José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)
Luke 22:3-6
Compare John 6:70-71; 13:2, 27
Judas was called to the apostleship. In the end, though, he betrayed Jesus, and his name has become virtually synonymous, in many languages, with traitor.
Some suggest that he was motivated by simple greed. And there are surely passages in the gospels to support greed as at least a contributing factor.
Others believe that he was a Zealot, a revolutionary interested in expelling the Roman occupation force from Palestine who grew impatient with Jesus’ failure to act as, Judas felt, the Messiah should. One suggested etymology for Iscariot is “man of the Sicarii,” referring to the knife-wielding Jewish assassins who sought to carry out anti-Roman terrorist attacks. (Does that sound contemporary enough for you?) On this reading, because Jesus didn’t live up to his political agenda, Judas sought to force the Savior’s hand by putting him into a situation where he would be forced to use his already-demonstrated miraculous power. But then, to Judas’s shock, he didn’t. Which would explain Judas’s sudden suicide when he realized that, in fact, Jesus was going to die.
Who knows?
But we should be very careful, in any case, that we not follow in Judas’s path. It’s very easy to point the accusatory finger at him, but we should be more worried, two thousand years later, about ourselves.
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