THE MYSTERY
OF JUDAS ISCARIOT
Only two creatures in the world knew
the secret of Judas: Christ and the traitor.
Sixty generations of Christians have
racked their brains over it, but the man of Iscariot, although he has drawn
after him crowds of disciples, remains stubbornly incomprehensible. His is the
only human mystery that we encounter in the Gospels. We can understand without
difficulty the depravity of Herod, the rancor of the Pharisees, the revengeful
anger of Annas and Caiaphas, the cowardly laxity of Pilate. But we have no
evidence to enable us to understand the abomination of Judas. The Four Gospels
tell us too little of him and of the reasons which induced him to sell his
King.
"Then entered Satan into
Judas." (Luke 22:3) But these words are only the definition of his
crime. Evil took possession of his heart, therefore it came suddenly. Before
that day, perhaps during the Supper at Bethany (John 13:27), Judas was not in
the power of the Adversary. But why suddenly did he throw himself into that
power? Why did Satan enter into him and not into one of the others?
Thirty pieces of silver are a very small sum,
especially for a greedy man. In modern coinage it would amount to about twenty
dollars, and, granting that its effective value or as the economists say its
buying power were in those days ten times greater, two hundred dollars seem
hardly a sufficient price to induce a man whom his companions describe as grasping
to commit the basest betrayal recorded by history. It has been said the thirty
pieces of silver was the price of a slave. But the text of Exodus states on the
contrary that thirty shekels was the compensation to be paid by the owner of an
ox which had injured a slave. The cases are too far apart for the doctors of
the Sanhedrin to have had this early precedent in mind.
The most significant indication is the office which Judas held among the
Twelve. Among them was Matthew, a former tax-collector, and it would have
seemed almost his right to handle the small amount of money necessary for the
expenses of the brotherhood. In place of Matthew, we see the man of Iscariot as
the depository of the offerings. Money is treacherous and saturated with
danger. The mere handling of money, even if it belongs to others, is poisonous.
It is not surprising that John said of Judas the thief, that he, "having the bag, took away what was put
therein." (John 12:6) And yet it is not probable that a man greedy for
money would have stayed a long time with a group of such poor men. If he had
wished to steal, he would have sought out a more promising position. And if he
had needed those miserable thirty pieces of silver, could he not have procured
them in another way, by running away with the purse, without needing to propose
the betrayal of Jesus to the High Priests?
These common-sense reflections about a crime so extraordinary have
induced many to seek other motives for the infamous transaction. A sect of
heretics, the Cainites, had a legend that Judas sorrowfully accepted eternal
infamy, knowing that Jesus through His will and the will of the Father was to
be betrayed to His death that no suffering might be lacking in the great penance
and punishment. A necessary and voluntary instrument of the Redemption, Judas
was according to them a hero and a martyr to be revered and not reviled.
According to others, Iscariot, loving his people and hoping for their
deliverance, perhaps sharing the sentiments of the Zealots, had joined with
Jesus, hoping that he was the Messiah such as the common people then imagined
Him: the King of the revenge and restoration of Israel. When little by little,
in spite of his slowness of comprehension, it dawned on him from the words of
Jesus that he had fallen in with a Messiah of quite another kind, he delivered
Him over to His enemies to make up for the bitterness of his disappointment.
But this fancy to which no text either canonical or apocryphal gives any support is not enough to
explain Christ's betrayer: he could have deserted the Twelve and gone in search
of other company more to his taste, which certainly, as we have seen, was not
lacking at that time.
Others have said that the reason is to be sought in his loss of faith.
Judas had believed firmly in Jesus, and then could believe no longer. What
Jesus said about His end close at hand, the threatening hostility of the capital,
the delay of His victorious manifestation, had ended by causing Judas to lose
all faith in Him whom he had followed up till then. He did not see the Kingdom
approaching and he did see death approaching. Mingling with the people to find
out the temper of the day, he had perhaps heard a rumor as to the decisions
of the meeting of the Elders and feared that the Sanhedrin would not be
satisfied with one victim alone, but would condemn all those who had long
followed Jesus. Overcome by fear—the form which Satan took to enter into him—he
thought he could ward off the danger and save his life by treachery; unbelief
and cowardice being thus the embarrassing motives of his shame.
An Englishman celebrated as an opium-eater, has thought out a new
apology for the traitor which is the opposite of this theory. His idea is that
Judas believed: he even believed too absolutely. He was so persuaded that Jesus
was really the Christ that he wished by giving Him up to the Tribunal to force
Him finally to show Himself as the legitimate Messiah. So strong was his hope
that he could not believe that Jesus would be killed. Or if He really were to
die, he knew with entire certainty that He would rise again at once to sit on
the right hand of the Father as King of Israel and of the world. To hasten the
great day, in which the Disciples were at last to have the reward for their
faithfulness, Judas, secure in the intangibility of his Divine Friend, wished
to force His hand and, putting Him face to face with those whom He was to cast
out, to compel Him to show Himself as the true Son of God. According to this
theory the action of Judas was not a betrayal but a mistake due to his
misunderstanding of the real meaning of his Master's teaching. He did not
betray therefore through greed or revengefulness or cowardice, but through
stupidity.
On the other hand others give revenge as the reason. No man betrays another without
hating him. Why did Judas hate Jesus? They remember the dinner in the house of
Simon and the nard of the weeping woman. The reproof for his stinginess and
hypocrisy must have exasperated the disciple who perhaps had been reproved for
these faults on other occasions. To the malice of this rebuff was added envy
which always flourishes in vulgar souls. And as soon as he could revenge
himself without danger, he went to the palace of Caiaphas.
But did he really think that his denunciation would bring Jesus to His
death or did he rather suppose that they would content themselves with flogging
Him and forbidding Him to speak to the people? The rest of the story seems to
show that the condemnation of Jesus unnerved him as a terrible and unexpected
result of his kiss. Matthew describes his despair in a way to show that he was
sincerely horrified by what had happened through his fault. The money which he
had pocketed became like fire to him: and when the priests refused to take it
back he threw it down in the Temple. Even after this restitution he had no
peace and hastened to kill himself. He died on the same day as his victim. Luke
in the Acts sets down in another way the evil end of Judas, but the Christian
tradition fancies the story of his remorse and suicide.
In spite of all the unraveling of unsatisfied minds, mysteries are
still tangled about the mystery of Judas. But we have not yet invoked the
testimony of Him who knew better than all men, even better than Judas, the true
secret of the betrayal. Jesus alone could give us the key to the mystery; Jesus
Who saw into the heart of Judas as into the hearts of all men, and Who knew
what Judas was to do before he had done it. Judas needed salvation and refused
to be saved.
Jesus chose Judas to be one of the Twelve and to carry the gospel to the
world along with the others, even though He knew his final choices. Would He
have chosen him, kept him with Him, beside Him, at His table, for so long a time if He had believed
him to be an incurable criminal? Would He have confided to him what was dearest
in the world to Him, the most precious thing in the world—the prophecy of the
Kingdom of God? Obviously, the answer is yes. He loved even His enemies.
Up to the last days, up to that last evening, Jesus treated Judas
exactly like the others. To him, as to all others, He gave His body, symbolized
by bread, His soul, symbolized by wine. (John 13:5) He washed and wiped, with
His own hands, the feet of Judas, those feet which had carried him to the house
of Caiaphas—with those hands which, through Judas' fault, were to be nailed to
the cross on the following day. And when, in the red light of the flickering
lanterns and the flashing of swords, Judas, under the dark shadow of the olive
trees, came and kissed that face still wet with bloody sweat, Jesus did not
repel him, but said, "Friend,
wherefore art thou come?" (Matt.
26:50)
Friend! (John 15:14) He had commanded him to go do what he
was told. (John 13:27) It
was the last time that Jesus spoke to Judas, and even in that moment He would
use none other than that customary word. Judas was not for Him the man of
darkness who came in the darkness to turn Him over to the guards, but the
friend, the same who a few hours before had been sitting with Him before the
dish of lamb and herbs, and had set his lips to His cup: the same who, so many
times in hours of rest in leafy shade, or in the shadow of walls, had listened
with the others like a disciple, like a companion, like a friend, like a
brother, to the great words of the Promise. Jesus had said at the Last Supper, "Woe unto that man by whom the Son of
man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born."
(Matt. 26:24; Mark 14:21) But now that the traitor was before Him, that the
treachery was complete, now that Judas had added to that betrayal the outrage
of the kiss laid on the lips of Him who has commanded love for our enemies, He
answered him with the sweet and divine words of their habitual intercourse, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?"
(Matt. 26:50)
Thus the testimony of Him who was betrayed increases our bewilderment
instead of raising the veil of the dreadful secret. He knew that Judas was a
thief and He gave him the purse: He knew that Judas was evil and He confided to
him a treasure of truth infinitely more precious than all the money in
the universe: He knew that Judas was to betray Him and He made him a
participant of His divinity, offering him the mouthful of bread and the sip of
wine; He saw Judas leading His assailants upon Him and He still addressed him
as at first, as He always had, with the holy name of friend.
"It
had been good for that man if he had not been born." (Matt. 26:24; Mark 14:21) These words might have
been, rather than a condemnation, an exclamation of pity at the thought of a
fate which could not be escaped. If Judas hated Jesus, we see no signs that
Jesus was ever repelled by Judas, because Jesus knew that the base bargain was
necessary, as the weakness of Pilate was necessary, the rage of Caiaphas, and
the insults of the soldiery, the timbers and nails of the cross. He knew that
Judas needed to do what he did and He did not curse him, as He did not curse
the people who wished His death, or the hammer which drove the nails into the
cross. One prayer alone broke from him, to beg Judas to shorten the dreadful
agony, "That thou doest, do
quickly." (John 13:27)
The mystery of Judas is doubly tied to the
mystery of the Redemption and we lesser ones shall never solve it.
No analogy can give us light. Joseph also was sold by one of his
brothers, who, like Iscariot, was called Judas, and was sold to Ishmaelite
merchants for twenty pieces of silver, but Joseph, who prefigured Christ, was
not sold to his enemies, was not sold to be put to death: and as a compensation
for his betrayal, great good fortune was his and he became so wealthy that he
could enrich his father, and so generous that he could pardon even his
brothers.
Jesus was not only betrayed, but sold, sold for a price, sold for a
small price, bought with coins. He was the, object of a bargain, a bargain
struck and paid. Judas, the man of the purse, the cashier, did not present
himself as an accuser, did not offer himself as a cut-throat, but as a merchant
doing business in blood. *The Jews, who understood bartering for blood, daily
cutting the throats of victims, and quartering them, butchers of the Most High,
were the first and last customers of
Judas. *The sale of Jesus was the first business dune by the merchant, just
entering business; not very big business, it must be admitted, but a real, true
commercial transaction, a valid contract of buying and selling, verbal, but honestly
lived up to by the contracting parties. If Jesus had not been sold, something
would have been lacking to the perfect shame of His penance and punishment: if
He had been sold for more money, for three hundred shekels instead of thirty,
for gold instead of silver, the disgrace would have been diminished, slightly,
but still diminished. It had been destined to all eternity that He should be
bought, but bought with a small sum. In order that an infinite, supernatural
but communicable value should be made available to men, it was needful to buy
it with a small sum, and with a sum of metal, which has no real value. Did
Jesus bought by others do also the same, He who wished to redeem with the blood
of only one man all the blood shed on the earth from the days of Cain to
Caiaphas?
And if He had been sold as a slave, as so many living souls were sold in
those days in the public places, if He had been sold as redeemable property, as
human capital, as a living tool for work, the dishonor would have been almost
nothing, and the Redemption put off. But He was sold as the calf is sold to the
butcher, as the innocent animals which the butcher buys to kill, to sell again,
and to distribute in morsels to flesh-eaters. The sacred butcher, Caiaphas,
never in his most successful days had a victim so phenomenal. For more than two
thousand years Christians have been fed on that victim, and it is still intact,
and those who feed are not gratified.
Every one of us has contributed his quota, an infinitesimal quota, to
buy that victim from Judas. We have all contributed towards the sum for which
the blood of the Redeemer was bought: Caiaphas was only our agent. The field of
Aceldama, bought with the price of blood, is our inheritance, our property. And
this field has grown mysteriously larger, has spread over half the face of the
earth: whole populous cities, paved, lighted, well-ordered cities, of shops and
brothels, shine resplendent on it from north to south. And that the mystery
should be even greater, Judas' money, also multiplied by the betrayals of so many
centuries, by the accumulation of interest, has become incalculably great.
Nothing is as fruitful and bountiful as blood. The statisticians, those
fortune-tellers of modern days, can bear witness to the fact that all the
courts of the Temple could not contain the money produced from that day to this
by those thirty pieces of silver cast down there in a delirium of remorse, by
the man who sold his God.
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