for For 2 ,000 years, I think it's safe to say,
Judas Iscariot has been the undisputed ultimate
villain of Western history. Oh, absolutely. I
mean, his name alone is basically a curse word
in multiple languages. Right. But when you bypass
the Sunday school version and dive into the actual
historical and biblical texts and the apocryphal
texts, too, the man who handed over Jesus becomes
a massive historical puzzle. He really does.
So today we are looking at a really fascinating
stack of sources. We've got comprehensive Wikipedia
entries detailing the canonical gospels, obscure
apocryphal texts, and deep modern historical
analyses. All focused on trying to understand
this single incredibly debated figure. Exactly.
And our goal today isn't to preach or take sides
in 2 ,000 -year -old theological debates. Right.
For you, the listener, who probably already knows
the basic outline of the story, we are just here
to look at the historical breadcrumbs. We want
to see what these diverse texts actually say
without endorsing any particular... religious,
or political viewpoint. Just following the evidence.
Yeah, okay, let's unpack this. It is quite the
unpacking job, too. Because while the headline
is universally known, Judas betrayed Jesus for
30 pieces of silver, the actual historical record
is remarkably fractured. Fractured how? You have
conflicting ancient stories, shifting theological
agendas, and massive cultural impacts over the
centuries. When you look closely at the sources,
Judas isn't just a one dimensional bad guy. No.
He functions more like a mirror reflecting the
anxieties of early Christian communities. And
that historical puzzle actually begins with his
name. Because today, nobody names their child
Judas. But in the first century Judean world,
it was an incredibly common, highly respected
name. Very popular. Yeah, it comes from the Hebrew
Judah, which literally means praise. And the
New Testament itself is full of quote -unquote
good Judases. Right. You've got the prophet Judas
Barsabbas, Jesus' own brother Jude, and another
apostle actually named... Judas, son of James.
And that commonality plays directly into a massive
debate about his historicity. Like whether he
even existed at all. Exactly. The question being,
did Judas Iscariot actually exist? Or was he
a literary invention? Scholars like Haya Mokobi
and John Shelby Spung have argued that Judas
was entirely contrived by early Christian writers.
What's their reasoning for that? Their theory
is that the character was invented as an attack
on the Judean religious establishment. to blame
them for executing Jesus. Essentially, they argue
the story was crafted specifically to foster
early anti -Semitism. Using a character named
Judas as a stand -in for the Judeans. Precisely.
But if that story is so convenient for an anti
-establishment narrative, why do mainstream historians
largely reject the idea that he was entirely
made up? It comes down to something historians
call the criterion of embarrassment. Okay. When
analyzing ancient texts, scholars operate on
the assumption that early followers would be
highly unlikely to invent a story that made their
leader look foolish. Or like a terrible judge
of character. Right. Why make up a story that
one of Jesus' hand -picked inner circle of 12
disciples turned on him? It creates a massive
PR problem for a fledgling religion. That makes
sense. Furthermore, the earliest allusion to
the betrayal doesn't even come from the Gospels.
It comes from Paul in 1 Corinthians. Paul uses
the Greek word paradimi, which most translate
as handed over or betrayed. So he was likely
a real historical figure. Most historians agree,
yes. But because Judas was basically the John
or Michael of the first century, they had to
distinguish him. Hence Judas Iscariot. Right.
And the sources present some wild theories on
what Iscariot actually means. It's a linguistic
mystery all on its own. The most widely accepted
theory is that it's a Greek rendering of the
Hebrew ikrios, meaning man from Kerioth. Referencing
a specific town. Yes, but that is far from settled.
Some scholars suggest it's a corruption of the
Latin word sicarius, meaning dagger man or assassin.
Which would link him to the Sicarii. Exactly.
That group of violent Jewish rebels who carried
concealed daggers to assassinate Roman sympathizers.
But the sources also point out a major chronological
issue with that theory. The Sicarii probably
didn't even exist as an organized group during
the 30s AD when Judas was alive. Right. They
rose to prominence decades later. So other linguists
look elsewhere. Some think it might come from
Aramaic words meaning the liar or the false one.
Or even red color. Yeah. And in a particularly
morbid twist, some linguists think it could derive
from a Greek -Aramaic hybrid meaning chokiness
or constriction. Which is very dark. Extremely
dark. Because if true, that would mean the nickname
was given to him posthumously by the other disciples
because of how he died. By hanging. Just imagine
for a second having a nickname that linguists
are still arguing over two millennia later. For
you listening, it really demonstrates how much
context gets lost or potentially invented over
centuries of translation. Absolutely. And that
ambiguity surrounding his name bleeds perfectly
into the ambiguity of his actions, which raises
an important question. Why did he do it? Why
did he do it? We know the core canonical act.
Judas goes to the authorities, leads them to
Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, and identifies
him with a kiss. And Matthew specifies the price
was 30 pieces of silver. Which the sources note
were likely Tyrian shekels. And that specific
currency matters because Tyrian shekels had a
high silver content and were the only currency
accepted for the temple tax in Jerusalem. It
adds a layer of religious bureaucracy to the
transaction. It really does. But the underlying
motivation for why he took that money shifts
dramatically depending on which gospel you read.
If you read the Gospel of John, the motivation
is straightforward greed. Just purely about the
money. Right. John paints Judas as the group's
treasurer. but also a literal thief. There's
that famous scene where expensive perfume is
used to anoint Jesus. Oh, right, and Judas complains.
Yes, he argues they could have sold it and given
the money to the poor. But John throws in an
editorial side note claiming Judas didn't actually
care about the poor. He just wanted to skim the
cash from the money box. Exactly. But the Gospels
of Luke and John also introduce a completely
different supernatural element. They explicitly
state that Satan entered into Judas. So we are
left trying to reconcile mundane greed with demonic
possession. And if you look at modern historical
theories, there's a third option. Political disillusionment.
The political theory is fascinating. Many modern
scholars theorize that Judas, like many at the
time, expected the Messiah to be a military leader.
Someone who would violently overthrow Roman rule.
And restore the kingdom of David. When he realized
Jesus had no intention of starting a war, Judas
grew deeply disillusioned and handed him over.
And there's another spin on that same theory,
right? That Judas betrayed Jesus to deliberately
force his hand. Yes, hoping that getting Jesus
arrested would spark the violent rebellion he
was waiting for. Well, here's where it gets really
interesting. Because the betrayal is only half
the story. The consequences, specifically what
happens to Judas after the betrayal, is where
the sources go completely off the rails into
some massive contradictions. Oh yeah, the deaths.
In fact, the discrepancy in the Bible regarding
Judas' death is so stark that it famously caused
the writer C .S. Lewis to reject the idea of
strict biblical inerrancy. The canonical accounts
are completely at odds. In the Gospel of Matthew,
Judas is hit with overwhelming remorse. He tries
to give the 30 pieces of silver. Back to the
priests. And they refuse it, calling it blood
money. So he throws the silver into the temple
leaves and hangs himself. The priests then take
that money and buy a potter's field to bury strangers
in. Which becomes known as the field of blood.
Right. But then you flood over to the book of
Acts and it's a completely different narrative.
There is absolutely zero mention of remorse.
None. Judas doesn't get the money back. He uses
it to buy the field himself. And he doesn't hang
himself. According to Acts. He falls headlong
on the property. His body bursts open in the
middle and all his bowels gush out. It's so graphic.
And for centuries, theologians tied themselves
in knots trying to make these two stories fit
together. St. Augustine tried a rather clumsy
harmonization. He suggested that Judas hanged
himself in the field, but the rope snapped and
then he fell and burst open. Which feels like
a desperate attempt to make the puzzle pieces
fit. When they belong to two different puzzles.
It does. Modern scholars generally view these
as distinct theological narratives written for
entirely different purposes. Like David A. Reed's
theory about Matthew. Yes, Reed argues that Matthew's
account is a midrashic exposition. Think of Midrash
as an ancient Jewish method of storytelling where
writers deliberately echo Old Testament scriptures
to prove a theological point to their audience.
So Matthew wasn't acting as a modern journalist
reporting facts at a crime scene. Not at all.
He was writing theology. He was trying to present
Judas's death as the fulfillment of ancient prophecy.
In doing so, he actually seems to blend passages
from the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah regarding
30 pieces of silver and a potter's field. Meanwhile,
regarding the bursting death in Acts, a classicist
named Glenn Most suggests the author might be
using figurative language. How so? He theorizes
the text is comparing Judas's posture and demise
to that of a dead, burst -open snake. Ah, the
ultimate cultural symbol of evil and degradation.
Exactly. So we see these early communities utilizing
different literary devices to punish the traitor.
But the canonical deaths are relatively tame
compared to the apocryphal accounts. They really
are. That brings us to the ancient historical
gossip that didn't make it into the Bible. Around
100 AD, an early church leader named Papias wrote
this incredibly gruesome account. The bloated
account. Yes. He claimed Judas was afflicted
by God's wrath and became so enormously bloated
that he couldn't walk down a street without hitting
the buildings on either side. Yeah, it's such
a bizarre image. Papias wrote that Judas's eyes
were so swollen a doctor couldn't find them.
He oozed pus and worms and eventually he basically
exploded on his own land. And the stench. Right.
The stench was apparently so horrible that a
century later people still couldn't walk past
the spot without holding their noses. It's a
vivid demonstration of how early Christian communities
were competing to describe the ultimate punishment.
They needed the scale of his suffering to match
the scale of his betrayal. And then there is
a text called The Gospel of Nicodemus, likely
from the fourth century, which introduces a bizarre,
darkly comedic version. The roasted chicken story.
Yes. In this text, Judas goes home feeling terribly
guilty. He tells his wife that he's going to
kill himself because he knows Jesus will rise
from the dead and punish him. And his wife laughs
at him. She points to a chicken roasting on a
spit over their fire and says, Jesus can no more
rise from the dead than this cooked bird. And
then the punchline. Instantly, the roasted chicken
comes back to life, hops off the spit and begins
to crow. Unbelievable. Judas is so terrified
by the undead poultry that he runs off and hangs
himself. To modern ears, a zombie roasting chicken
sounds entirely absurd. But these stories served
a vital purpose. They were cultural processing
mechanisms. Dealing with trauma, basically. Yes,
early Christians were dealing with the profound
trauma of the crucifixion and the cognitive dissonance
of a betrayed savior. So we see these communities
inventing bizarre, gruesome ends for Judas to
punish him. But in Egypt, another group of early
Christians went in the exact opposite direction.
Instead of punishing him in their texts, they
elevated him. Which brings us to the Gospel of
Judas, a text discovered in Egypt in the 1970s
and famously publicized by National Geographic
in 2006. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
the Gospel of Judas reveals that early Christianity
wasn't a monolith. It was a fractured landscape.
Where different groups were desperately trying
to solve the logical paradox of the crucifixion.
This text represents the Gnostic worldview. Break
that down for us. To understand this, we have
to look at how Gnostics viewed the universe.
Imagine the physical world as a flawed, corrupted
prison built by a lesser ignorant creator. That's
the demiurge of the Old Testament. Okay. The
true higher God, the Monad, is purely spiritual.
Wait, so in that framework, having a physical
body is a trap. Precisely. And in the Gospel
of Judas, he isn't a traitor at all. He's the
truest, most enlightened disciple. Wow. The text
claims that Jesus actually pulled Judas aside
and asked him to perform the betrayal. Because
the physical body is a prison, Jesus needed to
escape his flesh to return to the purely spiritual
realm. So by handing him over to be killed, Judas
was doing Jesus the ultimate favor. It was an
act of profound obedience. that allowed Jesus
to transcend the material world. But if Judas
is the hero because he frees Jesus from his physical
body, that completely unravels the traditional
idea of original sin and a necessary blood sacrifice.
It does entirely. How did mainstream church leaders
react to this at the time? They viewed it as
deeply heretical. Leaders like Irenaeus of Leon
specifically condemned the gospel of Judas in
the second century, arguing it completely inverted
the truth of the gospel. I can see why. But it
highlights how uncomfortable some early followers
were with the idea that Jesus was simply a victim
of circumstance or betrayal. They wanted to reclaim
agency for him. And there's another apocryphal
text that throws an even bigger curveball regarding
agency in the crucifixion, the Gospel of Barnabas.
Oh, this one is wild. It is. This is a late medieval
pseudepigraphical text, meaning it was written
much later and falsely attributed to Barnabas.
It aligns heavily with Islamic theological lore,
which rejects the idea that a prophet of God
would be subjected to the humiliation of the
cross. Right. In this version, Judas leads the
Roman soldiers to arrest Jesus. But right before
they enter, angels swoop in and pull Jesus out
of a window up to the heavens. Just whisked away.
Yeah. And at that exact moment, Judas is. physical
appearance is miraculously transformed so he
looks exactly like Jesus. It is the ultimate
case of divine mistaken identity. The Romans
burst in arrest Judas thinking he's Jesus and
drag him off. The illusion is so perfect that
the Pharisees, the high priest, and even Mary
are completely fooled. Incredible. In the Gospel
of Barnabas, it is actually Judas Iscariot who
is scourged and crucified on the cross in Jesus'
place. These alternative narratives really highlight
a profound theological anxiety surrounding the
mechanics of salvation. which inevitably leads
to the ultimate theological question. What happened
to Judas' soul? Exactly. If he had to betray
Jesus for the crucifixion to happen, and the
crucifixion had to happen for humanity's salvation,
isn't he kind of a necessary gear in the machine?
Yeah, heaven or hell. Where did he end up for
you listening? Because if God planned the whole
thing, it seems incredibly harsh to punish the
guy who merely played his assigned role. That
is the central paradox, and the theological divide
on this issue is stark. On one side, you have...
Protestant theologians like John Calvin, who
argued strongly for rigid predestination. That
his fate was sealed. Calvin believed Judas was
predestined for damnation. That God willed his
fall to demonstrate divine justice and fulfill
prophecy. Others focused on his suicide. Like
Cornelius Elipede. Yes. He argued that while
Judas sinned by betraying Jesus, he could have
been forgiven if he had genuinely repented. But
by despairing and taking his own life, he rejected
God's mercy and sealed his own fate in the depths
of hell. It's a very bleak view. But when you
look at the Catholic Church's stance, it is surprisingly
nuanced. It really is. The Catholic Church has
a canon of saints people officially recognized
as being in heaven. But they actually do not
have a canon of the damned. There's no official
list of people in hell. No, there is no official
infallible declaration from the church that Judas
or anyone specific is definitively in hell. Interesting.
During Vatican II, the church spoke generally
of eternal fire, but explicitly left individual
judgments to God's ultimate mercy. In fact, some
modern Catholic theologians like Hans Urs von
Balthasar have explored the theological concept
of the empty hell. What does that mean practically?
Von Balthasar argued that while hell is a real
possibility for those who definitively reject
God, Christians have a duty to hope for universal
salvation. Okay. He suggested the possibility
that Christ's descent into hell after the crucifixion
might have reached even the most lost souls,
including Judas. It is a theology of profound
radical hope. Though historically, the arts and
literature have definitely not shared that radical
hope. Not at all. If you look at Dante's Divine
Comedy, Dante places Judas in the absolute lowest,
darkest, freezing center of hell. The ninth circle.
Yeah, literally being chewed for all eternity
in the mouths of Lucifer, right alongside Caesar's
assassins, Brutus and Cassius. Art and literature
have effectively turned him into a caricature.
In historical paintings of the Last Supper, he's
often the only disciple without a halo. or he's
given a dark black halo to signify his fallen
status. Always visually separated. He's almost
always placed on the opposite side of the table,
isolated from the rest of the group. The sources
also note he's frequently depicted with red hair.
You see it heavily in Spanish cultural representations
and even in Shakespeare's writings. But as you
look closer at the historical texts, there's
a really dark, tragic reality attached to how
his image has been manipulated over time. There
is a terrible legacy here. Over the centuries,
particularly beginning in the Middle Ages, the
figure of Judas was weaponized. He was systematically
turned into a personification of the Jewish people.
The red hair depiction was part of that, right?
Yes. It was actually a Renaissance trope deliberately
used to visually correlate him with contemporary
European Jews. The story of his betrayal for
30 pieces of silver was twisted and utilized
for centuries to justify horrific Christian anti
-Semitism. Stereotyping an entire people based
on the actions of this one highly debated figure.
It is a stark reminder of how theological narratives
can be distorted to inflict real world violence.
So what does this all mean? We've gone from a
man with a remarkably common name to a mysterious
linguistic nickname to contradictory deaths featuring
bursting bodies. and resurrected chickens. It's
a wild ride. We've seen him framed as a Gnostic
hero, an accidental martyr, and a resident of
the lowest circle of hell. For you listening
right now, the story of Judas Iscariot really
serves as a mirror for 2 ,000 years of human
history. A blank canvas. He is the ultimate blank
canvas. We have projected all of our fears of
betrayal onto him. We've used him to debate massive
mind -bending theological concepts like free
will versus predestination. And tragically, humanity
has used his image to persecute others because
we have a deep psychological need for a clear,
undeniable villain to blame. He is a historical
figure who simply refuses to stay buried in the
past. And to leave you with one final incredibly
bizarre nugget from the sources to mull over.
Let's hear it. There's an obscure text we haven't
mentioned yet called the Syriac Infancy Gospel.
This ancient legend claims that when Judas was
just a young boy, he was possessed by Satan.
Okay. During a violent attack, this possessed
boy Judas encountered another child, young Jesus.
And what happened? Judas bit Jesus violently
on his side. That is a wild image. It is. But
the text adds one chilling, highly symbolic detail.
It claims that the exact spot where the boy Judas
bit the child Jesus was the very same side that
would later be pierced by the Holy Lands as Jesus
hung on the cross decades later. It's a haunting,
evocative image. I invite you to ponder that.
How deeply and almost cosmically intertwined
the destinies of the betrayer and the betrayed
were in the minds of the ancients. That is just
a mind -blowing image to end on. A huge thank
you to you, our listener, for joining us on this
deep dive into the sources today. There is always
more to the story than the headline. Stay curious,
keep questioning, and we'll catch you on the
next deep dive.