True Jew

The overwhelming majority of details in Judas’ story are ambiguous to the nth degree. They do not clearly paint him in negative terms let alone make him out to be a traitor. Tradition, including scholarly tradition, reads the negativity into the texts and then claims to have found it there. The Gospel writers give us plenty of room to disagree with these categorical statements of scholars. Einstein once said that the job of science is to look for what is, not for what we think should be the case. Or, as I have said elsewhere, all great art and great science have this in common: To learn to see, especially to see those parts of reality that the majority overlooks and neglects. New Testament scholars think Judas should be a traitor so they make the evidence conform to what should be. Genuine scholarship is to see what is. What is the real data? To give scholars their due, there are three things the Gospels say about Judas which indeed are very bad: traitor, thief, devil (i.e., the devil entered him). These are the three worst things the Gospels have to say about Judas and they fail miserably to make a case against him. One of them even points towards his innocence. The misuse of this evidence by scholars is one of the most witch-trial-like things about this system of abuse. This is where the three worst charges are made in the Gospels: 1) Luke 6:16—The only place in all of the Gospels where Judas is called traitor, prodotes in Greek. Luke is listing the names of the disciples and he ends with “Judas Iscariot who became a traitor”. None of the other Gospels use this term and none of the Gospels, not even Luke, uses the verb for betray, prodidomi. They all use a neutral verb, paradidomi, about which I will have much more to say later on, to describe Judas’ action. 2) John 12:16—John claims (and he is the only one to report this) that Judas carried the money box for the group and “he used to take what was put into it.” John implies this money was intended for the poor. 3) Luke 22:3 and John 6:70-71; 13:2,27—Luke tells us Satan entered Judas just before he went to the chief priests and captains. John 13:2 has the devil putting it into Judas’ heart and then entering him at 13:27. Earlier, John had Jesus calling one of them a devil and John says he meant Judas (6:70-71). There are three major reasons why this worst possible evidence fails to prove a thing. The first thing you might notice about all three allegations is that they come from the last two Gospel authors, Luke and John, and not from the earliest Gospels. Mark never calls Judas a traitor, thief, or devil. Neither does Matthew. Indeed, Mark is the chief source of all the ambiguity about Judas, as we will see further on. That the unequivocally bad evidence (or so it seems) comes so late is not a good sign for anyone who wants to prove Judas betrayed Judas. It looks very much like the ugliest things said about him were a later development. If Mark had any or all of these pieces, that might have had a little more weight. The lateness of these remarks is just the first clue that casts doubt on their legitimacy. The second reason this evidence fails: These charges are not made by anyone speaking within the Gospels. They are comments thrown in by the Gospel authors Luke and John. No character in any Gospel calls Judas traitor, thief, or devil. The closest we come is at John 6:70 where Jesus calls somebody a devil, but it is the author John who makes it a reference to Judas. I would not say that every statement put into the mouth of Jesus by John is suspect. But when we are dealing with an outrageous remark like “one of you is a devil” (as Jesus says at John 6:70), our antennae ought to go up. You have to wonder why none of the other Gospel writers remembered that Jesus said this. It would have come in quite handy. Even John does not quite have the nerve to tell us Jesus identified Judas as the one. It is John’s added comment at 6:71 that picks out Judas as the target. Whatever you think of this evidence, it remains true that no fellow disciple of Judas excoriates him in any way. This last point is particularly impressive. You might think that after the allegedly dirty deed was done, someone might have confronted Judas and hurled a curse or two at him. Someone might have denounced him, and you would think that at least one Gospel author might have deemed this worthy of being memorialized. But no! It’s missing from all the Gospels! If anyone who knew Judas ever said a bad word about him, all four Gospels failed to record it. That is rather significant. If we did have a piece of evidence that Peter or another disciple cursed Judas out at some point, that would be an interesting clue. It would be a point against Judas, even if it was reported in a late Gospel. But we don’t have that. Comments from the last two Gospel writers are pretty weak evidence. The third reason this evidence fails: They are all irrelevant to proving his guilt as a traitor (yes, even the mention of traitor at Luke 6:16), and one of them is not only irrelevant, it is an indication of his innocence. The charge of thief has nothing to do with Judas betraying Jesus. What are we supposed to imagine? That Judas betrayed Jesus to divert attention from his stealing from the poor? It does not make a lot of sense. It sounds more like an attempt to make Judas look bad, and therefore, to make it more believable that he could be a traitor too. It’s also funny that only the last Gospel writer remembers this. None of the others know anything about it or they didn’t think it was worth remembering. All in all, not a solid piece of evidence and it does not help prove if there was any validity to the claim that he turned against Jesus. What about being called a traitor at Luke 6:16? Surely that is relevant to the case against Judas? Surely not. It is merely an accusation or the record of one. An accusation can never be used to prove the truth of the accusation. That is a standard logical and moral principle in any field of study, but not in historical Jesus studies. And it ought to be. How do we know the accusation of traitor was not the result of slander? An allegation at most proves this charge came to be made and probably that many people believed it (though we don’t know whether they repeated this statement out of sincere belief or out of malice, i.e., knowingly repeating it as slander). It does not prove its own validity. The whole question is whether Judas was really a traitor or an innocent man falsely accused of such. Luke 6:16 cannot be used to answer this. It is equally consistent with both hypotheses. If there is any truth to the idea that Judas betrayed, it will depend on evidence—a pattern of evidence—beyond or outside the accusation. There is no field that I know of that would ever use an accusation or allegation as evidence for proving the truth of itself. Only New Testament scholars do this. The single charge of traitor in Luke has to be put aside. Finally, there is the devil-made-him-do-it. Like any accusation, demonization is worthless as evidence. It proves how hated and reviled Judas became. It does not prove that the vilification was deserved. It rather proves the opposite, doesn’t it? In pinning the devil on Judas, they were doing so because they had nothing else to pin on him. It is a statement that his act was a mystery to them. They had no idea why he did it or any other comprehensible information about it, so they said it must have been the devil who put him up to it. It is thus a confession that they had no evidence against him. Rather than give us anything, any real facts, that would demonstrate exactly what was happening here, all Luke and John can do is bring the devil into it. That’s the best they could do? This admission that they had no significant evidence is very much a point in favor of Judas. It is one small sign that helps to exonerate Judas. This should not surprise