Secrets of Judas

by James M. Robinson

  While Peter was below in the courtyard, one of the servant-girls of the high priest came by. When she saw Peter warming himself, she stared at him and said, “You also were with Jesus, the man from Nazareth.” But he denied it, saying, “I do not know or understand what you are talking about.” And he went out into the forecourt. Then the cock crowed. And the servant-girl, on seeing him, began again to say to the bystanders, “This man is one of them.” But again he denied it. Then after a little while the bystanders again said to Peter, “Certainly you are one of them, for you are a Galilean.” But he began to curse, and he swore an oath. “I do not know this man you are talking about.” At that moment the cock crowed for the second time. Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, “Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.

  Judging by the way Mark presents Peter, it would not have been surprising if Peter, like Judas, had gone out and killed himself, for both publicly betrayed him. Instead, Peter lived to see a better day—but not Judas!

  They built the greatest cathedral in the world over the site where Peter is thought to have been buried. But Mark would not have contributed a penny to the massive fund-raising effort involved! Fortunately, that took place long after Mark’s time.

  Jesus’s family hardly comes off much better in Mark than do the apostles. There is no infancy narrative in Mark, so the whole Christmas story is missing. Instead, the Holy Family is ashamed of Jesus, convinced that he is out of his mind, so they try to get him out of the public eye. Right after Mark’s list of the twelve apostles, culminating in “Judas Iscariot, who gave him over” (Mark 3:19), Mark continued (Mark 3:19–21, 31–35):

  Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”… Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

  The “Holy Family”? Hardly in Mark! Does Mark present Judas as all that much worse than the Holy Family? The same put-down applied to Jesus’s hometown, Nazareth (Mark 6:1–6).

  Judas Iscariot fits all too well into Mark’s portrayal not only of the twelve apostles, especially Peter, but also of the Holy Family and his hometown! What is going on here?

  Mark was the first Evangelist of the thriving Gentile Christian Church, as it became increasingly alienated from the Jewish Christian Church built with Jesus’s original disciples. Put into that context, it is less surprising that Mark so decidedly puts down the Twelve and the Holy Family. One can only recall the strained relations reflected already by Paul (Gal. 1:15–19; 2:1–14).

  Should one expect the Gospel of the Gentile Church to be more favorable than was Paul toward Peter (“Cephas”), whom Paul “opposed to his face, because he stood self-condemned,” and toward the “circumcision faction,” “this hypocrisy,” those who were “not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel,” not to speak of the “false believers” who opposed Paul in Jerusalem? After all, Paul had warned explicitly against any other gospel than his own (Gal. 1:6–9).

  One would actually expect a Gentile Christian Gospel to be anything but enthusiastic about those whom Paul put down so decidedly! The portrayal in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians of the Twelve (“Cephas and John”), specifically Peter (“Cephas”) and the Holy Family (“James”), fits perfectly the negative portrayal of the Twelve, Peter, and the Holy Family in the Gentile Gospel Mark. One should not expect it to be otherwise. But then the question has to be raised as to whether these Markan portrayals do full justice to these persons, or whether they are the victims of Paul’s, and Mark’s, theology. And what does this then suggest about Mark’s portrayal of another one of the Twelve, Judas Iscariot?

  The Gospel of Mark has been characterized as “a passion narrative with a long introduction.” What this characterization has in mind is the way in which Mark seems to have his focus on the cross long before the actual crucifixion story itself. Already very early on, the plot to kill Jesus is brought into the story (Mark 3: 6):

  The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

  Then, the second half of Mark is dominated by Jesus again and again predicting his crucifixion in all too much detail even for Peter, namely (Mark 8:31–32):

  Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly.

  Then on the descent from the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus casually mentions his resurrection to Peter, James, and John, who had been with him there (Mark 9:9):

  As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead could mean.

  Had he not just told them that after three days he would rise again?

  Shortly thereafter, there is a second detailed prediction of Good Friday and Easter (Mark 9:30–32):

  He was teaching his disciples, saying to them, The Son of Man is to be given over into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again. But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.

  Then, a third time, Jesus describes in even more detail what is going to happen (Mark 10:32–34):

  He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”

  For all practical purposes, this is a rather detailed summary of Mark’s passion and resurrection narratives (Mark 15–16). Indeed, it is generally recognized that such a detailed prediction was not made by the historical Jesus himself, but rather was formulated by the Evangelist and put on Jesus’s tongue.

  Even the Pauline gospel, limited to preaching only “Christ crucified” (1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2), crops up once in Mark on Jesus’s tongue (Mark 10:45):

  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.

  After all these allusions to the crucifixion, not to speak of detailed narrations, the Markan Jesus could quite understandably mention at the Last Supper (Mark 14:21): “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.” And Judas would only have to be a bit smarter than Peter and the other apostles to know that it was the will of God that Jesus die for our sins in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3).

  In view of Mark’s portrayal of Jesus’s death as the fulfillment of prophecy and as being the will of God of which Jesus and the Twelve were fully aware, with Jesus acquiescing to God’s will even to the point of death, it is really surprising, not that Judas turned Jesus over to the authorities to kill him as part of the plan of God, but that Mark can even present this in a reproachful way (Mark 14:18–21):

  And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will give me over, one who is eating with me.” They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, “Surely, not I?” He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to the one by whom the Son of Man is given over! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”

  But then, according
to Mark, if Judas Iscariot had never been born, how would the scripture have been fulfilled, how would the will of God have been done, how would Jesus have “died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3)? Why pronounce a woe on Judas, who is only doing what he was born to do?—what God, and therefore Jesus, want him to do?

  Mark explains that the Jewish authorities want to kill Jesus, but need to find a way to arrest him privately (Mark 14:1–2):

  The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, “Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.”

  Jesus picks this up to mock them at the arrest—and to emphasize that all they are doing is fulfilling the scriptures (Mark 14:48–50):

  “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But let the scripture be fulfilled.” And they all forsook him, and fled.

  Thus Judas is aiding the Jewish authorities’ arrest of Jesus in order to kill him. This cannot be, from Mark’s point of view, just an innocent referral to the religious authorities to hear what Jesus has to say, such as is appropriate on any and every issue that arises within Judaism. Their intention is not to interview Jesus to learn who he is and what he is trying to do, whereupon they might agree with him and release him. They only want to “arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him” (Mark 14:2). This had been their intention from the very beginning, when the Pharisees and Herodians conspired together “how to destroy him” (Mark 3:6). So, from Mark’s point of view, Judas is at best a party to the crime. Mark can’t completely whitewash the scene by presenting Judas Iscariot as just doing the will of God and so the will of Jesus.

  The Gospel of Mark presents in graphic detail the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Judas plays the central role (Mark 14:43–45):

  And immediately, while he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the scribes and the elders. Now the one who gave him over had given them a sign, saying, The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him and lead him away under guard. And when he came, he went up to him at once, and said, Master! And he kissed him. And they laid hands on him and seized him.

  It is of course this text that is primarily responsible for the “bad press” Judas Iscariot has received ever since.

  THE JEWISH SAYINGS GOSPEL Q

  The Jewish Christian Church of the first generation spoke primarily Aramaic, of which no written texts have survived. After all, most of the original disciples were illiterate! But, fortunately, somewhere along the way they did translate Jesus’s sayings into Greek, no doubt for use in their mission among Greek-speaking Jews. They even brought them together into a small collection of Jesus’s sayings. So I have spent the last two decades reconstructing it, with a group of scholars I brought together for this purpose. Let me explain:

  The Critical Edition of Q, which we published in 2000, presents this written text of sayings ascribed to Jesus. It is not a book that exists today in its own right in the New Testament. Instead, it lurks just below the surface, and has to be reconstructed. This is how: both Matthew and Luke had copies of the Sayings Gospel Q, and used it, together with the Gospel of Mark, in composing their Gospels, as a kind of “ecumenical” gesture, Matthew from the point of view of the Jewish Christians, Luke from the point of view of the Gentile Christians. So when Matthew and Luke have the same saying of Jesus, but they cannot have gotten it from Mark (since it is not in Mark), they must have gotten it from another source. Scholars a century ago nicknamed this other source “Q,” the first letter of the German word meaning “source,” Quelle. Today we refer to it as the Sayings Gospel Q, to distinguish it from the four Narrative Gospels with which we are familiar from the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

  Since Q itself does not have chapter and verse numbers, we make use of Luke’s chapter and verse numbers when quoting Q. This is because Luke follows Q’s sequence more faithfully than does Matthew. Since there is no birth narrative in Q, the text of Q begins at Luke 3 with John the Baptist. So the first chapter of Q is called Q 3. Q material is scattered through Matthew and Luke, but ends just before the passion narrative in Luke 22. So the last chapter of Q is Q 22.

  Since the Sayings Gospel Q is composed for use in the actual continuation of Jesus’s own message by his disciples, it does not look back on Jesus’s public ministry so much as a past reality to be described, as it is a collection of sayings still to be proclaimed. What is important is not who said what to whom, but that these sayings are decisive for you—your fate hangs on hearkening to them! It is perhaps for this reason that it does not mention by name those who carry on the message. None of the Twelve is mentioned by name, not even Peter—and not Judas!

  THE JEWISH CHURCH’S ECUMENICAL GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

  The Gospel of Matthew seems to have been written when the remaining vestiges of the Jewish Church of Q merged into the much larger Gentile Church of Mark. The merging of the Gospels of the two communions was a kind of ecumenical gesture attesting to the hoped-for harmonizing of the two confessions.

  Matthew supplements the Markan record about Judas in significant ways. Mark had ascribed the initiative for the bribe to the chief priests (Mark 14:11). But in Matthew, Judas actually asks the chief priests to offer him a bribe (Matt 26:15): “What will you give me if I give him over to you?” And Matthew focuses on Judas at the Last Supper when it comes to identifying who will give him over (Matt. 26:25):

  Judas, who gave him over, said, “Surely not I, Rabbi?” He replied, “You have said so.”

  This is not fully explicit, but nonetheless the reader gets the message: Judas will do it.

  It is quite significant that Matthew presents Judas here as addressing Jesus as Rabbi, rather than the Greek translation “Lord” normally used in the Gospels. Of course it may very well be that in the Aramaic used at the Last Supper, and elsewhere, Jesus was in fact addressed as Rabbi. At that time it did not yet have the specialized modern meaning of Jewish clergy, but was just a Jewish term of respect for a religious leader.

  But there seems to be a clear aversion to Rabbi or Rabbouni on the part of Matthew and Luke: once when Mark uses Rabbouni of Jesus (Mark 10:51), both Matthew and Luke read “Lord” (Matt. 9:28; Luke 18:41). Another time when Mark presents Peter addressing Jesus in the transfiguration story as Rabbi (Mark 9:5), Matthew and Luke read “Lord” (Matt. 17:4; Luke 9:33). In still another Markan instance of Peter addressing Jesus as Rabbi (Mark 11:21), Matthew omits the address (Matt. 21:20), and Luke omits the whole incident.

  It is only when Mark presents Judas addressing Jesus as Rabbi (Mark 14:45) that Matthew retains Rabbi (Matt. 26:49); Luke omits here the address completely (Luke 22:47). In fact, Luke never uses Rabbi anywhere. His is the Gospel most emphatically addressed to Gentiles! But Matthew actually inserts a second instance of Judas addressing Jesus as Rabbi (Matt. 26:25), where there is no parallel at all in the other Gospels. This is obviously because Matthew has disowned Judas. Such a form of address on the part of Judas merely documents his status as an unworthy disciple.

  Actually, Matthew explicitly rejects the use of Rabbi, by arguing that teachers of the Law and Pharisees seek to be so addressed out of pride (Matt. 23:5–7):

  They do all their deeds to be seen by others; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long. They love to have the place of honor at banquets and the best seats in the synagogues, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have people call them Rabbi.

  It is hence to be avoided (Matt. 23:8):

  But you are not to be called Rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are brethren.

  So Matthew emphasizes that it is Judas who calls Jesus Rabbi!

  When Judas actually kisses Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane to identify him to the Jewish authorities, Matthew has Jesus add (Matt. 26:50): “Friend
, do what you are here to do.” This is almost an exoneration of Judas for the identifying kiss! The irony of the scene is that Jesus addresses him as “friend,” an extremely rare term on Jesus’s lips!

  Then Matthew, alone among the Gospels, reports the remorse of Judas. He returns the money to the chief priests and elders, saying (Matt. 27:4): “I have sinned in giving over innocent blood.” Then, when they shrug their shoulders, Judas, “throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, departed; and he went and hanged himself” (Matt. 27:5).

  Matthew, as a Jewish Gospel, would of course have every reason to present a more favorable view of the Jewish disciples of Jesus than do Paul and Mark. After all, it was Matthew who rescued Peter from being Satan, to let him be the rock (Matt. 16:18–19):

  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

  To be sure, Matthew retains Peter’s opposition to the idea of the passion, and lets Peter still receive the rebuke “Satan.” But Matthew did flesh out the dialogue to make it less shocking and more understandable (Matt. 16:22–23):