The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Origen and the Salvation of Judas Iscariot

Sorry Dick! :smiley:

No need to say sorry :slight_smile: :laughing:

And when I’d found the essay I wanted to pass the info on to Jason :slight_smile:

Good to hear from Old China again. :smiley:

Thanks Dave – lovely to hear your welcoming voice again old China :slight_smile: I remember long ago reading Gary Armiault’s article. This is no criticism of Gary – to make the case for historical universalism he’s had to rely on grasping the big picture through a reading of secondary sources – often from the nineteenth century histories written by members of the American Universalist church which, for all of their strengths, were reliant on evidence that has since been sifted thoroughly as new evidence comes to light and a more accurate picture has emerged.

As I say the issue of the tradition of Judas repentance and suicide leading to reconciliation with Christ in Hades has been on the back burner in my mind since reading Gary’s article – and lo and behold I have just come across a scholarly discussion of this. I thought I must post what I’ve learnt here – because this is the one and only place where people would be interested in the nuances. It seems that Origen himself certainly didn’t see the suicide of Judas as related by Matthew are Judas assured passport to reconciliation. However, the hint that the thought of Christ resurrection lead him to an imperfect repentance and the difficulty of interpreting the text at this point – because it is unclear and may well have been tampered with - may hint that in the resurrection Christ and Judas were reconciled :slight_smile:

+1. :mrgreen:

I thought you’d interested Jason :smiley: And one last thought occurs to me – regarding what Origen has to say about Judas’ kiss in Gethsemane. I’ve heard Universalist type homilies on this incident – of Christ absorbing the wicked kiss of betrayal with forgiveness. However Origen’s reading is subtly different. He knew Greek and the original dialogue with Celsus was written in Greek. He knew that the word Matthew uses for the kiss is the same word Luke uses for the kisses of the penitent woman who anoints Jesus feet in the house of Simon. The word is not the one used for a kiss of formal and polite greeting. Rather it indicates a kiss of loving friendship and affection (and you’ll know all about this Jason ). So it seems for Origen that rather than Christ simply absorbing a wicked, treacherous kiss with forgiveness – at the moment that Judas kisses Christ – whatever the original intention behind the kiss – Origen’s humanity/God image is rekindled to some extent. There is a subtle nuance here regarding how to read this narrative I think.

While it doesn’t come from Origen, I think there’s a strong but subtle argument that one of the things Jesus was trying to prepare the apostles for in GosJohn’s final discourse, was not only Judas’ betrayal (which in John’s narrative the apostles still aren’t expecting aside from the Beloved Disciple) but for forgiving Judas. Because even though the Son of Man had to be betrayed by Judas so that the scriptures would be fulfilled, Jesus was still given all things by the Father in order to give eonian life to all that the Father had given Him and that includes Judas. Consequently, the new commandment to be loving each other would be an unexpected commandment to be loving Iscariot – which the apostles didn’t pick up on (not picking up on hints being typical for them, including quite demonstrably in John’s Last Supper and Final Discourse material, and also in the Synoptic Last Supper material).

That would mean the Church succeeds or fails from the outset based on how well they (and we) love Iscariot despite his treachery.

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Yes Jason that’s a really good point. Thank you. It is a tragedy that the Church – arguably apart from Origen and the tradition of Origen– did not forgive Judas; because this so quickly became such a source of hatred towards the Jews (and it is dispiriting to read about how this happened and how quickly). I have to admit that I find it very hard to harmonise what the Gospels have to say about Judas, Mark is sparse and minimal – why Judas goes to the priests is left enigmatic because it is they that suggest the fee and not him.

Matthew seems to me to give the most sympathetic account of him – and I think we’d agree on this. As I see it unlike John’s Gospel Jesus does not announce the betrayal and the doomed betrayer far in advance. IN the incident at the House of Simon with the penitent woman it is all of the disciples who are united in rebuke of the woman and of Jesus action in accepting her anointing – and not Judas alone. And although the same is true of Luke he doesn’t place this incident crucially in the week of the Passion so it does not seem to have the same implication about being a cause for the disciples all falling away at this point. The idea that you allude to that they all misunderstand Jesus and want him to conform to their expectations of triumphant Messiah; not one who is going to suffer and die and one who will confer especial favours upon them in his Kingdom of victors; which is one reason why they fall away after Jesus’ arrest. I note that all of the Synoptics have the disciples once again bickering about who will be the greatest in the Kingdom once again at the Last Supper – an issue that Matthew has Jesus rebuke James and John and their mother for raising far earlier in his account and resurfaces again. I wonder whether the enigmatic sign of the woman who washes Jesus feet – obviously offensive to the disciples because of her status as an unclean sinner and perhaps an act that they even at this moment are unconsciously aware signifies his death – is also offensive because of its humility. She washes Jesus’ feet and one day later he gives the same sign to the bickering disciples at the Last Supper. I also wonder a the disciples exclamation ‘Is it I?’ at Jesus announcement of the impending treachery. Were they at some level aware that it might be any one of them given the tensions at this point? Were they looking at each other in bickering accusation as they did so – ‘I know it’s not me = but it you?’ to the person seated to their right say?

Of course Matthew’s Judas does repent and tries to return the money and is mocked by the same authorities that officiate over rites of atonement for sin in the Temple – and Origen makes a fair point that his throwing of the money back into the Temple suggest that he understood Jesus’ judgement upon it and that the mockery of the Priests confirms this. And Judas is the first to confirm that Jesus’ blood is innocent which must be significant – although Origen does not seem to comment on this. Also here Judas does not purchase the field of blood himself but rather the priests do by way of some sort of money laundering scheme that makes them technically innocent. (I understand the argument is that they buy the field for him knowing that he has no heir and so the moment reverts to the Temple when he dies)

We don’t have the same rounded picture that we have of Peter emerging from Matthew’s account of Judas – but we do seem to glimpse his humanity. The kiss in Gethsemane that Jesus receives with the word ‘Friend’ and the eventual repentance – however imperfect – have the pathos of recognition scenes that remind me of Peter’s recognition when the cock crows. Judas does emerge as forgivable and I think you are right that at least for Matthew the words of Jesus quoted in the other Synoptic – ‘it would be better for this man if he had not been born’ do not refer to any future punishment but to the terrible remorse that will overcome Judas; and that the words echo Job and Jeremiah in lamentation and can be interpreted sympathetically.

When it comes to Luke I’m not so sure that the author and the tradition the author represents has forgiven Judas. Jesus greets Judas attempt to kiss him with a rebuke – and it would seem that the rebuke deflects that kiss. Luke has Satan leave Jesus in the desert after the Temptations with the ominous words that he will return again in a season – and in Luke this return is when Stan takes possession of Judas. In Matthew the return of Satan appears to be more evenly spread because Jesus her rebukes Peter as Satan for denying that he will suffer and die.

I’ve seen those who argue for the damnation of Judas say that Matthew obviously – with Judas hanging himself – is calling down the curse form Deuteronomy (the one is curse who hangs upon a tree). They can’t seem to see the irony that Jesus becomes a curse by hanging on a tree and overcomes the curse by defeating death and rising. I can see that Origen’s suggestion is a strong one here – that thoughts of the resurrection prophecy understood for the first time were the inspiration for Judas’s repentance – or at least that portion of his repentance that was good. And this opens that way for his salvation even if he did eventually give into the promptings of Satan.

I’ve always found it very difficult to harmonise Peter’s words about the death of Judas in Acts I with Matthew’s sympathetic account (apparently C.S. Lewis did to. I know that there are ways of harmonising the outward details – Judas hanged himself is not contradicted by Peter’s contention that he fell headlong and his bowels gushed out. There are several ways I have seen:

The rope broke, Judas fell headlong and his bowels gushed out (I think that was Augustine’s solution)

Judas hanged himself but the branch was weak and broke.

Judas hanged himself and his body remained hanging as an offence against Sabbath purity law and it became bloated and burst open.

Judas hanged himself, was left hanging and the earthquake that Matthew says happened at Easter bust his body open.

Judas hanged himself and when his body was eventually cut down it was thrown headlong into the valley of Hinnon where it burst asunder (Josephus tells of bodies being throw from the City Walls into the valley when the siege of Jerusalem was tightened in 70 A.D. as a prophylactic measure and this has been used to construct the hypothesis).

Judas did not die by hanging but was cut down and lived bur swelled up and burst open (that’s Papias’ grisly solution).

Perhaps any one of these or a combination might be true. But what I find difficult in this harmonisation enterprise is that Peter - or Luke reflecting on Peter’s speech – then adds Psalm 109 as commentary on what has happened. And this is the most vengeful of Psalms that came to be known as ‘The Judas Psalm’. And I find all of this hard to reconcile with the sympathy of Matthew’s account – it appears to be very different in spirit. And I can see why this bursting asunder later became seen as evidence of the devil leaving Judas body having taken his soul.

John – when I read him – doesn’t seem to give any impression of Judas humanity. He simply seems to be the one associated with the darkness that attempts to overcomes the light – down to the retelling of the story of the penitent woman where Judas alone stands against her because he covets the money as the duplicitous keeper of the purse. The drama at the fin al supper is no longer one in which all of the disciples are implicated with their misunderstanding and squabbling –

John 6:70
Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!”

John 13:18
"I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfil this passage of Scripture: ‘He who shared my bread has turned against me.’

Judas does seem to be a marked man, set apart from the start as ‘un-chosen’.

I can see that when Jesus in John says ‘I will draw all men to me’ that must include Judas and I can see how this coupled with the passage you have cited does. But against this people do cite:

‘’I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. 12"While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled. 13"But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves.… ‘’John 17:12

I wonder what you make of this? If Jesus in John is expecting forgiveness of Judas the rhetoric of other passages seems to tend in another direction (as far as I can see – and I can’t see very clearly)

Perhaps the disciples had difficulty not only with the memory that one of them betrayed Jesus but also with their feelings about deserting Jesus so that they had to project this pain and guilt back upon Judas. I don’t why Matthew should be the exception – but I do know that we must as it were forgive Judas and hope for Judas; and Matthew gives us the resources to enable us to do so in a way that Luke and John alone don’t. Well that’s my muddled thought son this one Jason 

John 17:12 only means what it says: that Jesus kept everyone from being killed, except for Iscariot, so that the scriptures would be fulfilled. Everyone still abandons Jesus, so it isn’t only Iscariot the son of destruction (it’s a pretty standard word for destruction, as in Romans 9 the vessels adapted for destruction carried with much makrothumia, saving patience, by God) who betrays Jesus.

(As a side note: quite arguably, Iscariot is the one who lets Peter into the Annas family complex for the pre-trial meeting! The disciple who does so is notably not called the beloved disciple, and while Nicodemus or JosArim might count there’s only one disciple we know of who was certainly at the arrest and who would be let into the house no questions asked by the gatekeeper. From a harmonization standpoint, it’s also interesting that Jesus hints about Iscariot dying here, and yet nothing at all comes of it in GosJohn per se. If we didn’t have GosMatt and/or Acts, we wouldn’t have any confirmation he died!)

But 17:12 isn’t mutually exclusive to the prophetic intention at the start of the chapter. Iscariot is necessarily included among the all flesh given to the Son by the Father so that the Son may be giving eonian life to everything given to Him. Just as one scripture was being fulfilled, so will Jesus’ declaration about the Father’s purpose in giving all creatures to the Son. That Iscariot will die does not prevent the Resurrection and the Life Himself from raising Iscariot and giving him eonian life eventually.

Granted, I’m doubtful John (who likes to comment so much about what has been said and done, that sometimes we can’t tell for sure whether he or Jesus is speaking!) understood the implications himself. But again for historical apologetics, when there’s evidence that the storyteller didn’t understand the point of what he’s presenting as being historically said, that’s evidence (although not deductively decisive) that the author isn’t making up things but passing along what he thinks actually happened. (A subtly different claim from whether he’s being accurate on the reportage, which has to be evaluated on other grounds. This characteristic wouldn’t weigh in favor of accuracy, since someone could misunderstand what he wrongly believed to have been said or done.)

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Thanks Jason - that’s an excellent reply :slight_smile:

Jason 

It’s really interesting what you say about Peter and Judas begin the only one that could get him access to Annas’s house Jason. John seems to be very accurate when dealing with the hearings at night as if he has eyewitness accounts – and this detail that seems a probable one further implicates Peter in collusion.

I don’t think that the Gospel writers made things up – as John Spong argues against the Judas tradition. But as Richard Beck has argued I do think there is evidence that whereas in Mark and Matthew Judas emerges as the betrayer from within the community of the twelve – and I would add that he seems to emerge from a dynamic of misunderstanding and being scandalised by Jesus shared by the other disciples – in Luke and John he is a man set apart from the beginning (and the speculation is that this may reflect inter-religious hostilities between Christians and Jews and/or Jewish and Gentile Christians. That’s not the same as anti-Semitism. This comes later and one of the mistakes of John Spong in my view is to read back later anti-Semitism into this. At this point the Early Christian sect was actually persecuted by Temple Judaism and viciously so; it wouldn’t surprise me if this was reflected in the partial understanding of the later Gospel writers in some degree; and if it is this shows that they had not yet fully grasped Jesus message.

I may be completely wrong but this is how I see Peter’s account of Judas’ death in Acts 1. It can’t be an account of his death as such – it’s an account of what happened to Judas’ body after his death (and perhaps an allegory too of someone falling pell-mell and the seat of their emotions being eviscerated – which is also what happens to Judas). However, I am prepared to think that Peter did not really understand Jesus message of forgiveness when he spoke thus. His ‘conversion was a slow and painful process. And perhaps if it is Luke that appended the reference to Psalm 109, Luke didn’t; understand fully either.

The thing about the account in Acts 1 as far as I can see is that it robs Judas of any humanity – he is reduced to spilling guts and it was this tradition that was taken up and exaggerated by Papias and fuelled the full blown anti-Semitism from the fourth century onwards. (It also reminds me of the Babylonian Talmud’s peculations about Jesus boiling in excrement in Gehenna – and that was written by a Jewish community still in control). And I think that one of the reason why we must ‘forgive’ Judas is that the best of all stories of unlimited forgiveness just cannot have an unforgiven protagonist – because the unforgiven one so easily becomes the whipping boy of self righteous projections with terrible results. But I note that Origen said that Judas was an inexhaustible mystery in some way and will take that as a lesson.

Origen got right about not holding up Judas suicide as such as the mark of complete repentance – yes it was not what God ever desired for Judas; but it does not preclude his forgiveness in the resurrection. I’m really glad to have tracked that down and I hope Illaria Ramelli takes a look at the Sermon on the death of Judas form Origen’s Commentary on Matthew one day and gives us a considered opinion  Happy Easter to you and to all 

Spong gets a looooooottttt wrong in his super-bizarre argument against the very existence of Judas Iscariot. I wrote an extended series on his argument several years ago for the Cadre, the start of which can be found here: christiancadre.blogspot.com/2009 … ariot.html

That’s just kind of an aside.:slight_smile:

Hi Jason I think I agree with everything you have said here  John Spong’s invented betrayer is not an original hypothesis – he’s using the theories of Jewish Scholars such as the late Hyam Macoby; and he was writing out of the experience of the Holocaust and in full knowledge of who Judas does become a mythic figure onto which hatred of the Jews was projected and inflamed. But although this is understandable to me it doesn’t stack up in terms of a critical reading of the sources as you have done so well here.
I fully agree with you that Matthew’s portrayal of Judas is so obviously a largely sympathetic one – and it’s hard to see how John Spong would feel that Matthew ratchets up the sinister portrayal of Judas.

I completely agree that Paul in 1 Corinthians is giving a liturgical statement when he speaks of Christ being handed over – and these are always condensed as are the later Creeds (none of which mention Judas). And it occurs to me that when Paul speaks of the handing over in the passive voice perhaps he is not only referring to Judas alone anyway. Judas hands over Jesus to the Temple authorities but they in turn hand Jesus over to Pilate and Pilate in turn hands him over for execution. So perhaps Paul’s liturgical formula has all of these ‘handing overs’ in mind.

Also if one of the criteria that the form critics use for thinking that a saying or narrative is genuine is that it is an embarrassing memory that could not be suppressed- the betrayal of Jesus by one of the twelve fits these criteria perfectly. And Origen in his refutation of Celsus has to do lots of explaining about this – it was already an embarrassment when he was writing.

Also if the Gospel writers really wanted to simply sully Judas they would have named him as a false accuser at the High Priest’s house. This doesn’t happen and the false accusers are not identified – which seems to have the ring of truth about it because it lacks contrivance.

Going back to Matthew narrative it does seem striking to me that in addition to other passages in the OT Judas betrayal and repentance bring to mind one particular OT narrative; namely the betrayal of Joseph by his brothers. It is Judah who sells Joseph to the Midianites for twenty pieces of silver. But it is Judah who also offers his life for Benjamin when he is falsely accused by Joseph’s trick that turns out to be a benign one. It seems to me that there are echoes with Judas here – the betrayal and selling of a loved one, but also the repentance and affirmation of the innocent one. Have you any views on this? (Judas is of the tribe of Judah?)

I really have nothing to add as I only skim read many of the posts. But I appreciated what I did read and need to come back and spend more time on this thread when I have a chance. A great topic for Good Friday discussion. My husband and I were just discussing Judas quite a bit the other day. To me he sounds like he was repentant for what he did- he returned the money, he declared Jesus was innocent, and then he killed himself thinking there was no hope for forgiveness. Such a sad story, but I have hope that there is a happier ending than just his guts exploded all over and he died with no hope.

Sobor,

It’s certainly bizarre (as I mentioned somewhere in that huge analysis) to try to claim that Christians using Judah almost exclusively in honored ways in their texts (aside from a brief mention of the false messiah in Acts), and rarely as a name for the people of Israel, would invent “Judah” as a betrayer’s name for sake of dishonoring all the people of Israel – and then for JSP to cite an appeal to Judah’s betrayal in the OT as evidence for this – when one of the most beloved stories of the OT, and the only one featuring the original Judah as a betrayer, involves Judah offering his own life to save Benjamin and even trying to save Joseph (although too late)! It’s extra bizarre when JPS goes on to draw a connection himself between OT Judah betraying Joseph, and 1 Cor Paul’s verbing of Jesus the night of the Lord’s Supper, using the same verb in Greek, after doing everything he can to cast doubt on whether Paul means a betrayal of Jesus is intended at all!

Have read closely now and agree Jason :slight_smile:

A few more points about Judas :slight_smile:

  1. In the late Middle ages Judas begins to be accorded some humanity in portrayals in art and in popular theatre (whereas before this time he is simply a comical monster). The Passion play from the fourteenth century English York Mystery Cycle is an example of this. Judas in his remorse not only tries to return the money to the Chief Priests – and Pilate is present at this meeting in the play – but also begs to be given over in lifelong slavery to Pilate in return for Jesus’ freedom; and this is a direct allusion to Judah’s offer to redeem Benjamin from what seems inevitable slavery. So this is an example of a Christian play in which the possible connection between Judah and Judas is made in a way that is sympathetic towards Judas.

  2. One of the things that is striking in Origen’s view of Judas is that he argued that it was a memory of the predicted resurrection that first made Judas repent when he came to his sense after the Satan left him. When Pope Leo the Great (ca. 395–461) reflected on the death of Judas in his homilies on the Passion– and made the toxic identification of Judas with the Jewish people as a whole explicit – he promulgated the view that Judas’s suicide was due to ‘bad timing’: “If only you had waited for the completion of your crime until the blood of Christ had been poured out for all sinners, you would have put off the gruesome death by hanging”. He also speculated that Judas sinned because he “believed Jesus to be not God the Son of God, but only a man of our own race” because he was not witness to the resurrection.

In some ways – from a realistic reading of Matthew’s narrative – this makes sense (without the incipient anti-Semitism that was to have Judas die on the fig tree that Jesus cursed). Judas dies alone and without anyone to console him while Peter for example has far greater opportunities for repentance. And as Hans Urs von Balthasar explains: “the Cross and burial of Christ reveal their significance only in the light of the event of Easter, without which there is no Christian faith” Origen appears to be a little hard on Judas here. He says that all that Judas needed to do was repent like the penitent thief at Cavalry to be forgiven – but Judas did not have Christ’s present next to him to encourage him. But I simply flag up that the idea that the resurrection may have made sense to Judas at this point seems unique to Origen (along with his sympathetic/non- hating reading of the renegade apostle that emphasises Judas’s humanity). I dunno – the fact that Judas in Matthew declares that Jesus is innocent could be seen as a dim foreshadowing of the resurrection which is God’s vindication of Jesus.

  1. (This is just me blathering no as someone who is not a biblical scholar and has found it very hard to make clear distinctions between the different Gospel accounts of the betrayal. although I think they are coming clear to me now); There are so many echoes between the story of the death of Judas and that of the death of Jesus, especially in Matthew:

Both die the cursed death on a tree (and Jesus becomes a curse for us to redden us from curse). Jesus dies in the place of the skull while Judas is buried in the field of blood purchased for the burial of outsiders and foreigners who are ‘cursed according to the law’.

Both die despised and seemingly forsaken

Judas is paid a paltry price for the betrayal of Jesus – the price for redeeming a slave. Jesus redeems from death with his precious blood.

I know many have had these thoughts before me. There does seem to be a symbolic association between the two deaths – even if this is a fragmented and broken one. I know we can’t make systematic theology out of this – but to me it all suggests that Judas is redeemed.

  1. I think Pope Benedict – the resigned Pope – was a fan of Origen? Funnily enough his pronouncement about Judas seems to closely follow Origen’s sermon in the Commentary on Matthew about Judas’ death.

  2. I think perhaps the internet rumour I quoted in my first post – namely that Origen quotes a tradition that all the apostles betrayed Christ in his Commentary on Matthew – may be false. This may be referring to the part of ‘Contra Celsum’ where Origen rebuts the arguments of the Jew who Celsus has been corresponding with who claimed that all of the disciples betrayed Jesus; Origen answers that Judas was the betrayer. We’d need to know about the exact contents of Origen’s sermon here.

  3. It is interesting that Origen in Contra Celsum may have inadvertently been a source for the extreme vilification of Judas. HE compares Judas to Oedipus in this simply to argue that both were free to chose otherwise even though their crimes were foreseen. However, Peter Stanford in his book no Judas says that the conflation of the stories of Judas and Oedipuis in the medieval blockbuster ‘The Golden Legend’ – where Judas’ treachery is foretold in a dream of his mother’s before he is born and he grows up to kills his father and marry his mother – may well have been a result of a cursory reading of Contra Celsum.

  4. Interestingly, Charles Wesley’s hymn “God’s Sovereign, Everlasting Love” (Hymns on God’s Everlasting Love 1741) written at a time when Charles was much frustrated by what he termed ‘the ‘poison of Calvinism seems to have influenced nineteenth century universalist sentiment about Judas as being with the scope of Christ’s redemption. This is the relevant bit -

Thou dost not mock our race
With insufficient grace;
Thou hast reprobated none,
Thou from Pharaoh’s blood art free;
Thou didst once for all atone—
Judas, Esau, Cain, and me.

A final question for you Jason Here’s something I read on the Internet -

‘’Jesus is never short on surprising things to say. One such thing comes at the moment he is betrayed by Judas.

Matthew 26:50 reads, "Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.” Friend? Does Jesus really address the one responsible for betraying him to those plotting his cruel destruction as “friend”? What do we do with that?

Well-known preacher and teacher Thomas G. Long suggests that Jesus is speaking ironically and argues that “friend”, in the Gospel of Matthew, “means something like ‘Buster’ and is itself no term of endearment” (Matthew, WJK, 305). He references Matthew 20:13 and 22:12 as other examples in the Gospel where “friend” is used ironically to mean something other than the way it is normally used.

Alternatively, N. T. Wright insists that when Jesus is here using the word “friend” in its normal sense. He says, “It is of course the word ‘friend’ that causes us to catch our breath. Friendship, for Jesus, does not stop with betrayal, even though now it is tinged with deep sadness” (Matthew for Everyone, WJK, 2.164). He also says that the Greek sentence above translated as “do what you came to do,” could be taken as a question asking, “Do you really want to go through with this?”

What do you make of Wright’s suggestion here Jason? (I’ve no idea). Also, what do you make of Thomas Long’s suggestion – does the context in the original Greek hint at Irony in Jesus addressing Judas as ‘Friend’ or is this just a matter of personal interpretation?

P.S. I think I’ll write a letter to Illaria Ramelli about Origen’s interpretation of Judas and see if she replies. I’ll let you know if she does – I’ll show you the draft if you want to see it too

Yes, I haven’t even checked the index yet of Dr. R’s Tome, to see if she commented and I just don’t recall what she said! I’m sure she has the Commentary on Matthew on access.

I had never even heard of the idea that Judas died on the fig tree that Jesus cursed. That’s pretty clever, although I can’t see any textual reason to forge the connection.

I thought I knew about the super-popular medieval “Golden Legend” – I’ve even read a book devoted to it as part of a much larger series on medieval studies (which is at the house unfortunately not here), but I don’t recall reading that Iscariot was part of it, much less that he was conflated with Oedipus in it. I agree, whoever added that in seems to have borrowed it from a cursory reading of Origen’s Contra Celsus.

I not only think the “Friend” is important for indicating the attitude of Jesus toward Judas, but also in those other two GosMatt occurrences. It isn’t like the king in the parable DIDN’T invite (and even insist) on that random guy being there. The problem wasn’t that the king wasn’t trying to be friendly, but that the guy wasn’t trying to be friendly: he either had something to wear to the wedding but insulted his host by not doing so, or he didn’t have something to wear and insulted the host by not accepting what (in cultural context) the king would have graciously provided him to wear. In a parable highly geared on acts of murderously insulting rebellion, which our later culture wouldn’t be picking up context clues about, this fits in fine. (I think it ought to be a lot more curious than people usually notice, that EVERYONE in the story was called and chosen to be at the wedding feast. The only “few” who were “chosen”, were those few in the story who were chosen to be slain and thrown into the outer darkness.)

The landowner in Matt 20 is trying to make peace with someone he himself graciously hired who is being jealously uncharitable about other people being given even more charity than he received. “Friend” doesn’t have to be ironic here, except in the sense that the one being rebuked is not being friendly to one who has indeed been a friend to him! I might even say that someone who tries to regard that usage as being “in itself no term of endearment” and/or as being only a neutral term thrown out casually like modern English “Buster”, is himself showing himself to be on par with the man being rebuked here! – envious of God being good to other people than himself.

Have we talked about the connection to Jeremiah yet and the potter’s field? – not only throwing the money to the potter (which in its context would be yet another subtle high Christology connection by the way), but the detail of Jeremiah buying a potter’s field.

Hi Jason :slight_smile:

Could you have a quick look for Judas in her index before I embark on my draft letter?

I’ve seen paintings in which Judas hangs form a fig tree, and the implication is that he is the dead fruit of the tree, According to Peter Stanford this visual symbolic tradition goes back ‘very early’ – but he isn’t more specific. It’s me that made the connection between the ‘Judas Tree’ and the Fig Tree that Jesus cursed. However, I think it is a good hunch that this was the original connection that was made. Symbols as they develop have a looser logic of association than can be had by proper textual warrant.

I have the chapter from the Golden Legend that tells the Judas story in a book of sources for the development of the Judas legends complied by Mervin Myer. The Chapter number is given as 45.

Very good points Jason – thank you  Excellent.

Please do tell more :slight_smile: