JUDAS ISCARIOT, so called to distinguish him from the other apostle, Judas or Jude;, who was also named Lebbeus and Thaddeus. Of his early life nothing is known, though it is supposed that he lived in Kerioth, a village in Judea, and that his name, Iscariot, means of lierioth. He became a disciple of Jesus, afterwards an apostle, and finally his betrayer. While associating with Jesus and the eleven it appears that he acted as treas urer of company. Whether Jesus committed that work to him, or the other. 'disciples left it to him, or he sought the office for himself, does not appear. We learn, that on one occasion when a woman broke an alabaster box of costly ointment, and anointed the feet of Jesus therewith, Judas Iscariot said, " Why was not this ointment. sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?" Upon which the historian John makes this comment, "This he said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief and had the bag, and bare (that is, took and bore away) what was put therein." Very soon after this incident we find that when the conspiracy was laid. to put Jesus to.• death, Judas agreed. to betray Jesus to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver. From.. that time he sought opportunity to betray him to them in the absence of the multitude, for they feared the people, many of whom were in sympathy with Jesus. Such an opportunity was soon presented. It was the time of the annual feast of the passover. Jesus with his company of twelve had partaken of the feast, and were about to withdraw to a garden where they often resorted for quiet and seclusion, but Judas left them and. went out, and having received of the chief priests and elders a band of men and officers provided with weapons and lanterns, he led them in the darkness to the spot well known to him, where Jesus had just been engaged in prayer. Judas had given a sign to his band, saying, " Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same i he: hold him fast ;" and as Jesus came out to meet them, saying, " Whom seek ye?" Judas said, "Hail, master," and drew near to kiss him. Jesus replied, "Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a: kiss?" During the trial which followed, when Judas saw that Jesus was condemned by• the chief priests and delivered to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, he repented and brought again to the priests and elders the pieces of silver which he had received for Ws.
crime, saying, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood." Perhaps• the matter had gone further than he anticipated, and he may haVe hoped to awaken in them some of the sense of wrong-doing which he was beginning to feel, and so to effect• a stay of proceedings. They answered, "What is that to us? see thou to that;" and he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple and went and hanged himself. An additional. circumstance is related in the Acts of the Apostles concerning the end of this miserable man. The money which he returned, the priests decided, must not be put into dm treasury, being the price of blood; so they used it for the purchase of the potter' s field outside the city walls as a burial place lot' the poor and for strangers. Peter by a fi gore says that Judas purchased the field with the reward of iniquity. This was doubtless the place in which Judas met his terrible death, and which for that reason and also as being the price of the blood of Jesus, was called Aceldamrt. This character, moving like a. dismal shadow in the luminous circle of Christ's companionship, has drawn much study..
Different views have been set forth as to his motives. Theories of partial excuse Dm him have not been wanting. It has been suggested even that he was acting in warm friendship' towards his master; that, impatient with Christ's seemingly hesitating meas ures in asserting his rights and establishing his kingdom, Judas resolved to force a crisis of attack in which Christ would find himself compelled to resort to his supernatural power to discomfit his foes—Judas not doubting that Christ would easily overwhelm the opposers, and in the natural reaction of the popular feeling against the plotting priests, would find the whole nation at his feet acclaiming him king. Could this theory be main mined from the recorded facts there would seem to be no crime that could not be made a virtue. Doubtless, there was in this betrayal the usual mixture of motives which is common in human action, and the blinded judgment which pertains to wrong-doing; but Jesus calls this traitor " the son of perdition." •