Judas Iscariot—What Can Be Said For Him?

Judas Iscariot has become to Christian people an object of horror more loathsome than even the devil himself.  The devil rebelled because he could not brook subjection to the Son of God, a failing which was noble compared with treachery to the Son of man.  The hatred of Judas is not altogether virtuous.  We compound thereby for our neglect of Jesus and His precepts: it is easier to establish our Christianity by cursing the wretched servant than by following his Master.  The heinousness also of the crime in Gethsemane has been aggravated by the exaltation of Jesus to the Redeemership of the world.  All that can be known of Judas is soon collected.  He was chosen one of the twelve apostles, and received their high commission to preach the kingdom of heaven, to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out devils.  He was appointed treasurer to the community.  John in telling the story of the anointing at Bethany says that he was a thief, but John also makes him the sole objector to the waste of the ointment.  According to the other evangelists all the disciples objected.  Since he remained in office it could hardly have been known at the time of the visit to Bethany that he was dishonest, nor could it have been known at any time to Matthew and Mark, for they would not have lost the opportunity of adding such a touch to the portrait.  The probability, therefore, is that the robbery of the bag is unhistorical.  When the chief priests and scribes sought how they might apprehend Jesus they made a bargain with Judas to deliver Him to them for thirty pieces of silver.  He was present at the Last Supper but went and betrayed his Lord.  A few hours afterwards, when he found out that condemnation to death followed, he repented himself and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to his employers, declared that he had sinned in betraying innocent blood, cast down the money at their feet, and went and hanged himself.

This is all that is discoverable about Judas, and it has been considered sufficient for a damnation deeper than any allotted to the worst of the sons of Adam.  Dante places him in the lowest round of the ninth or last of the hellish circles, where he is eternally “champed” by Satan, “bruised as with ponderous engine,” his head within the diabolic jaws and “plying the feet without.”  In the absence of a biography with details, it is impossible to make out with accuracy what the real Judas was.  We can, however, by dispassionate examination of the facts determine their sole import, and if we indulge in inferences we can deduce those which are fairly probable.  As Judas was treasurer, he must have been trusted.  He could hardly have been naturally covetous, for he had given up in common with the other disciples much, if not all, to follow Jesus.  The thirty pieces of silver—some four or five pounds of our money—could not have been considered by him as a sufficient bribe for the ignominy of a treason which was to end in legal murder.  He ought perhaps to have been able to measure the ferocity of an established ecclesiastical order and to have known what would have been the consequence of handing over to it perfect, and therefore heretical, sincerity and purity, but there is no evidence that he did know: nay, we are distinctly informed, as we have just seen, that when he became aware what was going to happen his sorrow for his wicked deed took a very practical shape.

We cannot allege with confidence that it was any permanent loss of personal attachment to Jesus which brought about his defection.  It came when the belief in a theocracy near at hand filled the minds of the disciples.  These ignorant Galilean fishermen expected that in a very short time they would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.  The custodian of the bag, gifted with more common sense than his colleagues, probably foresaw the danger of a collision with Rome, and may have desired by a timely arrest to prevent an open revolt, which would have meant immediate destruction of the whole band with women and children.  Can any position be imagined more irritating that that of a careful man of business who is keeper of the purse for a company of heedless enthusiasts professing complete indifference to the value of money, misunderstanding the genius of their chief, and looking out every morning for some sign in the clouds, a prophecy of their immediate appointment as vicegerents of a power that would supersede the awful majesty of the Imperial city?  He may have been heated by a long series of petty annoyances to such a degree that at last they may have ended in rage and a sudden flinging loose of himself from the society.  It is the impulsive man who frequently suffers what appears to be inversion, and Judas was impulsive exceedingly.  Matthew, and Matthew only, says that Judas asked for money from the chief priests.  “What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you?”  According to Mark, whose account of the transaction is the same as Luke’s, “Judas . . . went unto the chief priests to betray Him unto them.  And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money.”  If the priests were the tempters, a slight difference is established in favour of Judas, but this we will neglect.  The sin of taking money and joining in that last meal in any case is black enough, although, as we have before pointed out, Judas did not at the time know what the other side of the bargain was.  Admitting, however, everything that can fairly be urged against him, all that can be affirmed with certainty is that we are in the presence of strange and unaccountable inconsistency, and that an apostle who had abandoned his home, who had followed Jesus for three years amidst contempt and persecution, and who at last slew himself in self-reproach, could be capable of committing the meanest of sins.  Is the co-existence of irreconcilable opposites in human nature anything new?  The story of Judas may be of some value if it reminds us that man is incalculable, and that, although in theory, and no doubt in reality, he is a unity, the point from which the divergent forces in him rise is often infinitely beyond our exploration; a lesson not merely in psychology but for our own guidance, a warning that side by side with heroic virtues there may sleep in us not only detestable vices, but vices by which those virtues are contradicted and even for the time annihilated.  The mode of betrayal, with a kiss, has justly excited loathing, but it is totally unintelligible.  Why should he have taken the trouble to be so base when the movement of a finger would have sufficed?  Why was any sign necessary to indicate one who was so well known?  The supposition that the devil compelled him to superfluous villainy in order that he might be secured with greater certainty and tortured with greater subtlety is one that can hardly be entertained except by theologians.  It is equally difficult to understand why Jesus submitted to such an insult, and why Peter should not have smitten down its perpetrator.  Peter was able to draw his sword, and it would have been safer and more natural to kill Judas than to cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant.  John, who shows a special dislike to Judas, knows nothing of the kiss.  According to John, Jesus asked the soldiers whom they sought, and then stepped boldly forward and declared Himself.  “Judas,” adds John, “was standing with them.”  As John took such particular notice of what happened, the absence of the kiss in his account can hardly have been accidental.  It is a sound maxim in criticism that what is simply difficult of explanation is likely to be authentic.  An awkward reading in a manuscript is to be preferred to one which is easier.  But an historical improbability, especially if no corroboration of it is to be found in a better authority, may be set aside, and in this case we are justified in neglecting the kiss.  Whatever may have been the exact shade of darkness in the crime of Judas, it was avenged with singular swiftness, and he himself was the avenger.  He did not slink away quietly and poison himself in a ditch.  He boldly encountered the sacred college, confessed his sin and the innocence of the man they were about to crucify.  Compared with these pious miscreants who had no scruples about corrupting one of the disciples, but shuddered at the thought of putting back into the treasury the money they had taken from it, Judas becomes noble.  His remorse is so unendurable that it drives him to suicide.

If a record could be kept of those who have abjured Jesus through love of gold, through fear of the world or of the scribes and Pharisees, we should find many who are considered quite respectable, or have even been canonised, and who, nevertheless, much more worthily than Iscariot, are entitled to “champing” by the jaws of Sathanas.  Not a single scrap from Judas himself has reached us.  He underwent no trial, and is condemned without plea or excuse on his own behalf, and with no cross-examination of the evidence.  No witnesses have been called to his character.  What would his friends at Kerioth have said for him?  What would Jesus have said?  If He had met Judas with the halter in his hand would He not have stopped him?  Ah!  I can see the Divine touch on the shoulder, the passionate prostration of the repentant in the dust, the hands gently lifting him, the forgiveness because he knew not what he did, and the seal of a kiss indeed from the sacred lips.