What Did Judas Betray, and Why Did He Do It?
In my previous post I indicated that there are several things we can say with relative certainly about the historical Judas Iscariot (and indicated why I think we can be pretty sure about all of them): he really existed, he was one of Jesus' twelve disciples, he was therefore an apocalyptic Jew from Palestine, and he really did hand Jesus over to the authorities to be arrested. But what is it exactly that Judas did that led to Jesus’ arrest, and why did he do it? Here we move from the grounds of relative historical certainty to issues of probability and speculation. The question of Judas’s motives for his act has intrigued Christians from the time before our earliest sources and continues to intrigue scholars today. The reality is that any discussion of motive is almost entirely speculative. If you can’t accurately describe my motives in writing this particular blog thread the way I have – and I can assure you, you don’t know my motives (and even if I *told* you, you couldn't be [...]