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In 1962, I delivered the Edinburgh Gifford Lectures on The Deed and the Doer in the Bible, the tenth and last being entitled The Doer after the Deed. This article presents the case with which I concluded: Judas through whom an unprincipled administration could lay hands on the one they feared. In Matthew it leads to self-punishment, by hanging. In Acts punishment is inflicted from above, he falls and bursts. (Similarly, Papias has him bloated, inflamed, perishing in his filth.) Church tradition, setting out from Matthew, finds here the prototype of the very worst evildoer, adding to his outrage of selling the Saviour the ultimate one of self-slaughter. This has become the dominant interpretation — though a different one from the early third century will be looked at below. A representative German account runs: Das Ende des Judas … entspricht jüdischem Empfinden, für welches der Satz gilt (Tobit 12.10) ‘Die Frevler sind Feinde ihres eigenen Lebens’, The end of Judas … reflects Jewish feeling, in line with the dictum ‘The evildoers are enemies of their own life’. But it is a misreading, it does no justice to Matthew at all. Let us go through the story.
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- Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1995
References
** Dedicated to my wonderful friend Reuven Yaron and his family, it appeared first (minus para. XI) in California Law Review 82, 1994, pp. 95ff, then (with XI) in Rechtshistorisches Journal 13, 1994, pp. 307 ff. Bernard S.Jackson's “Brother Daniel: The Construction of Jewish Identity in the Israel Supreme Court”, International Journal for Semiotics of Law VI/17, 1993, pp. 115ff. reached me too late to be discussed. Something like his semiotic analysis, pp. 135 ff., would certainly be of value in exploring my texts.
1 27.3 ff.
2 1.16 ff.
3 See Bihlmeyer, K., Die apostolischen Väter, (1924) Fragment III.Google Scholar
4 Ch. VIII on Origen.
5 Lohmeyer, E. and Schmauch, W., Das Evangelium des Matthäus, (3rd., 1962) 376.Google Scholar
6 8.5 f., (me'anu lashubh — 'eyn 'ish niḥam). Septuagint: epistrepho-metanoeo, the latter equivalent to metamelomai. In an entirely non-doctrinal context, a somewhat analogous relation comes through. God led the freed slaves through the desert rather than the nearer Philistine territory ‘lest they repent when they see war and return to Egypt’ (Exodus 13.17, (niḥam, metamelomai — shubh, apostrepho equivalent to epistrepho).
7 Acts 3.19, (metanoesate kai epistrepsate).
8 31.19 ('aḥrey shubhi niḥamti). The Septuagint 38.19 simplifies: ‘after my captivity I repented’, hysteron aichmalosias mou metenoesa.
9 32.12, shubh … wehinnahem. The Septuagint 32.12 simplifies: ‘cease, pausai from the wrath of your spirit and become kindly, hileos genou about the evil of the people.
10 Psalms 90 (Septuagint 89). 13, shuba … wehinnaḥem (epistrepson … parakletheti). Parakaleo in this sense e.g. Judges 21.6, 15, II Samuel 24.16.
11 4.28, welo' niḥamti (metanoeso in Septuagint) welo' 'ashubh mimmenna (apostrepso ap' autes).
12 2.14, (shubh-niḥam) Septuagint: epistrepho-metanoeo.
13 Jonah 3.9, (yashubh weniḥam). Septuagint: metanoesei kai apostrepsei.
14 30.2, (shubh Septuagint epistrepho).
15 6.10, (shubh, epistrepho). Quoted in Matthew 13.15.
16 Judith, 5.19, (epistrepho).
17 22.32, (epistrepho).
18 I Samuel 15.29, (niḥam). The Septuagint reverently substitutes ‘to return’ for ‘to lie’ in the first half: ouk apostrepsei oude metanoesei, hoti ouch hos anthropos esti tou metanoesai autos.
19 110.4. Septuagint 109.4 (ou metamelethesetai).
20 42.6, (niḥam). Mitigated in the Septuagint: hegemai de emauton gen kai spodon, ‘I consider myself dust and ashes’.
21 Dodd, C.H., who took to my opinion, translated ‘was seized with remorse’, hinting at extraordinary quality: The New English Bible, New Testament, 1961, p. 52.Google Scholar
22 Matthew 26.14 ff., 45 ff.
23 E.g. Mishnah Gittin 5.5, Tosefta Baba Kamma 10.14, Baba Metzia 8.26.
24 Hamlet, III, iii. 53–55.
25 Even formalistic compliance is of considerable diversity; see my reference to the Charge of the Light Brigade in “Three Footnotes on Civil Disobedience in Antiquity” (Humanities in Society, vol. 2, 1979, p. 76).
26 15.18.
27 Exemplified by Saul, I Samuel 15.24,30, 26.21, by David, II Samuel 12.13, 24.10,17, I Chronicles 21.8, 17, by Hezekiah, I Kings, 18.14, by Micah 7.9, Psalms 41.5, 51.6, Job 7.20. Abimelech, in Genesis 20.9, stresses his manifest integrity of intent vis-à-vis Abraham by the rhetorical question ‘What have I sinned against you?’. See also infra n. 31, on Achan.
28 On I Samuel 7.6
29 See Lohmeyer and Schmauch, supra n. 5, at 375.
30 I Samuel 25.24, 28.
31 Confession's history is immensely complicated from Genesis 3 on. Joshua is told by God (7.10 ff) that a military venture miscarried because one of his men appropriated some of the accursed treasures of destroyed Jericho. A magical procedure identifies Achan as the criminal dooming him and all his family and possessions to extermination. However, he is still needed to reveal exactly where the booty is hidden and at Joshua's behest — addressing him as ‘my son’ — he gives glory to the Lord, confesses and cooperates without reserve. By Talmudic times, he thereby gains atonement (Mishnah Sanhedrin 6.2): as he and all his are being put to death, Joshua exclaims ‘Why has thou troubled us? the Lord shall trouble you this day’ — for the Rabbis ‘this day, but not in the next world’.
32 I shall be reproved, rightly, for not at least citing the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek terms for the offence. But that would be about two dozen, with major problems never so far tackled. So I let sleeping dogs lie rather than get awake ones to embark on too complicated a truth.
33 Cf. John 11.50, 18.14. I last discussed this subject in Appeasement or Resistance, (1987) 75 ff.
34 Matthew 27.4, 40.
35 Matthew 26.75.
36 1.15 ff. The demotion sets in already when, in Luke 22.47 f., his kiss is rejected. Or indeed to 22.22 when the synoptic record is shortened: see below, ch. X, n. 63.
37 Acts 1.20, Psalms 69.26, 109.8.
38 16.27 ff.
39 II Samuel 17.22. It is widely held that the Judas episode is influenced by this one; see e.g. Lohmeyer and Schmauch, supra n. 5, at 375. Does not conflict with what I say but strikes me as rather impossible.
40 Embassy to Gaius 234 ff.
41 The Jewish War, vol. 7, ch. 8, §6, 320ff.
42 See my “The Linguistics of Suicide”, in Philosophy and Public Affairs 1, (1972) 410, repr. in Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 7, (1977) 155.
43 6.1 ff. 10.20 ff. In my lifetime, on two or three occasions, when the ruling coalition in Germany was opposed by a radical party, you might join and leave and be welcomed on rejoining the latter. Growth in number, however, diversity and self-confidence were apt to turn a leaving into irremediable desertion.
44 Why did Luke not retain the suicide and explain that, in this case, because of the preceding desertion, it did not work in Judas's favour? Would have been too complicated, too academic at that stage. Up to a point, it became the dominant understanding, say, from A.D. 250, see infra ch. VIII.
45 Ten applications from the gospels are cited in my The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism, (1956, repr. 1973) 170 ff., starting with Matthew 9.1 ff., Mark 2.1 ff., Luke 5.17 ff. where (1) Jesus declares a paralytic's sins forgiven, (2) the scribes declare it a blasphemy, (3) he makes the paralytic walk and carry his bed.
46 Luke 2.41 ff. ‘The verb is hypotassein, which is technical in the rules of behaviour, the codes of community discipline, fashioned as the primitive Jewish-Christian sect began to crystallize’: my Civil Disobedience in Antiquity, (1972) 48.
47 Migne, , Patrologia Graeca 13, (1857) 1766 ff.Google Scholar
48 Shows how long it takes to shake off all the fall-out of a long-entertained major misconception.
49 Genesis 37.26 ff., 31 ff., 44.18 ff.
50 Matthew 26.15.
51 Genesis 44.14 ff.
52 Genesis 44.33 f.
53 Matthew 27.3.
54 Genesis Rabba 65 on Genesis 27.27, I Maccabees 7.9 ff., 9.54 ff., Josephus, , Jewish Antiquities 12.385 f.Google Scholar, 391 ff., 413, 20.235.
55 See on him Broyde, I., Jewish Encyclopaedia, 1907, vol. 7, p. 242Google Scholar, and on Alcimus, A. Buchler, ibid.., vol. 1, pp. 332 f.: Jose has a place among the rare early stars commemorated in the Mishnah's The Fathers (1.4). Apparently he is not meant to be forgotten; this tract still figures in the traditional Sabbath afternoon services between Passover and New Year.
56 I wish I had thought of these two a fortioris when I wrote on Rabbinic argumentation.
57 Comes out in many ways: e.g. Yakim is the leader's nephew, Judas a disciple, Yakim ‘sells’ him in inverted commas, Judas for cash.
58 I advisedly keep quiet about his name in the text. The few readers who consult footnotes are hopefully experienced enough not to get too confused by its, too, being Judas. Note: neither I Maccabees nor Josephus records the drama of Jose and Yakim.
59 Matthew 27.1 ff.
60 1.18 f.
61 The deaths of Agrippa I, Herod the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes, e.g. by Munck, J., The Acts of the Apostles, (1967) 10, 114 f.Google Scholar
62 While dubious, then, about the Verharmlosung, the treatment as amply parallelled, of Judas's death in Acts by commentators like Munck, I am no happier with its dismissal as silly, like say, Bardy, G. speaking of an echo des fables assez pueriles in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique 11:2. 1932, p. 1946.Google Scholar
63 Matthew 26.24, Mark 14.21. Luke 22.22 omits the second half, ‘it had been…’, relegating the main treatment of an evil figure to Acts 1.15 ff.; see supra ch. VI.
64 Only underlined by its pronounced exclusion at certain junctures, like I Samuel 15.29: ‘The Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent, for he is not a man that he should repent’. Another proviso ought to be recorded here: superior, guiding factors are even behind the contrary — Cain's reinstatement, for instance, to be cited presently. I might inquire into all this if I were assured of another 15 years; see the next footnote but two. — I am aware that the Oxford English Dictionary, (2nd ed., 1989) vol. 3, p. 841, ranks this use of ‘contrary’ as colloquial and dialectical.
65 Genesis 4.10 ff.
66 Exodus 23.9 ff.
67 II Kings 20.1 ff., Isaiah 38.1 ff.
68 See e.g. Dillman, A.D., Die Genesis, (4th ed., 1882) 95.Google Scholar
69 1.3, 10.
70 I Chronicles 19.18.
71 Genesis 41.46. His father Jacob, too, honourably received by the ruler, departed in this fashion: 47.10.
72 Esther 8.15 — possibly echoing the Joseph elevation.
73 Genesis 4.13.
74 Matthew 16.23, Mark 8.33.
75 Matthew 17.1 ff., Mark 9.2 ff.
76 23.34; cf. supra text accompanying nn. 43–44; see my Sin, Ignorance and Forgiveness in the Bible, (Claude Montefiore Lecture 1960) ‘They know not what they do’ in Studia Patristica IV, (1961) 58 ff., Ancient Jewish Law, (1981) 69 ff., and “Jonah: A Reminiscence” (1984) 35 Journal of Jewish Studies 36 ff.
77 I am not saying that Matthew does have the full argument in mind.
78 Supra n. 43.
79 Acts 5.1 ff. When J. Munck, supra n. 62, at 40, calls the case of Achan in Joshua 7.1 ff. (supra n. 31) ‘a just parallel’, he misses a great gulf between the two.
80 Though over-extended hesitation could be a problem, Paul may have felt guilty of it: see my Onesimos, , in Christians among Jews and Gentiles, Essays in honour of Krister Stendahl, ed., Nickelsburg, G.W. with MacRae, G.W., (1986) 42 f.Google Scholar
81 See on him above, ch. IX.
82 Vol. 4, pt. 2, (1924) 1130 f.
83 (1973) vol. 13, p. 831.
84 Even he reaching back further than a superficial look might indicate: he lived well over 100 years.
85 1 QS 4.7 f.; see G. Vennes with the collaboration of Vermes, P., The Dead Sea Scrolls — Qumran in Perspective, (1971) 137.Google Scholar
86 I am indebted to the Community Rule in another context. In 1946, E.G. Selwyn, publishing a commentary on the First Epistle of St. Peter, included an Appended Note by me, “Participle and Imperative”, pp. 467 ff. I argued that ‘a strange use of the participle in Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, Hebrew and I Peter must be the participle of Hebrew rules, of Mishnah, Tosefta and so on’. There was strong support but some opposition as well, based on the post-New-Testament date of the final Mishnah and Tosefta. A weak argument seeing that not a few rules in question are truly archaic and, indeed, that this application of the participle becomes much rarer as Tannaism comes to an end around 200. Well, the Community Rule does testify to the pre-New-Testament origin of the phenomenon: “All that enter are saying, Amen … The priests are recounting the just exploits of God … and all that enter are confessing after them', 1.18 ff. See my Ancient Jewish Law, (1981) 29 ff.
87 Vol. 1, 1926, pp. 990 f., 1006, 1031.
88 Matthew 26.25, sy eipas.
89 Matthew 26.64, sy eipas.
90 Luke 22.70, hymeis legete.
91 Matthew 27.11, Mark 15.2, Luke 23.3, John 18.37, sy legeis.
92 Tosefta Kelim Baba Kamma 1.6.
93 Strack-Billerback, p. 990, take it as a rhetorical question: ‘Du schämst dich wohl zu sagen, daβ (selbst) der Hund des Hohepriesters beliebter ist als du?’, ‘You are ashamed, are you not, to admit …?’ Quite possible. Makes no difference.
94 Verzeichnis der Schriftgelehrten, (1961). The Simons are on pp. 139 f.
95 Meti comes near ‘surely not’, for example, in Mark 4.21: ‘Surely, a candle is not brought to be put under a bushel or under a bed? Is it not (brought) that it may be set on a candlestick?’.
96 Creed, J. M. in his The Gospel according to St. Luke, (1930) 279Google Scholar, anticipates the essence of my interpretation. While sy eipas and sy legeis, hymeis legete were ‘understood to imply assent… the personal pronoun, sy, hymeis must be significant: the statement is yours, i.e. a certain protest against the question is implied’. He cites Euripides, Hippolytus 352, where Phaedra, Theseus's second wife, is about to reveal to her nurse her love for Hippolytus, Theseus's son from an Amazon. She cannot bring herself to openly name him, so says ‘whoever haply he is, the Amazon's’. The nurse: ‘You mean Hippolytus?’. Phaedra: “From yourself you hear this, not from me’. A certain protest against her own confession.
97 14.57 ff.
98 14.61.
99 Vol. 2, p. 51.
100 Babylonian Abodah Zarah 4a. Not the only place where the expression is met but pretty representative.
101 18.28, vol. 1, p. 799.
102 7.41, vol. 2, p. 163.
103 There are others; ḥinnek seems favoured in 19th century translations.
104 Luke 23.9 f.
105 19.19 ff.
106 18.38.