What followed in the confusion of that night the Gospels do not record. Not many students of tlie N. T, Avill follow Heumann and archbishop Whately (Essays on Dunf/ers) in the hypothesis that Judas was "the other disciple" that was known to the high-priest, and brought Peter in (comp. JMeyer on John xviii, 15). It is probable enough, indeed, that he who had gone out with the high-priest's officers should return with them to wait the issue of the triah Then, when it >vas over, ■ came the reaction. The fever of the crime passed away. There came back on him the recollection of the sinless righteousness of the Master he had wronged (Matt. xxvii, 3). He feels a keen remorse, and the gold that had tempted him to it becomes hateful. He will get
JUDAS
1062
JUDAS
rid of the accursed thing, will transfer it back again to those who with it had lured him on to destruction. They mock and sneer at the tool whom they have used, and 'then there comes over him the horror of great darkness that precedes self-murder. He has owned his sin with " an exceeding bitter crj'," but he dares not turn, with any hope of pardon, to the Master whom he has betrayed.' He hurls the money, which the priests refused to" take, into the sanctuary (vau<;) where they were assembled. For him there is no longer sacrifice or propitiation. He is " the son of perdition" (John xvii, 12). "He departed, and went and hanged himself" (Matt, xxvii, 5). He went " unto his own place" (Acts 1,25). A.D. 29. See below.
AVith the exception of the stories already mentioned, there are but few traditions that gather round the name of Judas. It appears, however, in a strange, hardly in- telligible way in the history of the wilder heresies of the 2(1 century. The sect of Cainites, consistent in their inversion of all that Christians in general believed, was reported to have honored him as the only apostle that was in possession of the true gnosis, to have made him the ol)jcct of their worship, and to have had a gospel bearing his name (comp. Neander, Church Hist, ii, 153 ; Iren;eus, ddv. liar, i, 35; Tertullian, De Prmsc. c. 47). For the apocrj'phal gospel (Epiphanius, Jlcer. xxxviii, 1), sec Fabricius, Coxlex. Apocr. i, 352. See Gospels, Spumous.
3. Our Lord's Object in his Selection as an Apostle. — The choice was not made, we must remember, without a prevision of its issue. '' Jesus knew from the begin- ning . . . who should betray him" (John vi, G4) ; and the distinctness with which that evangelist records the successive stages of the guilt of Judas, and his Master's discernment of it (John xii, 4; xiii, 2, 27), leaves with us the impression that he, too, shrank instinctively (Bengel describes it as " singularis antipathia," Gnomon i\'. Test, on John vi. 64) from a nature so opposite to his own. We can haivlly expect fuUy to solve the question why such a man was chosen for such an office, nor is it our province to sound all the depths of the divine pur- poses, yet we maj', without presumption, raise an in- quiry on this subject.
(1.) Some, on the ground of God's absolute fore- knowledge, content themselves with saying, with Cal- vin, that the judgments of God are as a great deep, and M'ith Ullmann (Siindlositjl: Jesii, p. 97), that Judas was chosen in order that the divine purpose might be ac- complished through him. See Puedestixation.
(2.) Others, less dogmatic in their views, believe, with Neander {Leben Jesu, § 77), that there was a dis- cernment of the latent germs of evil, such as belonged to the Hun of :Man, in his insight into the hearts of men (John ii, 25; Matt, ix, 4; Mark xii, 15), yet not such as to exclude emotions of sudden sorrow or anger (Mark iii, 5), or astonishment (Mark vi, 6; Luke vii, 9), ad- mitting the thought "with men this is impossible, but not with God." Did he, in the depth of that insight, and in the fulness of his compassion, seek to overcome the evil which, if not conquered, would be so fatal ? It gives, at any rate, a new meaning and force to many parts of our Lord's teaching to remember that they must have been spitken in the hearing of Judas, and may have been designed to make him conscious of his dan- ger. The warnings as to the impossibility of a service divideil between (iod and mammon (Matt, vi, 19-84), and the destructive power of the " cares of this world," and the " deceitfulness of riches" (^latt. xii, 22, 23), tlie pointed words that spoke of the guilt of unfaithfulness m the « unrighteous mammon" (Luke xvi, 11), the prov- erb of the camel passing through the needle's eye (:\Iark X, 25), must have fallen on his heart as meant specially for him. He was among those wlio asked the question, Who, tlicn, can be saved? (Mark x, 2(;). Of him, too, we may say that, when he sinned, ho was " kickiu'r agamst the pricks." lotting slip his "calling and elect tioii," frustrating the piu-pose of his Master in giving
him so high a work, and educating him for it (compare Chrysostom, Ho7n. on Matt, xxvi, xxvii, John vi).