Judas Iscariot

JUDAS ISCARIOT. - Apostle, sadly famous for having betrayed Jesus. Son of a certain Simon, from the city of Qerijoth (John 6:72; 13:2-26), perhaps the present-day Hirbet el-Qarjatejn, a small town in southern Judea, he was called to the apostolate (Luke 6:16) and appointed administrator of the group of the "twelve" (John 12:6; 13:29). He betrayed the Master for thirty pieces of silver (Matt. 26:14 ff. and parallel texts). A guest at the Last Supper, he does not appear to have participated in the Eucharistic Communion (John 13:2-32). He led co-those who went to seize the Redeemer (John 18:3; Acts 1:16); he betrayed the Master with a kiss (Matt. 26:49 and parallel texts); he too was struck down by Jesus with the words: "I am he" (John 18:5), and after his condemnation he hanged himself (Matt. 27:3-5; Acts 1:18).

In the lists of the Apostles J. is always named last, with the infamous note of "the traitor" (Matt. 10:4; Mark 3:19; Luke 6:16). Jesus knew from the beginning "who the traitor was" (John 6:6) and pointed him out with the titles: "a devil" and "son of perdition" (John 17:12). But one must not hold that J. had perverse desires from the very beginning or that he was an intruder in the apostolic college; he was chosen by Jesus together with the others: he must have had practical abilities and good qualities that made him worthy of being chosen an apostle and steward.

The crisis perhaps began in the synagogue of Capernaum, where Jesus' answer to Peter lets it be understood that J. did not share the faith of the chief of the Apostles (John 6:70 f.). More than Peter, J. must have been scandalized by the repeated predictions of Jesus' Passion (Matt. 16:21-23; 17:22 f.; 20:18 f.). Then avarice grew in him, which made him a "thief" (John 12:6), and Jesus' reproach at the supper of Bethany must have stung him (John 12:7 f.), where he learned, from the Master's words, that his end was now near. Of this he had confirmation after Jesus' glorious entry into Jerusalem, when Jesus alluded to his own Crucifixion (John 12:32). Then the crisis broke out. And J. went to the priests to ask how much they would give him to hand the Master over to them (Matt. 26:14). It is difficult to establish the psychological motive of the betrayal. The Evangelists, besides the design of God (John 13:18; 17:12; Acts 1:16), point to avarice. But this does not fully explain J.'s conduct after Jesus' condemnation. Love of money, wounded pride, fallen illusions must have contributed to J.'s betrayal, and a certain love for Jesus is not to be excluded, a human love that resurfaced as an impulse of despair when the consequences of the horrendous crime became clear. Then J., having returned the money, went and hanged himself (Matt. 27:5); the rope broke or the branch bent and he, striking the ground, "burst open in the middle" (Acts 1:17).

Legend also built upon J. While the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy presents him as possessed by the devil from childhood, Papias mentions some who believed he survived the hanging (in F. X. Funk, Patres ap., Paderborn 1901, pp. 360-63).

In the course of the centuries J. also found his apologists. From the Cainites of the 2nd century down to a Roué of the present century, by way of E. Renan, Petruccelli della Gattina, G. Bovio, etc., a trail of admirers has sought to defend his person and his deed, or at least to excuse him. But against every attempt at rehabilitation stands the word of Jesus: "The Son of Man goes as it is written of him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed: it would be better for him if he had never been born" (Matt. 26:24).

Fedele Pasquero

ICONOGRAPHY

1. Archaeology

In some Christian sarcophagi two successive scenes of J. with the Redeemer are observed; the first represents the meeting, when the traitor approached greeting him: "Hail Rabbi"; the second moment is the kiss (Mt. 26:47-48). Thus in the sarcophagus of Servanne (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 15, 2). Of the scene of J.'s kiss several examples are known in sarcophagi, among them one known since the time of A. Bosio (Roma sotterranea, Rome 1632, p. 431); others published by Garrucci and by Le Blant. Among these are remembered the sarcophagi of Verona (Wilpert, Sarcofagi, pl. 150, 2) and of Arles (ibid., pl. 32, 3; 148, 2; 217, 3). In the sarcophagi there is only one example of the hanging of J., in Arles; of it Wilpert recognized in the Museum of Nîmes the fragment with the head of J. with two faces; the artist thus wished to express falseness (ibid., pl. 15, 1).

In non-cemeterial art J. is represented on one of the columns of St. Mark's in Venice when he goes to receive the thirty pieces of silver (Venturi, I, fig. 252). On the ivory casket of Brescia J. points out Jesus to the soldiers (J. Kollwitz, Die Lipsonothek von Brescia, Berlin 1933, p. 15, pl. 1).

In the Evangelary of Rabbula, J. at Gethsemane embraces the Redeemer (R. Garrucci, Storia dell'arte cristiana, III, Prato 1876, pl. 138); in the mosaic cycle of S. Apollinare Nuovo (6th century) there is represented first the kiss of J., as on one of the columns of St. Mark's in Venice, and then in the act of handing back to Caiaphas the price of his betrayal, a scene which is found in a diptych of the cathedral of Milan and on one of the columns of the ciborium of St. Mark's. In the mosaic cycle of a basilica in Spain, perhaps at Saragossa, J. was depicted hanged from the tree, as is attested by the illustrative distich, dictated by Prudentius (Dittochaeon, no. 41); this scene is found several times; for example, in the Lipsanotheca of Brescia (J. Kollwitz, op. cit., p. 32, pl. 5); on an ivory of the Museum of London (O. M. Dalton, Catalogue of the ivory carvings of the christian era of the British Museum, London 1909, no. 291); in a diptych of the cathe-

of the Cathedral of Milan (Venturi, I, fig. 390); in the "purple codex" of Rossano (A. Muñoz, Codex purpureus Rossanensis, Rome 1907, pl. 12); in the Evangelary of Rabbülâ (R. Garrucci, op. cit., III, pl. 138, 1); on one of the columns of the ciborium of St. Mark's (Venturi, I, fig. 259).

In some Christian inscriptions of Rome, Capua, Nola and Ravenna one reads imprecatory expressions against the violator of tombs, to whom it is threatened either that "anathema habeat de Iuda" or "cum Iuda partem habeat".

Enrico Josi

2. Art

Apart from its appearance in the countless images of the Last Supper, the depictions of the kiss and the arrest form an essential element of the Passion cycles in medieval Byzantine and Italian monuments (mosaics in St. Mark's in Venice and at Monreale; frescoes in S. Angelo in Formis; bronze doors at Benevento and Monreale), reaching with Giotto's fresco in the Arena Chapel at Padua the highest artistic level. The further iconographic development of the aforementioned themes concerns the introduction of veristic details in the bearing of the bailiffs (cf., for example, the prints of the late German Gothic and still the three woodcuts of Dürer); the artists of the Renaissance experimented in the reproduction of a nocturnal scene.

Of the other scenes with G. as protagonist, the bribery by means of the thirty pieces of silver is encountered for the first time in the 9th century (Chludov Psalter in Moscow); in the West the relevant examples are divided between Germany (Evangelary of St. Bernward at Hildesheim, ca. 1000; relief in the choir of the cathedral of Naumburg, ca. 1270), southern France (Romanesque reliefs in the friezes of St-Gilles and Beaucaire) and Italy (relief in the aforementioned column of the ciborium of St. Mark's, the relief of the cathedral of Modena, painting by Duccio at Siena, frescoes by Giotto at Padua and by Barna at S. Gimignano). In contrast to the repentance of G., of which the column of the ciborium at Venice gives one of the very rare representations, the punishment of the traitor, that is his hanging, already traced in an ivory at London of ca. 400, is found again in the Evangelary of Rabbülâ, in Byzantine miniatures, in the Catalan Bibles (ca. 1000) as well as in the column of the ciborium at Venice. With the course of time there manifests itself the tendency to render the scene of the suicide, originally limited to strictly essential elements, as horrifying as possible: with reference to the text Acts 1:18, the 13th-century reliefs in the portal of the Calende at Rouen and in the central façade of Reims show the entrails coming out of the disemboweled body, while in a relief at Strasbourg (ca. 1300) the devil himself extracts them.

Kurt Rathe

THE GOSPEL OF G. I

An apocryphon, of which there is mention in St. Irenaeus (I, 31, 1: PG 7, 704) and in St. Epiphanius (Haer., 38, 1, 3: PG 41, 654-66). It was composed within the sect of the Cainites (v.), who regarded J. as a hero, the only Apostle who had understood Jesus. The apocryphon, which was presumably meant to be a rehabilitation of its protagonist, has not come down to us; the lack of information makes it impossible to form an idea of its contents.

Fedele Pasquero