Gospel writers can scarcely mention Judas without mentioning
that he betrayed Jesus (Matthew 10:4; 26:14-16, 46-50; Mark 3:19; 14:10-11,
43-46; Luke 6:16; 22:3-6, 47-48; John 6:71; John 12:4). Though many of them
wrote their accounts many years, in some cases decades, after the fact the
sting of Judas’ betrayal was still keenly felt, not just by those who were
eyewitnesses to it, but by Mark and Luke who were not eyewitnesses. We tend to
think of Judas as betraying Jesus, but Judas betrayed more than just Jesus. He
betrayed the other apostles too. They knew it and they clearly felt it. He was
one of their own and that made his actions all the more despicable.
John gives the occasion of Judas’s alienation from Jesus
when a woman lavished an expensive container of oil on Jesus’s feet. Judas,
knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, noted that the
ointment was worth 300 denarii (John 12:5).
That amounts to 1200 drachmas or 7200 obols, a fifth of a talent. It was
a significant sum of money. Judas piously complained that the oil could have
been sold and given to the poor (John 12:5). John, who had worked closely with
Judas for at least three years, observed as an aside, “not that he cared for
the poor” (John 12:6). Judas tried to mask his greed with piety.
Earlier Jesus had observed, with some evident satisfaction,
“the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:22). Judas,
however, was unhappy with what Jesus was doing and at that point, John seemed
to think, decided that Jesus was an impediment. Perhaps Judas thought that if
Jesus and his inconvenient program were out of the way that he, Judas, would
then be able to control the money that had been given for Jesus’s use “because
he was a thief, and had the bag” (John 12:6).
When things were not developing the way that Judas thought
they ought to go, he went to his religious leaders: “Judas Iscariot went unto
the chief priests” (Matthew 26:14). “And from that time he sought opportunity
to betray him” (Matthew 26:16). All the way along, the gospel writers note that
Judas sought to put a pious façade on his actions. He could claim that what he
was doing had the approval of his religious leaders and so it must be right.
The heinousness of his act did not faze him. He was past feeling. So he could
rationalize that he was doing what was right and proper and with the full
approval of the proper ecclesiastical authorities.
On another level, Judas allowed himself to be used by
Jesus’s enemies to bring about Jesus’s destruction. Jesus had many enemies who
wanted to get rid of Jesus, and Judas let them use him to accomplish that task.
Unfortunately for them, it did not get rid of Jesus.
It is this Judas, the greedy, the selfish, the
hypocritically pious, the power-hungry traitor that is remembered in history.
Dante puts Judas in the lowest circle of hell in the mouth of the devil himself
as the “anima là sù ch’ha maggior pena.”[1]
The Oxford English Dictionary notes that since the fifteenth century, in
English, a Judas is “one who treacherously betrays under the semblance of
friendship; a traitor or betrayer of the worst kind.”
