Judas Iscariot – Why Did He Really Sell Jesus for 30 Pieces of Silver? Documentary

Judas Iscariot – Why Did He Really Sell Jesus for 30 Pieces of Silver? Documentary 

On a spring evening in around 30 AD, the religious  teacher Jesus of Nazareth shares his Passover meal in Jerusalem with his twelve disciples. He informs  the group that one of them will betray him. While each of the disciples protest their  innocence, Judas Iscariot has already promised to reveal his master’s hideout to the Roman and  Jewish authorities who jointly govern the city, in exchange for the modest sum of 30 pieces  of silver.

 After the dinner, as Jesus prays with his senior disciples at the Garden of  Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Judas leads an armed party towards Jesus and  kisses him on the cheek to identify him to the armed men. Jesus is arrested and delivered for  separate trials before Jerusalem’s chief priest Joseph Caiaphas and the Roman governor Pontius  Pilate, who sentences him to death by crucifixion.

Over the last two thousand years, Judas has  been vilified by Christians as the man who betrayed Jesus and facilitated his arrest and  execution, but is there scope for a more positive appraisal of Judas’ actions? This is the story  of Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Christ. The man known to history as Judas Iscariot was  likely born around the turn of the 1st century AD.

According to mainstream scholarship, his surname  Iscariot, which is used in the gospels of Luke and John to distinguish him from another disciple  named Judas, indicates that he came from Kerioth, a town to the south of Jerusalem in Judea.  John’s gospel adds that Judas’ father was named Simon Iscariot.

 However, this theory  is not universally accepted, and the late Biblical scholar Géza Vermes suggested that  Judas’ surname was derived from qiryah, a word simply meaning “town,” possibly  referring to the city of Jerusalem itself. Another theory is that Iscariot is a corruption  of sicarius, a Latin term meaning dagger-wielder which gave its name to the Sicarii.

 This  was a Jewish revolutionary organisation known for assassinating Jewish elites  whom they saw as collaborators of Rome. While the meaning of Judas’ last name remains a  mystery, his first name was common among Jews in 1st century Judea as the Greek form of the Hebrew  name Judah. In the Old Testament, Judah was the fourth son of Jacob and the founder of one of  the twelve tribes of Israel.

 The kingdom of Judah would emerge as the principal tribe of the  Israelites and, accordingly, the Jewish people. The name Judas was therefore popular among Jews in  the years after the death of Alexander the Great as the region fell under the control of the  Seleucid Empire, the Hellenistic successor state based in the city of Antioch.

 Seleucid rule  came to an end in the mid-2nd century BC following a Jewish rebellion led by Mattathias  ben Johanan and his sons of the Hasmonean dynasty. After Mattathias died early in the rebellion  his son Judas Maccabeus was the preeminent rebel leader, and his success in retaking  Jerusalem in 164 BC is still commemorated by the Jewish festival of Hannukah.

 Another  rebel named Judas the Galilean took part in an armed uprising against Roman rule in around 6 AD,  making him a near contemporary of Judas Iscariot. The etymological associations between the name  Judas and the Hebrew term Yehud, meaning Jew, encouraged the antisemitic view among Christians  that the Jewish people were primarily responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.

 This was despite  the fact that Judas was neither more or less Jewish than Jesus or the other disciples. The  late American theologian John Shelby Spong argued that Judas was invented by the gospel  writers in the decades following Jesus’ death to pin the blame for the crucifixion on the  Jewish authorities rather than the Romans. While Judas plays an important role in Christian  theology, biographical information is extremely thin and is largely contained within the four  canonical gospels of the New Testament.

 Scholars using the gospels as historical sources have to  take a number of considerations into account. Most scholars believe that the canonical gospels  were written in the final third of the 1st century AD, between years 70 and 100. While they contain  historical information about Judea and Galilee in the 1st century AD and demonstrate varying degrees  of familiarity with Jewish Scripture, the gospel authors are not interested in providing detailed  biographies of Jesus or any other figures.

Instead, they convey the theology of fledgling  Christian communities across the Roman world at a time when the followers of Jesus were still in  the process of splitting from mainstream Judaism. The gospel narratives focus on  Jesus’ teachings and his miracles, building up to the dramatic climax of his death  and resurrection.

 Judas only comes to prominence in the final act, though earlier references to  him already identify him as Jesus’ betrayer. Christian tradition attributes the authorship of  the four gospels to the Twelve Apostles and their close circle, though this is rejected by most  modern scholars. The gospel of Mark is believed to have been written in Rome by John Mark, an  associate of apostles Peter and Paul, and is dated to around 70 AD shortly after the Emperor  Nero’s persecution of the Christians in Rome.

This, according to Christian tradition,  claimed the lives of the two apostles. The gospels of Matthew and Luke, written  a decade or two later, are attributed to the apostle Matthew and a physician who  attended to the Apostle Paul respectively. Since they include many episodes found in Mark,  they are believed to have used Mark as a source, and the three gospels are collectively known  as the synoptic gospels.

 Matthew and Luke also share many stories that are not present in  Mark, suggesting that they relied on an earlier hypothetical source that is now lost. The Gospel  of John, commonly dated to no earlier than 100 AD, is traditionally attributed to the Apostle  John, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, though this would imply that he lived to 100.

 Both  ancient and modern scholars associate the gospel with the early Christian community in  Ephesus in what is now western Turkey. In addition to the canonical gospels, there  were dozens of other gospels in circulation, often attributed to other apostles such as St  Peter or St Thomas. These include a Gospel of Judas which was rediscovered in Egypt in the late  20th century and translated into English in 2006.

While these apocryphal gospels offered  alternative interpretations of Jesus’ life, they were excluded from the New Testament canon in the late 2nd century AD in favour of the  gospels written closest to Jesus’ lifetime. While the gospels are the first texts to mention  Judas Iscariot, they are not the earliest works of Christian literature.

 The earliest letters  of the Apostle Paul to the Christian churches he set up across the Roman world are dated to  50 AD. Paul was not among the Twelve Apostles but had persecuted the Christians in Syria and  Palestine before converting to the new faith after receiving a vision of Jesus on the road  to Damascus. Unlike the Christian community in Jerusalem led by James, the brother of Jesus,  which required believers to adopt Jewish Law, Paul enthusiastically spread the word among  the non-Jewish Gentile population without any restrictions. In his first letter to the  Corinthians, Paul wrote of Jesus’ last supper “on

the night he was betrayed.” Some scholars argue  that the original Greek verb paradidomi should be more accurately translated as “handed over” or  “given up.” There is no indication that Jesus was betrayed by any of his disciples. In his Letter  to the Romans, Paul writes, “Since God did not spare his own Son, but gave him up to the benefit  of all…” using the same Greek verb paradidomi.

This suggests that the “handing over” of Jesus  was on God’s initiative and not a malicious act. Aside from the reference in the Gospel of  John about Judas as the son of Simon Iscariot, the gospels contain no information about  Judas’ life before he joined Jesus in Galilee. The name Judas Iscariot is first mentioned in  Chapter 3 of Mark’s Gospel.

 Here he is named among the twelve disciples summoned by Jesus to  the hills of Galilee to join his inner circle. Judas not only appears at the end of the list but  is already labelled as the man who would betray Jesus. The writer Peter Stanford suggests that  this might reflect an existing oral tradition in early Christianity as a reminder to readers  that Judas would eventually betray Jesus.

The gospels of Matthew and Luke follow Mark in  placing Judas at the end of the list of disciples and in describing him as Jesus’ betrayer. John’s  gospel does not include a list of the Twelve but instead introduces them over the course of the  narrative. He first mentions Judas at the end of Chapter 6, after Jesus’ assertion that bread is  his flesh and wine is his blood caused many of his early followers to turn away from him.

 While  Peter declares on behalf of the Twelve his faith in Jesus’s divinity, Jesus replies that even  though he has personally chosen the Twelve, one of them is a devil. The writer of John’s  gospel explains that Jesus is referring to “Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one  of the Twelve, was later to betray him.” According to the traditional interpretation  of Iscariot as meaning “from Kerioth,” the gospel writers emphasise Judas’  status as an outsider from Judea.

This is in marked contrast to Jesus and the other  eleven disciples from Galilee. While Judea and Galilee had been ruled by King Herod the Great at  the end of the 1st century BC, by the early 1st century AD Judea had been formally incorporated  into the Roman Empire as a province. Galilee, on the other hand, retained a degree of autonomy from  Rome under Herod’s son King Herod Antipas.

For much of Mark’s Gospel, Judas is simply  included among the Twelve who accompany Jesus as he spreads his teaching and performs his miracles  to communities around Galilee, operating from the fishing village of Capernaum on the northern shore  of the Sea of Galilee. In the gospel narratives, Peter serves as the spokesperson for the Twelve,  and is part of an inner circle alongside James and John, the sons of Zebedee, while Judas remains  on the fringes.

 He only comes to the fore in Mark’s Gospel after Jesus and the Twelve arrive  in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. By the time he does so, the city’s religious elders have already  identified Jesus as a threat to their authority. Jesus had attracted large crowds and  his message of humility and selflessness contrasted with what he characterised  as a corrupt religious establishment.

Mark begins Chapter 14 with the chief priests  scheming to kill Jesus, before describing a dinner in the nearby village of Bethany, where a woman  pours a jar of expensive perfume on Jesus’ head. While onlookers criticised her for wasting  expensive perfume worth more than a year’s wages, Jesus defends the woman and explains it as the  anointment of his body in preparation for burial, foreshadowing his imminent death.

 Mark then  abruptly reintroduces Judas, who goes to the chief priests and agrees to betray Jesus. While  Mark states that the chief priests promised to give Judas money, he does not set out a motive  for Judas’ actions. Matthew, on the other hand, has the disciple asking “What are you willing  to give me if I deliver him over to you?”. Matthew is the only gospel to name the price  of the betrayal as 30 pieces of silver, which has become one of the most  famous details of Judas’ life.

The sum appears to be a reference to  two passages in the Old Testament, in which 30 silver shekels is associated with the  wages of a shepherd or the compensation paid to a slaveowner for a dead slave, an indication of the  disregard Jewish religious leaders had for Jesus. That Judas agreed to accept this modest sum  indicates that he was not primarily motivated by money, even though 30 pieces of silver  is now shorthand for greed and avarice.

In the Gospel of Luke, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus  is not motivated by monetary considerations, but by him being possessed by the devil. Chapter 22 of  Luke opens with the Jewish religious authorities planning to do away with Jesus and continues  “Then Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, one of the Twelve.

” It is at this moment  that Judas approached the chief priests and the officers of the temple guard to discuss  how he would betray Jesus. As in Mark’s Gospel, the authorities were delighted and agreed  to give him money without him asking for it. Attributing the world’s evils to the devil is a  common device throughout Christian literature. Judas is also closely associated  with the devil in John’s Gospel.

As mentioned previously, John mentions Judas  for the first time when Jesus informs the Twelve that there is a devil among them. In contrast to  the other gospels, Jesus is already aware that one of the Twelve would betray him at the start of his  ministry in Galilee but continues to work with him until his death in Jerusalem.

 In John’s  version of Jesus’ anointment at Bethany, the dinner takes place at the house of Lazarus,  the man whom he had recently raised from the dead. The expensive perfume is poured onto  Jesus’ feet by Lazarus’ sister, Mary. John singles out Judas as the person who complains  that the expensive perfume should have been sold and its proceeds given to the poor.

 However,  John adds that Judas raised this objection not because he was genuinely concerned for the  poor, but that he was the group’s treasurer and frequently stole some of the money for  himself. Peter Stanford observes that it would have been more appropriate to assign the duties  of treasurer to the former tax collector Matthew. Stanford cites the French scholar René Girard’s  view that the portrayal of Judas as a thief reflected the gospel writers’ efforts to present  him as the scapegoat.

 Judas’ actions, as John describes them, are also reminiscent of Jesus’  criticisms of the Jewish religious authorities for misusing temple funds. This has encouraged  antisemitic tropes about Jewish moneylenders over the centuries. While Judas appears in John  more often than the other gospels, John does not mention Judas meeting the chief priests and  receiving money from them to betray Jesus.

Instead, John writes of Satan entering into  Judas and tempting him during the Passover meal. Whereas Jesus readily identifies himself as the  Son of God in John’s Gospel, he is more reticent to reveal his messianic destiny in the synoptic  gospels. This may explain why Jesus does not reveal that he is to be betrayed by one of the  Twelve until the Last Supper, prompting them to protest their innocence by asking among themselves  “Surely you don’t mean me?”.

 In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus avoids naming Judas specifically and  instead singles out “the one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me,” adding that, “It  would be better for him if he had not been born”. Jesus then proceeds to share his bread with all  the Twelve disciples. While Matthew’s Gospel echoes Mark in quoting Jesus’ remark about  his betrayer being better off not being born, he continues with Judas asking “Surely you don’t  mean me, Rabbi?” to which Jesus responds “You have said so”. Jesus gives the same non-committal  response later in Matthew when he appears before

the Jewish Sanhedrin and is challenged to declare  himself the Messiah. It is also worth noting that while the other disciples protest their innocence  during the Passover meal by asking Jesus, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?” Judas addresses  Jesus with the Hebrew term rabbi. This subtly puts further distance between Judas and the other  eleven, implying that while the others are prepared to acknowledge Jesus’ divinity, Judas  only recognises him as a religious teacher.

Nevertheless, Judas is among the Twelve who  receive the bread and wine from Jesus as his flesh and blood, instituting the Eucharist that has  become a central element of Christian worship. While Mark and Matthew have the  Twelve sharing the meal together despite knowing of a traitor in their midst,  Luke’s Gospel reverses the sequence of events by having Jesus announce the presence of a  traitor only at the end of the Passover meal, after the Twelve had eaten the bread and drunk  the wine. In John’s Gospel, Jesus institutes the

Eucharist much earlier in the narrative during the  aforementioned episode that causes many of Jesus’ followers to turn away from him in disgust for his  apparent encouragement of cannibalism. In John’s version of the Passover meal at the beginning of  Chapter 13, Jesus is aware of his imminent death, and the author adds that “the devil had already  prompted Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.” Here, John describes Jesus getting  up from the table to wash the feet of the Twelve.

This includes Judas and is a gesture of humility  that has been re-enacted by churchmen and monarchs over the centuries on Maundy Thursday during  Easter Week. Peter refuses to let Jesus subject himself to the indignity of washing his feet and  proposes that he should wash the other parts of his body as well.

 At this, Jesus told Peter that  the rest of his body was clean, while observing, “But not all of you”, referring perhaps to one of  the other disciples. This becomes clearer a few verses later when Jesus tells the Twelve that one  of them would betray him. Like the other gospels, John has the Twelve anxiously asking  among themselves who the traitor was. In John’s narrative, Peter asks the Apostle  John, who was reclining next to Jesus, to ask him to identify the traitor.

 Taking  a piece of bread, Jesus answered him, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece  of bread when I have dipped it in the dish”. Jesus then passes the bread to Judas,  an unambiguous accusation that is absent from the other gospel narratives. John then  writes that as soon as Judas took the bread, “Satan entered him,” a sequence of events that  suggests Jesus is orchestrating events, seemingly assuaging Judas’ guilt.

 This sense is strengthened  with Jesus’ subsequent instruction to Judas, “What you are about to do, do quickly”. Having  already identified Judas as the group’s treasurer, John explains that the disciples  believed that Jesus’ enigmatic remark had something to do with buying supplies for the  Passover festival or giving money to the poor. This misapprehension allows Judas to leave  the dinner early to report to the authorities and lead them to Jesus’ hideout later that  evening.

 John leaves Judas’ character and motivations open to interpretation by  accusing Judas of financial misconduct, while also suggesting that Judas was acting as an  agent, not only of Satan, but of God and Jesus. After the dinner, the scene shifts to the Garden  of Gethsemane just outside the city walls, and Jesus prays to God the Father as he  prepares to fulfil his messianic mission.

In Mark and Matthew, Jesus asks Peter, James, and  John to keep a lookout, but they repeatedly fall asleep until Jesus sees Judas approaching with  an armed crowd and exhorts them “Rise! Let us go! Here comes my betrayer”. In a prearranged  signal, Judas addresses Jesus as “Rabbi!” and gives him the infamous kiss, a common  greeting among Jewish men of the period.

Judas’ biographers Susan Gubar and Peter Stanford  observe that even in the darkness of night, it would have been straightforward for the  authorities to identify Jesus in the group of twelve and arrest him without the kiss  from Judas, and Stanford sees the inclusion of this detail as a sign of authenticity.

  In Matthew’s account, Jesus instructs Judas, “Do what you are here for, friend”. This is a line  echoed by Jesus’ remark to Judas during the Last Supper in John’s Gospel and once again suggests  a degree of understanding between the two men. In contrast, Luke describes Jesus taking  evasive action when Judas attempts to kiss him before asking his betrayer, “Judas, are you  betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” The Gospel of John does away with the kiss  completely.

 John’s Gospel contrasts with the synoptic gospels, where the party accompanying  Judas to arrest Jesus are understood to be exclusively Jewish priests, officials, and temple  guards. Instead, John refers to a detachment of Roman soldiers accompanied by Jewish officials.  Rather than walking ahead of the soldiers to kiss Jesus, Judas simply stands among them while  Jesus asks them who they are seeking to arrest, identifying himself as Jesus of Nazareth  while asking them to let his disciples go.

The gospels describe an attempt at resistance by  one of the disciples, whom John names as Peter, who takes a sword and cuts off part of the ear  of a Jewish official’s attendant. Jesus, however, orders him to put down the sword. Otherwise, the  disciples flee the scene in an undignified panic. All four gospels famously describe Peter  fulfilling Jesus’ prophecy that he would deny him three times before the crowing of the rooster the  following morning, but Peter would redeem himself by seeking forgiveness and building solid  foundations for the early Christian church.

While Judas makes no further appearance in the  gospels of Mark, Luke, and John after Jesus’ arrest, in Matthew’s gospel he shows remorse after  learning that the Jewish Sanhedrin has handed him over to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor who  has final authority to rule on capital crimes. Matthew describes Judas seeking to return  the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests, telling them, “I have sinned, for I have betrayed  innocent blood”.

 The Jewish elders curtly reply, “What is that to us? That is your responsibility”.  In contrast to the Christian promise of redemption for sinners who repent, the Jewish  priests hold out no such promise. In despair, Judas throws the 30 pieces of silver  into the temple and proceeds to kill himself. The Jewish elders recognise that the blood money  could not be placed into the treasury and instead use it to buy a field as a burial ground for  foreigners, which came to be known as the Field of Blood or Akeldama. Another account of Judas’ death  is found in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles,

believed to have been written by the author of  Luke’s Gospel. In Chapter 1 of Acts, the remaining apostles reassemble in Jerusalem to elect a man  named Matthias to fill the vacancy left by Judas. During the meeting, Peter explains that  after buying a field with the money he received for betraying Jesus, Judas’ body  burst open and his intestines spilled out.

The accounts of Judas in the four gospels  and Chapter 1 of Acts have inspired different interpretations among scholars. Susan Gubar  sees Mark and Matthew offering a sympathetic portrait of Judas as a wayward apostle compared  to the sinister figure possessed by Satan in Luke and John.

 While Peter Stanford observes that only  Matthew gives Judas the opportunity to repent for his sins, the extent to which Judas’ betrayal  of Jesus reflects his own personal failings or makes him a passive agent in a wider divine  plan remains unclear. While modern historians and scholars have examined the gospels with a  critical eye, Christians have treated the four canonical gospels as reliable witnesses to Jesus’  life for much of the last two thousand years.

The prevailing perception of Judas throughout  this period is therefore a composite from all four accounts, drawing heavily on the later and  more detailed narratives in Luke and John. In the popular imagination, Judas is a fraudster who is  motivated to betray Jesus by avarice, handing him over to the authorities with a duplicitous gesture  of affection.

 He is unambiguously a traitor, with no mitigating circumstances such as being  the unwitting agent of Satan, or as Jesus’ active collaborator in the implementation of a divine  plan. As mentioned earlier, the identification of Judas with Jewishness and avarice has inspired the  pernicious antisemitic trope of the greedy Jew. In the same way, the intimate kiss that Judas  planted on Jesus’ face to seal his betrayal has been interpreted as a condemnation  of the sinfulness of homosexuality.

In modern times, as historians and scholars  take a more critical approach to the Bible and other religious texts, the figure of Judas  has been re-examined in a more positive light. This process was furthered in 2006 with the  translation of the rediscovered Gospel of Judas. While the papyrus text in Egyptian Coptic  was carbon-dated to the 3rd century AD, it is believed to have been written  in Greek during the 2nd century AD.

While gaps in the text present difficulties in  interpretation, in 180 AD Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons denounced the Gospel of Judas as heresy. The  Gospel was attributed to a small sect known as the Gnostics, who prioritised inner knowledge  and spirituality and resisted the external authority of the Apostolic Church, which traced  its teachings to those of the Twelve Apostles.

The Gospel of Judas presents a  conversation between Jesus and Judas three days before Jesus’ death. Judas is  presented as the most favoured of the apostles owing to his superior understanding of God’s plan.  Jesus tells Judas that he would experience much suffering and would be excluded from the Twelve,  referring to him as the “thirteenth spirit.

” Later on, when Judas requests admission  to the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus tells him, “You will go through a great deal of grief, when  you see the kingdom and its entire generation”, suggesting that Judas himself would not join  them. When Judas asks what benefit he would get, Jesus tells him that “You will be the thirteenth,  and you will be cursed by the other generations, but eventually you will rule over them”.

 While the  Gospel of Judas also shows him betraying Jesus and receiving money for doing so, Jesus’ spirit has  already ascended to heaven before his arrest, and the crucifixion of his corporeal  form is of little importance. Professor April DeConick has challenged  the positive interpretation of Judas by asserting that the accepted translation of  “thirteenth spirit” should instead be rendered “thirteenth demon”.

 She argues that the gospel was  written by the Gnostics as a parody to challenge the concept of sacrifice, and particularly  the notion that God could kill his own son. While the Gospel of Judas has received  particular attention in recent times owing to its rediscovery, other apocryphal texts also examine  Judas in greater detail, though most of these cast him negatively.

 The 3rd century theologian Origen  of Alexandria offers a more nuanced view of Judas, arguing that while he betrayed Jesus out of free  will, the infamous kiss was a genuine sign of affection. Similarly, Judas’ repentance and death  in Matthew reflects the power of Jesus’ teaching. A century later, the influential philosopher  Saint Augustine of Hippo concluded that Judas was an evil being who was unaware that God  was employing him for the good of mankind.

His contemporary, Saint Jerome, best known as the  translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible, wrote that “Judas is cursed, that in Judas the Jews may be  accursed”. As the power of the Roman Catholic Church increased at the expense of the Western  Roman Emperors in the 4th and 5th centuries AD, Pope Leo the Great labelled Judas “the  wickedest and unhappiest man that ever lived”.

The concept of Judas as a member of Jesus’ circle  who was condemned to hell after his betrayal served as a powerful tool for the Church to  maintain its authority. The view of Judas as beyond redemption was further developed  during the medieval period. An apocryphal text known as the Arabic Infancy Gospel, believed to  have been compiled in the 6th century, describes Judas as a child being possessed by Satan and  attempting to bite the boy Jesus.

 Meanwhile, the apocryphal Gospel of Barnabas, usually dated  to the late medieval period and believed to have been influenced by the Islamic belief that Jesus’  death on the cross was a simulation. It claims that after betraying Jesus, God transformed Judas  as Jesus’ body double, and it is Judas rather than Jesus who meets his end on the cross.

 Other  Christian authors preferred to develop the image of Judas’ death in Acts by describing his body  swelling to enormous size until bursting open. During the medieval period,  depictions of Judas’ gruesome death, often with him hanging from a tree while his guts  burst out from him, adorned the walls of churches. A frieze on the 13th-century Freiburg Minster  in Germany show a hanging Judas with his bowels spilling out from him as silver coins fall  from his hand.

 At Autun Cathedral in France, the hanging Judas is shown with two teams of  devils pulling at the rope to tighten the noose. A similar concept appears on the ceiling of the  Baptistery in Florence, where Judas is shown in Hell hanging from a tree with a devil pulling  on the rope. Devils also accompany Judas in depictions of the Last Supper, such as that on the  pulpit in the Cathedral of Volterra in Tuscany.

While the other eleven apostles are  shown seated at the table with Jesus, with the Apostle John leaning against Jesus as  in the gospel attributed to him, Judas is shown under the table receiving his piece of bread  from Jesus. To clear up any further doubt, the sculptor depicts Satan as a horned beast  with a dragon’s tail sitting behind Judas.

Alongside the association with Satan and betrayal,  the image of Judas with the 30 pieces of silver was often used in Italy as a reaction to the class  of merchant-bankers. These were often viewed as men who enriched themselves by lending money at  extortionate rates to the Church and nobility. The Basilica of St Francis of Assisi, dedicated  to a saint who rejected worldly possessions, includes eleven depictions of Judas, perhaps  as a reminder of the allure of worldly goods.

Such visceral images of Judas’ fate would have  communicated the Church’s message most effectively in an age of widespread illiteracy. However,  embellished accounts of Judas’ depravity are also to be found in popular literature.  In Dante’s celebrated Divine Comedy, Judas is placed in the ninth circle of hell,  the part reserved for traitors.

 Dante labels this part of the ninth circle Giudecca after  Judas, but the same term was used in southern Italian dialects for Jewish ghettos. Judas appears  alongside Caesar’s assassins Brutus and Cassius, being devoured by a three-headed Satan. The Roman  poet Virgil, Dante’s guide in the underworld, tells the poet, “That soul up there who  suffers most of all, is Judas Iscariot: the one with head inside and legs out kicking”.

  Peter Stanford highlights another popular account of Judas’ life in the Golden Legend, a 13th  century collection of saints’ lives by the Dominican prior Jacobus de Voragine which was  one of the most widely read books of the time. Jacobus inserts his Judas tale into his chapter  on Saint Matthias, the apostle who replaced Judas. According to Jacobus, Judas’ parents were  a Jewish couple named Ruben and Cyborea.

One night, Cyborea has a nightmare that she would  give birth to a son who would destroy their race. When the baby was born, they put him in  a wicker basket so he would die at sea. He washes up on an island called Scarioth,  where he is found and adopted by the queen. While the tale is so far inspired by that  of Moses, Judas is an aggressive child who bullies the king and queen’s own son.

 After being  informed that he was adopted, Judas is humiliated and kills the prince. He flees to Jerusalem  and becomes Pontius Pilate’s chief minister. While on business for Pilate, Judas  kills a landowner after a disagreement. Recalling the Greek myth of Oedipus, it transpires  that the murdered man is Judas’ father Ruben. Pilate not only transfers Ruben’s property  to Judas but invites him to marry his widow.

The couple remain unaware that they are mother  and son until Cyborea tells Judas about the baby she had abandoned. After realising the horrifying  truth, Cyborea advised Judas to join Jesus and beg for forgiveness. Having stressed that the tale is  apocryphal, Jacobus follows the canonical gospels in making Judas the treasurer and the man  who betrays Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.

Jacobus combines the two versions of Judas’ death  by suggesting that Judas attempted to kill himself but his demonic spirit could not leave  through the mouth that kissed Jesus. As a result, it had to exit his body along  with his entrails via the rear passage. In addition to these representations of Judas,  many medieval European communities observed “Judas Day”.

 This fell on the Saturday  between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, during which the townsfolk burned  effigies of the treacherous apostle. However, as early as the 14th century, the  Spanish Dominican friar Vincent Ferrer, who would later be canonised, cast Judas as a  tragic figure who attempted to seek forgiveness from Jesus after returning the 30 pieces of  silver to the temple but was prevented by the crowds gathering to witness the crucifixion.

  Judas therefore decided to kill himself so that he could intercept Jesus as his teacher ascended  to heaven. Ferrer’s position was a dangerous one, and he was only acquitted of heresy following  the intervention of antipope Benedict XIII, to whom he was confessor. While artists in  Renaissance Italy began depicting Judas without satanic accoutrements, the Protestant Reformation  doubled down on Judas as an instrument of Satan.

Judas’ reputation as the ultimate traitor  was also evident in Russian Orthodoxy. In 1709, Tsar Peter the Great awarded the “Order  of Judas” to Ivan Mazeppa, the Ukrainian Cossack leader who had served the Russian Empire before  switching his allegiance to Charles XII of Sweden during the Great Northern War.

 Later in  the 18th century, Enlightenment thinkers began challenging centuries of accept Christian  doctrine. The revolutionary writer Thomas Paine, who himself rejected Christian belief, wrote “Why  do not Christians, to be consistent, make saints of Judas and Pontius Pilate, for they were the  persons who accomplished the act of salvation?”. In the mid-19th century, the English writer Thomas  de Quincey cast Judas as a political revolutionary who sought to overthrow Roman rule and informs  on Jesus in an effort to force a rebellion.

The composer Edward Elgar’s 1903 oratorio  ‘The Apostles’ also presents Judas as a social reformer, concerned about improving  the lives of people on earth. Judas betrays Jesus to the Jewish priests in the hope that  they would make common cause against Rome, but after Jesus is handed over to Pilate Judas  becomes depressed and takes his own life.

While Judas was transformed into a revolutionary  hero in radical circles, popular opinion continued to regard him as a traitor beyond contempt. While  Enlightenment philosophers promoted religious tolerance, the rise of nationalism during the 19th  century witnessed a revival in the scapegoating of Judas and the Jews.

 A wave of antisemitism in  France following defeat in the Franco-Prussian War culminated in the infamous Dreyfus Affair, in  which Jewish artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus was imprisoned following accusations of  passing military secrets to the Germans. In 1894, the antisemitic journalist  Edouard Drumont’s newspaper La Libre Parole carried a headline referring to “Judas Dreyfus”.

  Other right-wing newspapers characterised Dreyfus’ defence as “the kiss of Judas Iscariot.” The  Dreyfus Affair dominated French politics at the turn of the 20th century and eventually  resulted in Alfred Dreyfus’ acquittal in 1906. The rise of Fascism in Germany a few decades  later saw Nazi propagandists again emphasise the link between Judas and the Jews.

 In 1934, Hitler  visited the village of Oberammergau in Bavaria for the 300th anniversary of the Passion Play  which blamed Judas and the Jews for Jesus’ death. The notorious 1940 propaganda film ‘Jew Süss’  uses Judas as the prototype for Joseph Süss Oppenheimer, an 18th century Jewish financier and  adviser to the Duke of Württemberg. Württemberg was accused of corruption and ultimately hanged.

  Susan Gubar observes, “Judas stars in Nazi propaganda films not because he betrayed Christ  but because, having done so, he was depicted for centuries in European art with traits that  became the stock in trade of anti-Semitism.” The late Jewish-British scholar Hyam Maccoby  goes even further, claiming that 2,000 years of European antisemitism, fuelled by images of  Judas, led directly to Hitler and the Holocaust.

After World War II, the stereotype of “Judas the  Jew” was relegated to the fringes of political and religious discourse, and Christians began to  acknowledge their shared history with Judaism. This created the space for the further  re-examination of Judas and his motivations. The Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis’ 1953 novel  The Last Temptation of Christ portrays Judas working alongside Jesus to achieve God’s plan.

  Kazantzakis’ Judas rejects Jesus’ advice to turn the other cheek and prefers violent resistance  to the authorities. Despite this, he recognises that Jesus is the Messiah and it is God’s will  for him to be crucified. Throughout the novel, Jesus has human doubts about whether his sacrifice  for humanity would ultimately be worth it. When Jesus decides that he must die, he instructs Judas  to hand him over to the Romans.

 In a controversial episode that outraged Christians around the world,  particularly after it was adapted into a film by Martin Scorsese in 1988, Kazantzakis described  Jesus having a dream on the eve of his crucifixion in which he married Mary Magdalene and  lived to an old age with his apostles. Judas rebukes him for having such considerations  and urges him to fulfil his messianic destiny.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1973 musical Jesus  Christ Superstar places Judas on centre stage, presenting the twelfth apostle as a worldly,  rational man who reluctantly betrays Jesus in order to save the Jews from harsh Roman  reprisals. Meanwhile, the 2005 play The Last Days of Judas by award-winning American  playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis posits that if God’s capacity to forgive is unlimited,  then Judas also deserved to be redeemed.

Within established Christian communities around  the world, Judas continues to be regarded negatively, though he is no longer so prominent  as a scapegoat. In 2000, Oberammergau revised the script of its famous Passion Play to hold  out the promise of God’s forgiveness for Judas. In 2007, shortly after the publication  of the Gospel of Judas, Pope Benedict XVI published an analysis of Jesus’ life in which he  acknowledged Judas’ willingness to repent, though argued that he remained condemned by succumbing  to despair and taking his own life. While Judas

Iscariot remains a byword for treachery in the  21st century, his guilt is by no means clear. What do you think of Judas Iscariot? Was he  an agent of Satan or an instrument of God? Was his betrayal of Jesus motivated by  his evil nature and his love of money, or was it an unsuccessful attempt to  instigate rebellion that he regretted? Please let us know in the comment section and in  the meantime, thank you very much for watching.