Judas Was a Good Guy--Who Knew?
Sermon, April 14, 2006
Rabbi Bruce Kadden

Every good story needs a villain.  The story of Purim has Haman, and the Passover story has Pharaoh.  And the story that Christians tell this week as they prepare for Easter, the story of the death of Jesus, has Judas, the disciple who according to the canonical gospels betrayed Jesus.

Indeed, his treachery has become so ingrained, not just in Christianity, but in Western thought, that dictionaries define the word Judas as a “traitor, especially one that betrays under the pretense of friendship.”  In 1994, when former Soviet preside3nt Mikhail Gorbachev appeared in a Russian court, he was met by shouts of “Judas.”

But, we learned last week, a very different view emerges from The Gospel of Judas, an ancient text discovered in the 1970’s, but just now made public.  According to this document, Judas was a favored disciple of Jesus who was given special knowledge and who turned against him at Jesus’ request.

What does this new discovery mean? 

What do biblical scholars say about Judas?

Who was this first century individual who is reviled by so many?

Judas is included in every list of Jesus’ 12 disciples in the gospels.   He is most often called Judas Iscariot, to distinguish him from others named Judas, which was one of the most common names of Jewish boys in the first century.  Judas, of course, is the Greek version of Judah.

There is much scholarly debate about the term Iscariot. 

--Ish Kariot, a man from Kariot, a village of uncertain locale;
--Ish Keriota – a man from the city, i.e., Jerusalem;
--Sicarii – dagger-wielding assassins, a brand of the Zealots;
--shakar – lie, false one;
--sachar – deliver or hand over.

There is virtually no doubt that he was part of Jesus’ inner circle of 12 disciples, although some scholars have a difficult time accepting that Jesus could have chosen Judas to be part of this significant group.  And, according to all of the gospels, Judas “betrayed” Jesus, playing a crucial role in identifying him and his crime to the Jewish authorities.

However, many scholars have pointed out a significant problem with this argument.  The Greek word “paradidomi,” which is usually translated as “betray,” more commonly means to “deliver” or “hand over,” with no pejorative connotation whatsoever.  The linguistic analysis of this word is quite complex, but scholarly consensus is that the word very likely means that Judas delivered him to the authorities and that there is no linguistic basis to conclude that the texts say that Judas “betrayed” Jesus.  This common misunderstanding is based on a later view of Judas, which has been read back into the earliest sources which refer to him. 

According to this interpretation, Judas still played a key role in “handing over” Jesus to the authorities, but this act was one that was recognized by Jesus as part of the Divine plan that would ultimately lead to his death.  If this act is part of God’s plan, then there is no reason to portray Judas as a villain.  In the words of Professor William Klassen, “Judas did his God-given duty and contributed to the realization of Jesus’ mission by handing him over.”

Professor Michael Cook has suggested that the story of Judas as it was developed by the Christian Church is a “camouflaged allegory of the Jews’ betrayal of Jesus.  He points out the similarity between the name Judah and the word Jew in both Aramaic and Greek and charges that it was “employed to stereotype Jews as traitors.”

The story is based, at least in part on two stories in the Hebrew scriptures:

--the story of Judah selling Joseph to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver (Genesis 37:28);

--the story of Achitofel, King David’s advisor who betrays him and then hangs himself (2 Samuel 17:23).

Professor Cook concludes that the accounts of Judas “are not historical,” but a “fictional betrayal story developed in the middle of the first century.  Many scholars would not accept this assessment and conclusion, but it certainly raises serious questions about the historicity of Judas as portrayed in Christian scriptures. 

With the recent publication of the “Gospel of Judas,” we now have something else to consider:  a rather positive portrayal of Judas, who still turned in Jesus, but did so at Jesus’ request.  What are we to make of this discovery?

The “Gospel of Judas” was first mentioned in the late second century by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon, who denounced the manuscript as heresy.  The text, however, was lost, and only discovered among documents found in the Egyptian desert in 1970.  The Coptic text, from about the year 300, is considered to be a copy of an earlier Greek version.  It probably originated in the middle of the second century in a Gnostic community. 

The Gnostics were considered heretics by the mainstream Christians.  They were noted for their dualistic view of God and the world.  One of its proponents, Marcion, argued that the God of Hebrew Scriptures was a different God than the God of Christianity, and tried to exclude the Hebrew Scriptures from the Christian biblical canon.  The Gospel of Judas was apparently created by a community of Cainites, early Christians who considered traditional villains, such as Cain, as heroes because, according to The Catholic Encyclopedia “they suffered at the hands of the cruel God of the Jews.”

Scholars do not consider the Gospel of Judas of historical value with regard to the story of Jesus and Judas, because it was written much later than the canonical gospels.  They may tell us a lot about the community that produced them, but very little about the community about which they wrote.

It is possible that this account reflects an early tradition, alluded to in the gospels of Mark and John, that Jesus chose Judas to hand him over to the authorities.  But the Gospel of Judas has its own theological agenda for this view:  in helping Jesus rid himself of his physical flesh, Judas freed the true divine being within Jesus.  Contemporary Christianity still considers this view to be heretical, as it rightly did in the second century.

As Jews, we can hope that the discovery of this gospel, and the discussion that has ensued, will motivate Christians to learn more about the figure of Judas, become aware of some of the historical scholarship rather than just the textual traditions, and recognize that Judas may not have been the villain that most Christians think he is.

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