he threw back at them (Matt. 27:5–7), in the other it is purchased by Judas himself with the money he was given, to become the place where he killed himself (Acts 1:18). Since the details are mutually exclusive, one is hardly copying the other. Rather, we should assume that they share a tradition with the overlapping facts that Judas committed suicide and that the term “field of blood” is in some way associated with his suicide.

  THE REHABILITATION OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

  No one in our history has such a bad name as Judas Iscariot. You only have to sneer “Judas!” or say “thirty pieces of silver” or “Judas kiss” to score your put-down, without going into detail. People who have never read the Gospels know what you mean! It is like referring to someone who betrays one’s country as a “Benedict Arnold,” without needing to know any details of his betrayal of the American colonies to the British.

  Maybe Judas Iscariot needs to be rehabilitated! After all, the Evangelists presented the Twelve as quite dull about Jesus’s mission, yet they have become honorific names used to accredit the Gospels of Matthew and John; Peter is said to have rebuked Jesus when he foretold his passion, but Peter’s reputation has shifted from “Satan” to “rock”; Jesus’s family tried to restrain him early in his ministry, but now it is dogma that Mary has been assumed into heaven, where she can be appealed to: “Hail, Mary, mother of God,” as one recites the rosary. Thus the dubious characters in the story have all become saints—except for Judas Iscariot! Has his time not come?

  I have used with much appreciation the appealing and scholarly book by the Mennonite theologian William Klassen.10 As indicated above, he has argued convincingly that the transla
tions betray, betrayal, and traitor are simply not what the Greek term means. Rather it means give over, hand over, turn in.

  This neutral translation is then defended by the account itself. Jesus has been telling the Twelve again and again in great detail that he must go to Jerusalem to die, and reproached Peter for not accepting the fact: it is prophesied in the Hebrew scriptures and hence is the will of God, which Jesus must fulfill. Judas is playing an indispensable role in the divine plan, and surely must know it. He himself had been prophesied already in the Hebrew scriptures (John 13:18): “The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me” (Ps. 41:10). He is just doing what Jesus tells him to do (John 13:27): “Do quickly what you are going to do.” What’s so wrong with that?

  Of course much of this is Markan theology rather than historical fact, which is sometimes overlooked in the effort to exonerate Judas. And even Mark, while fitting Judas into the plan of salvation, does actually pronounce woe on him as well (Mark 14:21). Yet, on the other hand, one notices the bad press Mark gives to the stupid Twelve, Peter (i.e. Satan), and the Holy Family, who are embarrassed by the bad impression Jesus is making as a fanatic and wanting to take him home to keep him out of circulation (though his mother does stick by him on Good Friday to the bitter end, and his brother James surfaces as a leader of the Jerusalem Church). But Christianity has rehabilitated all of them, and so it is a bit inconsistent to leave Judas Iscariot on the hook!

  The argument has been made that Judas may have thought that having the official Jewish authorities investigate Jesus’s claims was the appropriate thing to do, for they would surely understand his message and endorse his ministry. Yet Jesus’s triple prediction of the details of Good Friday in Mark refers explicitly to “the chief priests and the scribes” as perpetrators of the evil, so that Judas would have been the most stupid of the Twelve not to know what would happen if he gave Jesus over to them. It is very difficult to interpret the canonical Gospels as being on Judas’s side. Matthew and Luke do not really clean up Mark’s story to exonerate Judas, and the Gospel of John is the worst of all. To be sure, Matthew and the book of Acts report Judas’s remorse, hurling back the thirty pieces of silver to the Jewish authorities or buying a place to commit suicide, and then taking his own life. Does this not help some to exonerate him?

  Perhaps the most fruitful way to go at giving Judas a better place in our minds and hearts is to recall what Jesus himself said about forgiveness. Not only is there the comment about those who were doing him in: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do” (emulated by the first Christian martyr, Stephen, at his stoning, Acts 7:60). And not only did he tell one of the criminals being crucified with him (Luke 23:43): “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” His own teachings pointed in the same way, in saying after saying, many of which we venerate as the Sermon on the Mount (Q 6:27–38; Q 15:4–5,7; 15:8– 10; 17:3–4):

  Love your enemies and pray for those persecuting you, so that you may become sons of your Father, for he raises his sun on bad and good and rains on the just and unjust.

  The one who slaps you on the cheek, offer him the other as well; and to the person wanting to take you to court and get your shirt, turn over to him the coat as well. And the one who conscripts you for one mile, go with him a second. To the one who asks of you, give; and from the one who borrows, do not ask back what is yours.

  And the way you want people to treat you, that is how you treat them.

  If you love those loving you, what reward do you have? Do not even tax collectors do the same? And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what reward do you have? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

  Be full of pity, just as your Father is full of pity.

  Do not pass judgment, so you are not judged. For with what judgment you pass judgment, you will be judged. And with the measurement you use to measure out, it will be measured out to you.

  Which person is there among you who has a hundred sheep, on losing one of them, will not leave the ninety-nine in the mountains and go hunt for the lost one? And if it should happen that he finds it, I say to you that he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray.

  Or what woman who has ten coins, if she were to lose one coin, would not light a lamp and sweep the house and hunt until she finds? And on finding she calls the friends and neighbors, saying: Rejoice with me, for I found the coin which I had lost. Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels over one repenting sinner.

  If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. And if seven times a day he sins against you, also seven times shall you forgive him.

  So should we forgive Judas? Love our enemy? I do not think the efforts to argue that what he did was the right thing to do under the circumstances have proven their case. But I do think we can stop using him as a whipping boy, and seek a fairer, more forgiving relation to him.

  THREE

  The Gnostic Judas

  The first thing we hear about Judas after the New Testament is—his vindication! In the middle of the second century, a Gospel of Judas was written by a Gnostic sect called Cainites. Of course it was promptly suppressed, but apparently it is this same document that has been rediscovered in our own time. But what did we already know about The Gospel of Judas from the heresy-hunting church fathers who condemned it, and from what we know about how books were written back then?

  The Gospel of Judas is first mentioned by Irenaeus. He wrote his Refutation of All Heresies in Lyon, France, around 180 CE. It is then documented by another heresy-hunter, Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis on the island of Cyprus, in the fourth century. So we have to begin with them.

  The horrified report by Irenaeus tells us a good deal of what we know about how the Cainites used the Bible, and hence how they would interpret the biblical accounts of Judas. In fact, Irenaeus actually mentions The Gospel of Judas in that connection:1

  [Some] declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off what belongs to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fabricated work to this effect, which they entitle The Gospel of Judas.

  Esau, Korah, and the Sodomites are of course very bad company for Cain to keep! And we know a person by the company he keeps! Judas’s associates were so terrible that the God of the Hebrew scriptures punished them severely. Let’s look at the specifics:

  Esau is the older son of Isaac and Rebecca, who sold his birthright for a “mess of pottage” to his younger brother Jacob. As Paul summarizes it (Rom. 9:13):

  As it is written,

  I have loved Jacob,

  But I have hated Esau.

  Or, as Hebrews puts it (Heb. 12:16):

  See to it that no one becomes like Esau, an immoral and godless person, who sold his birthright for a single meal.

  Korah was of course the son of Esau (Gen. 36:5, 14; 1 Chron. 1:35), if not his grandson (Gen. 36:16). Perhaps it is basically the name of a clan. But in any case Korah is given credit/blame for instigating a revolt against Moses and Aaron, about which we will hear more later.

  The Sodomites? This is the name about which you may already be best informed, if you know what is named after them: sodomy.

  Sodom was a large city at the southern end of the Dead Sea that already in antiquity was a notorious ruin. I participated in the archeological excavation of the most probable site, Bab ed-Dhra, back in 1965, though we found no incriminating evidence, of course.

  Abraham’s nephew Lot lived there. He extended oriental hospitality to two angels as house guests. But before bedtim
e, things suddenly took a turn for the worse (Gen. 19:4–5):

  But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house; and they called to Lot, Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.

  God’s destruction of Sodom was notorious already in antiquity, as a warning against committing abominations deserving equal or worse punishment (Q 10:12):

  For Sodom it shall be more bearable on that day than for that town.

  Sodom, along with its sister-city Gomorrah, went down in history as the worst city of antiquity. As a result, their punishment was legendary (Rom. 9:29):

  And as Isaiah predicted,

  If the Lord of hosts had not left survivors to us,