48 Fun Facts About Judas Iscariot

At the Last Supper, what does Jesus hand to Judas to single him out as the betrayer?

A piece of bread, dipped in the dish: 'What you do, do quickly,' Jesus tells him, and nobody else at the table grasps why Judas then walks out into the night.

How did Judas identify Jesus to the armed crowd that came to arrest him?

He greeted him with a kiss, the signal agreed in advance; the Greek verb in Matthew and Mark implies a warm, fervent one, not a formal peck.

Where was Jesus arrested after Judas led the guards to him?

Gethsemane was a place Jesus often went with his disciples, which is how Judas knew where to bring the guards that night.

Which two gospels suggest that Judas was possessed by Satan when he betrayed Jesus?

Luke and John: Luke has Satan enter Judas before he bargains with the priests, John at the supper table itself, while Mark and Matthew speak only of money.

According to Matthew, how did Judas die?

He hanged himself, Matthew says, after confessing 'I have sinned' to the priests and hearing only 'What is that to us? You see to it.'

How does the Book of Acts say Judas died?

He fell headlong and burst open in a field he had bought with his reward, Peter tells the disciples, with no word of the remorse found in Matthew.

What name was given to the plot of land bought with Judas's silver?

Field of Blood, or Akeldama in Aramaic, has two origins: Matthew says the name came from the money that bought it, Acts from Judas's own death there.

What did the priests plan to use the field for when they bought it with Judas's returned silver?

Burying strangers: the plot had been a potter's field, which is why English still calls a paupers' cemetery by that name.

Who was chosen by lot to fill Judas's place among the Twelve Apostles?

Matthias beat one other nominee when the disciples prayed and drew lots, and the New Testament never mentions him again.

In each gospel's list of the twelve apostles, where does the name of Judas Iscariot appear?

Last, every time, and never without a tag: Matthew and Mark add 'who also betrayed him', and Luke 'who also became a traitor'.

One theory links the name Iscariot to the Sicarii, Jewish rebels named after which weapon?

A dagger, or sica: the Sicarii struck in crowds with blades hidden under their cloaks. The rival reading makes Iscariot simply 'the man from Kerioth'.

Judas is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Judah, which carries what meaning?

Praise: in Genesis, Leah names her fourth son Judah with the words 'This time I will praise the Lord', and the name of his tribe later gave us the word Jew.

Which gospel says Judas kept the disciples' money bag and used to steal from it?

John alone calls Judas a thief who dipped into the common purse, yet it is the one gospel in which no one offers him money for the betrayal.

In the fourth gospel, what did Judas say had been wasted on Jesus instead of given to the poor?

Expensive perfume, a pound of pure nard that Judas priced at 300 denarii: the gospel adds that he cared less for the poor than for the cash he could skim.

Which prophet does Matthew name for the thirty pieces of silver, though the passage matches Zechariah?

Jeremiah is the name Matthew gives; Jerome and Calvin called it a slip, while others think he blended in Jeremiah's own story of buying a field with silver.

In Exodus 21:32, thirty pieces of silver was the compensation price for what?

A slave: Exodus fixes that sum as the payment owed to a master whose servant is gored by an ox, so the price Matthew names was the going rate for a life in bondage.

Where does Matthew say the remorseful Judas flung down his thirty coins before he went away?

In the Temple: the priests gathered the coins up again but ruled that such money could never go back into the sacred treasury.

Which dinner-party superstition is often traced to Judas's place at the Last Supper?

Thirteen at a table is unlucky, the saying goes, because Judas made thirteen; yet the Bible gives no seating order, so nothing in it makes him the thirteenth to sit down.

In Matthew's account of the arrest, what does Jesus call Judas as the guards close in?

Friend: 'why are you here?' is all Jesus says to him, and when a follower draws a sword a moment later, Jesus tells him to put it away.

The Gospel of Judas, which casts the betrayal as obedience to Jesus, belongs to which tradition?

Gnostic writings prize secret knowledge: here Judas is the one apostle who truly understands Jesus, who laughs at the others as they pray over their meal.

In which language is the only surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas written?

Coptic: the copy, made in Egypt around the year 300, is itself a translation of a lost Greek original written before 180.

Which magazine gave the Gospel of Judas dramatic worldwide exposure in April 2006?

National Geographic unveiled it with the line that Christ's betrayer was 'his truest disciple', a reading the scholar April DeConick soon attacked as a mistranslation.

Where did the only known copy of the Gospel of Judas sit crumbling for years while a dealer sought a buyer?

A bank safe-deposit box in New York state kept it in damp air for years, and a later owner froze it; by the time it was rescued it lay in over a thousand pieces.

In the King James Bible, Jesus says none of his disciples is lost except 'the son of' what?

Perdition, or 'destruction' in modern versions: Jesus adds that Judas was lost 'that the scripture might be fulfilled', as if the betrayal had long been written.

Which day of the week before Easter is nicknamed 'Spy' day because Judas's betrayal is mourned then?

Holy Wednesday recalls the day Judas struck his bargain and turned 'spy' among the Twelve; Orthodox Christians fast on Wednesdays all year in memory of it.

In Dante's Inferno, who gnaws on Judas for eternity at the centre of Hell?

Lucifer has three mouths: Brutus and Cassius, Caesar's killers, hang from two, but Judas gets the worst, chewed head-first in the middle for betraying Christ.

In Dante's Inferno, what encases the traitors of Judecca, the innermost zone of Hell named after Judas?

Ice: Dante's deepest hell is not a furnace but a frozen lake, where those who betrayed their lords lie sealed under the surface, unable even to speak.

What is Judas clutching in Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper?

A small bag, read as his thirty coins or the apostles' purse: Leonardo also sets him in shadow and makes him the only figure with an elbow on the table.

Whom did Leonardo threaten to use as the model for Judas when the friars said he worked too slowly?

The prior of the refectory had complained to the Duke of Milan about the delay; Leonardo's reply, Vasari says, sent the Duke into fits of laughter.

How is Judas often distinguished in Last Supper paintings?

He is the only apostle without a halo in many versions; some painters gave him a dark one instead, a reminder that he had once been an apostle like the rest.

What hair colour is Judas traditionally given in Spanish culture and by Shakespeare?

Red: European painters often gave him red hair, part of a wider stereotype of the age that marked Jews out the same way and treated the colour as a sign of bad character.

Which Baroque painter's 1602 canvas The Taking of Christ shows Judas at the moment of betrayal?

Caravaggio's canvas was lost for some two centuries until 1990, when a conservator recognised it hanging, mislabelled, in the dining room of a Jesuit house in Dublin.

At Easter in parts of Spain, Greece and Latin America, what do crowds traditionally do to an effigy of Judas?

Burn it, though some towns stone the figure, toss it in a blanket or pack it with fireworks first; the custom has never been an official part of the Easter liturgy.

Which Argentine writer's story Three Versions of Judas appears in Ficciones (1944)?

Jorge Luis Borges invents a Swedish theologian whose third and final theory is the most scandalous: that God chose to become man not as Jesus but as Judas.

Which 1970 Rice and Lloyd Webber rock opera centres much of its plot on a disillusioned Judas?

Jesus Christ Superstar began as a record because nobody would back it on stage; only when the album became a hit did it reach Broadway, in 1971.

In Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, who orders Judas assassinated?

Pontius Pilate, sick with regret over the execution he approved, has his secret-service chief arrange it, and the chief's own agent, a woman named Niza, lures Judas to his death.

Who played Judas in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ?

Harvey Keitel's Judas stands for 'violence, the strong arm', Scorsese said, in a film he saw as a contest between brute force and love.

In Stephen Adly Guirgis's 2005 play The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, where is Judas's case put on trial?

Purgatory hosts the courtroom, where witnesses from Mother Teresa to Sigmund Freud take the stand; Philip Seymour Hoffman directed the first production.

Which English composer's oratorio The Apostles shows Judas trying to force Jesus to reveal his power?

Edward Elgar cared more about motive than doctrine: his Judas hopes to push Jesus into founding an earthly kingdom, and gives way to despair when it fails.

In the 2021 film Judas and the Black Messiah, the 'Judas' is an FBI informant who betrays which Black Panther leader?

Fred Hampton, who chaired the Illinois Panthers, was betrayed by William O'Neal, a car thief the FBI recruited in return for dropped charges and a monthly stipend.

In a stockyard, what job does a 'Judas goat' do?

Leading others to slaughter: the trained goat walks sheep into the abattoir as a decoy, and its own life is spared.

The apostle Jude, whose name is really Judas, is the Catholic patron saint of what?

Lost causes: he shared a name with the traitor, so English Bibles shortened his to Jude to keep the two apart.

What is a 'judas', or 'judas hole', in the door of a house or a prison cell?

A peephole: it lets someone inside watch a visitor unseen, and that small act of spying is why the nineteenth century named it after the traitor.

Which 1965 book by Hugh J. Schonfield argued Judas acted with Jesus's full knowledge and consent?

The Passover Plot claimed Jesus meant to survive the cross with the help of a drugged drink, a scheme undone by a soldier's spear; it was filmed in 1976.

The name Judas was popular in the first century thanks to Judas Maccabeus, whose victory is celebrated at which festival?

Hanukkah marks his recapture of Jerusalem's sanctuary in 164 BC; his fame made Judas one of the commonest names of the age, so the New Testament has several.

Auricularia auricula-judae, long known as 'Judas's ear', is what kind of living thing?

A fungus: brown, rubbery and shaped like a human ear, it grows mostly on elder, the tree that folklore ties to Judas, which is how it got his name.

Which singer was heckled with a shout of 'Judas!' in Manchester in 1966 for playing an electric set?

Bob Dylan shot back 'I don't believe you, you're a liar', then he and his band launched into Like a Rolling Stone.

Which pop star released the single 'Judas' in 2011?

Lady Gaga co-directed the video herself, casting the apostles as a motorcycle gang and playing Mary Magdalene opposite Norman Reedus as Judas.