The Bertrayal of Jesus by Judas

• There appears to be no strong reason given in the gospel for Judas to betray Jesus.
• There is evidence in the early Christian writings of an alternate tradition of the betrayal of Jesus which does not include one of his twelve disciples as the traitor.
• There are also divergent accounts of Judas' death and how the Field of Blood was purchased and got its name.
• The mistake in Old Testament reference (attributing the prophecy to Jeremiah instead of Zechariah) by Matthew also reveals his modus operandi.
• All the additional details about the episode from Matthew and Luke could have been derived wholly from Old Testament passages.

Mark 14:10-11 (Matthew 26:14-16; Luke 22:1-6) And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.

The confusion underlying the betrayal of Judas is further compounded by the fact that we are not told why he wanted to betray his master. Some apologist had made the obvious suggestion that it was greed. But this is most unlikely for it would have been more profitable for Judas to actually abscond the common fund (remember that Judas was the treasurer of the group) than to sell his master for the little amount the gospels made it out to be. Other suggestions include that ambition and jealousy. But nothing in the gospels can tell us what his ambitions were or who he was jealous of. [2] Some apologists have even suggested that Judas fearing the imminent arrest of Jesus, due to his quarrels with the chief priests and teachers of the law, actually betrayed his master to rid himself of this very fear! [3] All these suggestions remain unconvincing. As Guignebert commented:

We are confronted by nothing but...arbitrary suppositions unsupported by any trustworthy passage. The very number of them [i.e. the explanations of the apologists-PT] is sufficient to discredit them, and they merely vie with another in flights of imagination. Even if we combine all motives, ambition, jealousy, fear and failing confidence, and dress them out in high-sounding epithets, we cannot deduce from them any well-founded and therefore acceptable conclusions. The interminable discussions which we have touched on appear lamentable futile. The betrayal remains purposeless, useless and unintelligible...[4]

Alternate Tradition of Betrayal

I Corinthians 15:5 ...And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve...

There is a further problem with the story of the betrayal in the gospels. The evangelists tried to show us that Jesus knew beforehand who his betrayer was. Matthew, for instance, showed Jesus confidently telling Judas that he is the traitor:

Matthew 26:21,25 And while they were eating, he said, "I tell you the truth, one of you will betray me."...Then Judas, the one who would betray him said, "Surely not I, Rabbi." Jesus answered, "Yes, it is you."

Matthew 19:28 "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the son of man sits on his throne in heavenly glory, you who have followed me will also sit on the twelve thrones; judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

Luke 22:29-30 "And I confer onto you a kingdom; just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

Thus the passage in Matthew corroborates the suggestion above that there was an alternative early tradition that did not include the traitor among the original twelve disciples. [6]

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The Contradictions between Acts and Matthew On Judas' Death

Matthew 27:3-5 When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver [a] to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.

Acts 1:18-19 Now this man [Judas] bought a field with the reward of his wickedness; and falling headlong he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that the field was called in their language Akel'dama, that is, Field of Blood.

Not only is there discrepancy as to how he died, there is also the divergence in what Judas did with the money. Matthew said he threw the money into the temple and left while Acts said that he used the money to buy a field. In Matthew it was the chief priests and elders who used the money to buy the field which ended up with the same name, The Field of Blood:

Matthew 27:6-10 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." So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."

Mistake in Old Testament Reference by Matthew

St. Augustine in his work De Consensu Evang (III 7) said that Matthew knew very well that the sentence came from Zechariah, but he also knew that he was writing at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, and he dared not take the liberty of correcting it. And why did the Holy Spirit dictate an inaccuracy? To show that all the prophets were equally inspired and that it did not matter whether what was said by one was ascribed to another!! [10]

Such nonsensical medieval explanations had forced modern apologists to try and come up with a better one but to no success. An example of a modern explanation for this discrepancy is the one given by the early twentieth century fundamentalist R.A. Torrey:

There is no record in the book of Jeremiah, of his having uttered this prophecy, but there is no reason whatever to think that we have in Jeremiah all the prophecies he ever uttered, and Zechariah may easily have access to prophecies of Jeremiah not recorded in the book of Jeremiah. [11]

There is actually a very natural reason why Matthew made the mistake of reference that he did. The first part of this reason is that Matthew had an erroneous translation of the Septuagint with him. As scholars had pointed out, the original reading in Hebrew of Zechariah had the priest casting the money into the treasury. The Hebrew word for treasury (owtsar) and potter (yatsar) were written very similarly. Matthew had with him an erroneous translation of the Old Testament which translated what should have been treasury to potter. [12] In fact the original phrase in Zechariah, correctly translated, reads thus:

Zechariah 11:12-13 Then I said to them, "If it seems right to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them." And they weighed out as my wages thirty shekels of silver. 13: Then the LORD said to me, "Cast it into the treasury" --

Jeremiah 32:9,10,14 And I bought the field of Hanameel my uncle's son, that was in Anathoth, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the evidence, and sealed it, and took witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances...Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Take these evidences, this evidence of the purchase...put them in an earthen vessel (i.e. pot).

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The Old Testament: The Source of the Judas Story

Thus the Matthean story of Judas hanging himself has a close parallel in the Old Testament (II Samuel) about another betrayal, in this case one that didn’t succeed. It concerned Ahitophel, a renowned sage who betrayed David by going over to Absalom, who had rebelled against the Jewish king. However, his counsel was not accepted by Absalom. As a result, Ahitophel went home and hanged himself. (II Samuel 17:23) The Greek word used by Matthew here (Matthew 27:5), apegxato (aphgxato, he hanged himself), is exactly the same as that in the Septuagint for II Samuel 17:23.

We find that a passage from Psalms (attributed to David) about this episode had also been used as an achetype in the story of Judas’ betrayal. [14]

Psalm 41:9 Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, [a reference to Ahitophel-PT] which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.

The gospel of John in fact had Jesus referring to the above passage in Psalm explicitly:

John 13:18,21 I am not speaking of you all; I know whom I have chosen; it is that the scripture may be fulfilled, `He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.' ...When Jesus had thus spoken, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, "Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me."

II Samuel 20: 9-10 And Jo'ab said to Ama'sa, "Is it well with you, my brother?" And Jo'ab took Ama'sa by the beard with his right hand to kiss him. But Ama'sa did not observe the sword which was in Jo'ab's hand; so Jo'ab struck him with it in the body, and shed his bowels to the ground, without striking a second blow; and he died.

Normally it is in their mistakes and anachronisms that we see more clearly the source of the story as the Old Testament. As Uta Ranke Heinemann, in her book Putting Away Childish Things, pointed out, the literal translation of Matthew 26:15 would have the high priests "weighing out" (esphran, esperan) thirty "pieces of silver" (arguria, arguria). However this is a major anachronism, for the pratice of weighing out pieces of silver and the use of silver pieces as money was no longer current during the time of Jesus.

In Jesus' day there were gold and silver denarii...-but no coin or currency known as "pieces of silver". These had gone out of circulation around 300 years before. Equally anachronistic is the "weighed out." This was customary in Zechariah's time, but by Jesus' day had long been replaced by minted silver coins. (Pinchas Lapide, Wer war schuld an Jesu Tod? [1987] pp23-24)[16]

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Notes

References

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