About the Betrayer Judas Iscariot. What's an Iscariot?

[00:00:01] About the betrayer Judas Iscariot what's an Iscariot? [00:00:06] By Bart D. Ehrman Read by John Paul Middlesworth this past weekend I sponsored the fourth annual New Insights into the New Testament Conference with an array of speakers giving talks for non scholars on a particular topic. This year the topic was Apocrypha and Canon, which was dealing with books that did not make it into the New Testament, other Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apocalypses. [00:00:30] The most recent significant discovery in this field was the Gospel of Judas, and we certainly had a paper on that. It made me wonder when I had last discussed Judas Iscariot on the blog, and I looked and it's been years, so I thought I should give it another go, either to refresh years old memories or to inform others who were not here among us at the time. [00:00:51] For starters, if he's called Judas Iscariot, what's Iscariot mean? [00:00:57] It turns out the question is much debated. Here's what I say about it in my book the Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot Oxford University Press, 2006, which includes a long section on the historical Judas the name Judas Iscariot Sometimes knowing the names of persons from antiquity can give further information about them. People of the lower classes did not have last names and so to differentiate people with the same first name, descriptive designations designations were often added. For example, there are several different Marys in the New Testament. Mary was one of the most common names in 1st century Palestine and so each New Testament Mary is given some kind of identifying feature. Mary the mother of Jesus Mary of Bethany Mary Magdalene. This last designation indicates that this Mary came from the town of Magdala, which was a fishing village on the Sea of Galilee. [00:01:52] Thus, simply by knowing what she was called, we can learn some information about her. [00:01:58] Some people have hoped that the same might be true of Judas Iscariot. [00:02:02] What everyone agrees on is that his name was Judas or Jude, as the name is sometimes translated, and that he is called Iscariot to differentiate him from the other Judases of the New Testament. One of Jesus own brothers was named Judas or Jude, for example in Mark 6:3, as was another of his disciples, not iscariot in John 14:22, as was the author of one of the shorter letters in the New Testament, the Book of Jude, whose author does not claim to be Jesus brother or any other known Jude. [00:02:35] There is no doubt that the Judas we are interested in was described as Judas Iscariot. This descriptive term for him is found some 12 times in the New Testament and also in our sources, including The Gospel of Judas. [00:02:48] What is in doubt is what the term might have meant. There have been many, many suggestions made by scholars over the years, but none of them has won general assent. [00:02:58] Some of the suggestions are highly creative. One 19th century scholar suggested that iscariot came from a Hebrew word meaning to stop up skr skar, and that it referred to the fact that he died by strangling. His throat was stopped up a hundred years later. Another scholar suggested that the term came from the Semitic words iskwa re ut, which might mean something like one who makes money out of friendship. [00:03:25] Some scholars have thought that the term showed that he came from the region known as Issachar. He was an Issachariat. [00:03:32] Others have pointed out that the term iscariot sounds a bit like the Latin word for dagger, sica, and is possibly related to the term used of Jewish dagger assassins known as the Sicarian. [00:03:44] This might suggest that Judas was a Jewish zealot who advocated violence against the Roman Empire. [00:03:50] Others have thought that the name derives from the Hebrew word for liar, sakar, and that it designates his basic nature. [00:03:57] Some have thought that the name goes back to an Aramaic word, iskar, which signifies a person with a ruddy complexion. [00:04:04] On this basis, they have argued that he was a redhead. [00:04:08] The possibilities seem endless. But none of these options has persuaded most linguists intimately familiar with the rules of ancient Semitic languages. [00:04:16] Probably the most common explanation is that iscariot comes from the Hebrew words ish keriot, which might mean something like a man who comes from the village of Kariot. If this view is correct, then the question where was Kariot? And that's part of the problem. [00:04:36] The book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible mentions a town of this name in the southern part of Israel, the region later known as Judea in Joshua 15:25. And perhaps that's what the name signifies, that Judas was a Judean. If so, that would make him the only southerner among Jesus followers. [00:04:54] On the other hand, there are reasons for doubting that Kerioth still existed In Jesus Day, 1200 years after the time of Joshua. [00:05:02] And it would seem odd that Jesus, who spent his entire public ministry in Galilee prior to his last week, would have had someone from a completely different part of the country as one of his closest followers. [00:05:14] Another city called Kerioth appears to be located outside of Israel in the country of Moab. [00:05:23] But it also seems unlikely that one of Jesus Jewish followers would be from there. [00:05:29] As a result, some of the best scholars have concluded that we simply don't know what iscariot meant. [00:05:36] Indeed, some have argued that even the gospel writers some 35 to 65 years after Judas death no longer knew what it meant. In any event, knowing Judas name does not appear to give us much to go on if we want to learn more about him historically. [00:05:51] But what can we know about him? [00:05:54] Start dealing with that in the next post.