Judas Iscariot

Judas Iscariot was one of the Twelve, remembered in every Gospel as the disciple who handed Jesus over to the chief priests. The meaning of ‘Iscariot’ is uncertain: ‘man from Kerioth’ and ‘dagger-man’ are among the proposals. His motive is unclear; Matthew mentions thirty pieces of silver and John calls him a thief, while Luke and John say Satan entered him.

Matthew and Acts give different accounts of his death, and Papias preserved a third, gruesome tradition. In the second century some groups read his role positively: Irenaeus mentions a Gospel of Judas, and a Coptic Gospel of Judas published in 2006, whose portrait of him scholars read in different ways, presents him as the recipient of secret teaching.