The Pharisees and Sadducees did not need Judas to identify Jesus for them, they were obsessed with “getting” Jesus and knew full well what he looked like. But the thirty pieces of silver allowed them to say, “See, the conspiracy against this Yeshua began within his own circle.” That is the nature of Judas’ screw-up, he allowed the priests to discredit Jesus in a way that hid their own hand in the matter.
This is true, but the men at arms that went out to arrest Jesus would not have known what the Lord would have looked like, and so needed Judas to identify Him.
Judas broke the Hebraic cultural proscriptions twice in betraying Jesus, thus not only showing himself to be a betrayer, but to be a man of very bad character (we know elsewhere that he was a thief as he took money from the box the Disciples had for their immediate needs).
Judas, knowing full well he was going to betray Christ, dipped bread with the Lord from the same dish. In the cultures of that area to this day, if you dip bread together, you cannot ever betray the other person you eat with. This is also a proscription in Ethiopian culture (and a group would eat from the same large dish at table anyway).
Secondly, Judas actually kissed the Lord to identify Him to the men at arms. That, more than anything, showed him to be a man of truly evil and false character, given the fact that in those cultures a kiss is always a sign of respect and reverence in the first instance.
There are two ways given in the Gospel re: how Judas died. Other than hanging, it is also related that his insides burst open in what would become the field of blood.
In any event, medieval churches that depict representations of the various symbols assigned to each Apostle DO often depict the hangman’s rope and the bag with thirty pieces of silver alongside those of the others as a sober reminder that even Apostles and disciplies of Christ were not above temptation and sin.
Our Lord Himself, on at least two occasions, referred to Judas’ sorry state i.e. “the one who gave me over to you has the greater sin.” Or “It would have been better for him not to have been born.”
At no time in Christian history anywhere was there ever a movement to exonerate Judas or was there ever any “local cult” to him. That is simply Gnostic-based speculation taken up by an eager contemporary journalism seeking to create sensationalist revisionism for the purpose of making money.
They have been successful in their purpose so far - Christians should never be complicit in unwittingly supporting such business enterprises by giving them any kind of heed.
Alex
