Was There A Historical Judas?

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]One of the most important characters in all four gospel narratives and somebody that is central to the life story of Jesus is somebody that doesn't get looked at too much by biblical scholars in comparison to a lot of other characters and that is Judas. The man who according to the narratives betrays Jesus and is ultimately one of the people responsible for his eventual crucifixion. And if you're in any way interested in the historical Jesus or the very early history of Christianity, you will inevitably run into an issue that a lot of people have had to ask themselves about, and that is, did Judas actually exist? Now, trying to answer that question, whether or not Judas actually existed, is something that's only really going to come from textual criticism. We're going to have to go into the gospels, look at the motivations for why they were written, and try to understand based on those motivations whether or not it's more likely than not that there would have been somebody in Jesus's inner circle that would have betrayed him. And I'll be honest, it's not a question that we're ever going to get a definitive answer to. But I think by trying to get as close as possible as we can to an answer, well, it's a pretty interesting ride. Now, if you're at all familiar with the Bible and just the broader story of Christianity, you probably understand Judas as being somebody who for the sake of money betrayed Jesus, then felt immense regret afterwards and ended up killing himself because of that betrayal. And that is a I think somewhat accurate overview of how he is presented in the New Testament. But it's also a tradition that throughout the four gospels evolves and changes. And I think it's worth looking at how the character of Judas is portrayed differently by going back to the very start to my favorite gospel and that is the gospel of Mark. Mark's gospel of course being the earliest one written at the latest probably written around 70 AD in the aftermath of the destruction of the temple being written likely in Rome to a Latinized audience.

[00:02:11]And Mark is interesting because when you read through it, there is quite a lot of missing development of theology. It's a very very interesting read by itself because of how short it is, how easy it is to read, and how much like some of the basics of the Christian story aren't really there yet, uh, including like post-resurrection appearances. But anyway, Mark has a very interesting portrayal of Judas in it that I don't think too many people know about or haven't thought about in depth. Because in the Gospel of Mark, no clear definitive reason is given for why Judas actually betrays Jesus in the narrative.

[00:02:54]But there is a heavily implied reason for why he does it. If you read the Gospel of Mark that there is this one incident where Jesus is essentially having this incredibly expensive oil put over him by a woman and Judas and some of the disciples really don't like this like that is incredibly expensive oil why don't we use that and actually like give money to the poor instead of like putting it on you and then Jesus responds summarizing here basically saying you'll always have the poor you won't always have me this woman is anointing me for death. So Jesus is saying, "I'm going to die soon." And then immediately after that, Judas decides that he's going to betray Jesus.

[00:03:39]It is incredibly abrupt. But one of the things that I find fascinating is that even though Judas does then go and talk to the religious authorities and is offered money, it's heavily implied that he's not doing it for the money in the first place and that that is a secondary consideration. What I think is implied by the text is that as soon as Judas heard according to Jesus like prophetically saying that he was going to die that Judas was essentially of the mindset, oh okay, then this guy is clearly going to fail to be the Messiah and I'm not going to tie myself to a sinking ship. It was a very common belief at the time that the Messiah would be a military figure, somebody that would come and save the Jewish people from the oppression of the Roman Empire. So I think the implication there is that that is what Judas was expecting. And when Jesus told him, I'm going to die, then what Judas thought was, okay, this man is clearly not the Messiah that I was expecting and I may as well turn him over to the religious authorities. Basically, so that we can ensure that when the actual Messiah comes that we're all ready and nobody continues following this false teacher who I have totally been misled to think was the Messiah. So that's the first way that Judas is actually presented to us in the history of Christian writing. Uh there is an argument to be made that in one of Paul's letters he makes reference to Jesus being either betrayed or handed over. So maybe there's a reference there, but like the first time that we're actually shown Judas in Christian writing and it's explained his process of betrayal, it's implied at least that the reason he's doing it is because Jesus does not fit his criteria for who the Messiah was going to be. Judas also does not kill himself in the Gospel of Mark after the betrayal. He basically just vanishes from the story and is never brought up again. But of course, as the Christian tradition evolved and we get into the later gospels, Judas increasingly becomes a more and more terrible, horrific, and evil being as time goes on. We get to the Gospel of Matthew. He's evil, greedy, doing it for money. And then you get to like Luke and Acts and John, and Judas is like the embodiment of evil on earth and is betraying Jesus just because he's a fundamentally evil being that exists.

[00:05:58]But before we go any further, let's actually get to the betrayal. What did Judas actually betray? What what did he actually do? Because all the gospel narratives display it as they have no idea where Jesus is or who he actually is and what he looks like and they need Judas to identify him to hand him over to the authorities. There are two main conclusions that scholars tend to come to in terms of what Judas actually betrayed if he existed. So, first of all, the idea of like the kiss uh to point out Jesus to the religious authorities or or to the Romans uh that's commonly agreed upon just to be like a massive exaggeration uh and just pure theater for the story. So, very unlikely that. But if there was a betrayal, why did it happen? There are two main theories that I like to look at. The first one is the riot theory. If you lean into the idea that I've spoken about before where the historical Jesus was most likely somebody who caused a riot in Jerusalem during Passover, hence why he was crucified, then betraying his location is kind of believable. If he had started that riot and then basically gone into hiding in Jerusalem and Judas was upset that it wasn't escalating beyond that in any sense, he was just somebody that did one riot instead of a fullout revolution. Then maybe Judas would have betrayed his location for the sake of hopefully another Messiah coming along later. This guy clearly doesn't have the guts to actually overthrow the Romans. He didn't escalate it nearly as much as I wanted him to. I'm just going to turn him over and then I'll start looking for the next potential Jewish Messiah. The second idea is this thought that what Judas did, assuming you don't think that Jesus like kicked off a riot uh in Jerusalem during Passover and you assume that it was something else like some claim or something that what Judas did was that he betrayed to the Roman authorities at the time that in private Jesus was making explicitly political claims against Rome and was teaching his core followers that he was going to be the king of Israel or some independent leader of a Jewish nation state that would revolt against Rome. This interpretation kind of relies on Judas being the other type of caricature that being instead of somebody that desperately wanted some sort of like military overthrow instead this is some guy who realized he was way in over his head in terms of the potential danger that he had put himself in. somebody that followed Jesus's public ministry, became involved in like the core inner circle, and then suddenly realized, "Oh, these guys are actually talking about like political revolution, I I need to get out of here, and I'm going to turn him in on my way out."

[00:08:42]Because it would be one thing for Jesus to preach publicly about religion, but if Judas showed up and told the Romans, "Oh, yeah, in private, he is preached about the fact that he's going to overthrow the Romans and become the future king of Israel." they would probably respond, "Okay, we're going to have him killed."

[00:09:00]And then, you know what? Actually, I'm going to address a third possibility, which is something that is probably regarded as like the most generous interpretation of what Judas did if he existed and did betray Jesus to the authorities. And that is the idea that Judas was somebody that wanted to see, you know, like the apocalypse come, like this point where God would interfere and like stop the Romans. And what he was doing by betraying Jesus was trying to accelerate the process when he didn't see like the the military might taking off or like an army being brought together by Jesus. He was like, you know what? I'm going to force the issue. I'm going to turn him over. He's going to be confronted by the Romans and then God will have to intervene. Now, that's very speculative, but I feel like if we're talking about the historical Judas, uh, we should at least give him the assumption that there was one potential theory for why he might have had in his own mind good reasons for betraying Jesus to the authorities at the time.

[00:10:00]So, anyway, there are the theories as to what the historical Judas would have actually done in terms of betraying the historical Jesus. But why should you think that he actually existed? Well, first point, it is completely unanimous in agreement between the gospel sources and probably Paul to an extent that Jesus was to some extent betrayed by somebody in his inner circle. And that is not something that any of the early Christian sources try to hide away from.

[00:10:33]So, not only is there this complete consensus in the early Christian tradition that Jesus was betrayed by somebody in his inner circle, but that's also a particularly embarrassing thing for the authors themselves to admit and something that they probably couldn't get away from in their writing because it was true. It was something that happened. It's not a particularly good look if you're trying to sell somebody as literally being God, but somebody from their inner circle betrayed them.

[00:11:01]Why didn't he see it coming? what the gospels read like are people trying to justify why it actually adds to the fact to the pool of evidence that Jesus was the Messiah rather than take away the fact that he was betrayed by somebody that he considered one of his closest confidants. And it also doesn't really blend with like the core message of Christianity that it was trying to put out at that time that like anyone could be forgiven for literally anything. is why if you're trying to make that message would you invent a character from scratch who does something and the whole point of him doing that is that he literally cannot be forgiven. Read read the gospel of John, read uh any of the gospels and it comes to how they address Judas. They make the argument consistently that Jesus literally says it would be better if Judas was never born. The idea that Judas would be created from scratch just to contradict the core message of what the gospels are trying to get across, I think is particularly unlikely. I think what we have in Judas is somebody who would have known the historical Jesus and somebody who in an incredibly volatile political environment made a a very rash decision to suddenly detach themselves from Jesus's movement either for the sake of their own safety or because they didn't think that Jesus was living up to their expectations of what they expected from him. And as a result of that, early Christians remembered this Judas figure as somebody who betrayed Jesus. In Paul's letters, arguably and all throughout the gospels, it is central to Jesus's account, to the account of his life that he was betrayed. And what the gospels show us is an evolving narrative, an evolving idea of a character where this one figure becomes increasingly detested and hated by Christian communities. And you see that over time as he goes from somebody with no clear motivation as to what he's doing to the embodiment of Satan himself on earth throughout the four gospel narratives. I've of course seen arguments to the contrary of Judas's existence. One of the more popular ones is the idea that uh Judas is like derived from Judea and that's a standin for the Jewish people as a whole. Like Judea betrayed Jesus. And that does kind of make sense at first glance, but it's kind of difficult to reconcile when you remember that there are three other people in the New Testament at least named Judas, including one of Jesus's own brothers.

[00:13:49]So, look, will we ever get a definitive answer as to whether or not Judas actually existed? Probably not, unless we eventually do get the ability to travel through time one day. But for the present moment, it's not a question that we're going to be able to with any definitive answer say yes or no to the question of whether or not Judas actually existed. Not to the extent that we can say that certain figures in the Bible existed like Jesus himself or like Peter or like Paul or James or maybe John. So did Judas Escariat actually exist?

[00:14:24]I don't know, but probably.

[00:14:28]Is Is that a satisfying answer? I don't know.