in sacred art Judas Iscariot is generally treated as the very incarnation of treachery, ingratitude and impiety. The Middle Ages, after their fashion, supplied the lacunae in what they deemed his too meagre biography. According to the common form of their story, he belonged to the tribe of Reuben.[1] Before he was born his mother Cyborea had a dream that he was destined to murder his father, commit incest with his mother, and sell his God. The attempts made by her and her husband to avert this curse simply led to its accomplishment. At his birth Judas was enclosed in a chest and flung into the sea; picked up on a foreign shore, he was educated at the court until a murder committed in a moment of passion compelled his flight. Coming to Judaea, he entered the service of Pontius Pilate as page, and during this period committed the first two of the crimes which had been expressly foretold. Learning the secret of his birth, he, full of remorse, sought the prophet who, he had heard, had power on earth to forgive sins. He was accepted as a disciple and promoted to a position of trust, where avarice, the only vice in which he had hitherto been unpractised, gradually took possession of his soul, and led to the complete fulfilment of his evil destiny. This Judas legend, as given by Jacobus de Voragine, obtained no small popularity; and it is to be found in various shapes in every important literature of Europe.
For the history of its genesis and its diffusion the reader may consult D’Ancona, La leggenda di Vergogna e la leggenda di Giuda (1869), and papers by W. Creizenach in Paul and Braune’s Beitr. zur Gesch. der deutschen Sprache und Litteratur, vol. ii. (1875), and Victor Diederich in Russiche Revue (1880). Cholevius, in his Geschichte der deutschen Poesie nach ihren antiken Elementen (1854), pointed out the connexion of the legend with the Oedipus story. According to Daub (Judas Ischariot, oder Betrachtungen über das Böse im Verhältniss zum Guten, 1816, 1818) Judas was “an incarnation of the devil,” to whom “mercy and blessedness are alike impossible.”
The popular hatred of Judas has found strange symbolical expression in various parts of Christendom. In Corfu, for instance, the people at a given signal on Easter Eve throw vast quantities of crockery from their windows and roofs into the streets, and thus execute an imaginary stoning of Judas (see Kirkwall, Ionian Islands, ii. 47). At one time (according to Mustoxidi, Delle cose corciresi) the tradition prevailed that the traitor’s house and country villa existed in the island, and that his descendants were to be found among the local Jews.
Details in regard to some Judas legends and superstitions are given in Notes and Queries, 2nd series, v., vi. and vii.; 3rd series, vii.; 4th series, i.; 5th series, vi. See also a paper by Professor Rendel Harris entitled “Did Judas really commit suicide?” in the American Journal of Philology (July 1900). Matthew Arnold’s poem “St Brandan” gives fine expression to the old story that, on account of an act of charity done to a leper at Joppa, Judas was allowed an hour’s respite from hell once a year. (G. Mi.)
JUDAS-TREE, the Cercis siliquastrum of botanists, belonging to the section Caesalpineae of the natural order Leguminosae. It is a native of the south of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Asia Minor, and forms a handsome low tree with a flat spreading head. In Spring it is covered with a profusion of purplish-pink flowers, which appear before the leaves. The flowers have an agreeable acid taste, and are eaten mixed with salad or made into fritters. The tree was frequently figured by the older herbalists. One woodcut by Castor Durante has the figure of Judas Iscariot suspended from one of the branches, illustrating the popular tradition regarding this tree. A second species, C. canadensis, is common in North America from Canada to Alabama and eastern Texas, and differs from the European species in its smaller size and pointed leaves. The flowers are also used in salads and for making pickles, while the branches are used to dye wool a nankeen colour.
JUDD, SYLVESTER (1813–1853) American Unitarian clergyman
and author, was born in Westhampton, Massachusetts,
on the 23rd of July 1813. He bore the same name as his father
and grandfather; the former (1789–1860) made an especial
study of local history of the towns of the Connecticut valley,
and wrote a History of Hadley (1863). The son lived in Northampton
after his tenth year, was converted in a revival there
in 1826, graduated from Yale in 1836, and taught in 1836 at
Templeton, Mass., where he first met Unitarians and soon found
the solution of his theological difficulties in their views. He
entered the Harvard divinity school, from which he graduated
in 1840. In the same year he was ordained pastor of the
Unitarian church of Augusta, Maine, where he died on the 26th
of January 1853. His widest reputation was as the author of
Margaret, a Tale of the Real and the Ideal, including Sketches of a
place not before described, called Mons Christi (1845; revised 1851),
written to exhibit the errors of Calvinistic and all trinitarian
theology, and the evils of war, intemperance, capital punishment,
the prison system of the time, and the national
treatment of the Indians. This story, published anonymously,
attracted much attention by its true descriptions of New England
life and scenery as well as by its author’s earnest purpose.
Richard Edney and the Governor’s Family (1850) is in much the
same vein as Margaret. A poem entitled Philo, an Evangeliad
(1850) is a versified defence of Unitarianism. He published,
besides, The Church, in a Series of Discourses (1854). As a preacher
and pastor he urged the desirability of infant baptism. He
lectured frequently on international peace and opposed slavery.
See Arethusa Hall, Life and Character of the Rev. Sylvester Judd (Boston, 1857) published anonymously.
JUDE, THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF, a book of the New
Testament. As with the epistle of James, the problems of the
writing centre upon the superscription, which addresses in
Pauline phraseology (1 Thess. i. 4; 2 Thess. ii. 13; Rom. i. 7;
1 Cor. 1. 2) the Christian world in general in the name of “Jude,
the brother of James” (Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3). The
historical situation depicted must then fall within the lifetime
of this Judas, whose two grandchildren Zoker and James
(Hegesippus ap. Phil. Sidetes) by their testimony before the
authorities brought to an end the (Palestinian) persecution of
Domitian (Hegesippus ap. Eus. H. E. iii. 20, 7). These two
grandsons of Judas thereafter “lived until the time of Trajan,”
ruling the churches “because they had (thus) been witnesses
(martyrs) and were also relatives of the Lord.” But in that
case we must either reject the testimony of the same Hegesippus
that up to their death, and that of Symeon son of Clopas,
successor in the Jerusalem see of James the Lord’s brother,
“who suffered martyrdom at the age of one hundred and twenty
years while Trajan was emperor and Atticus governor,” “the
church (universal) had remained a pure and uncorrupted
virgin” free from “the folly of heretical teachers”; or else we
must reject the superscription, which presents the grandfather
in vehement conflict with the very heresies in question. For
the testimony of Hegesippus is explicit that at the time of the
arrest of Zoker and James they were all who survived of the
kindred of the Lord. True, there is confusion in the narrative
of Hegesippus, and even a probability that the martyrdom of
Symeon dated under Trajan really took place in the persecution
of Domitian, before the arrest of the grandsons of Jude, for apart
from the alleged age of Symeon (the traditional Jewish limit of
human life, Gen. vi. 3, Deut. xxxiv. 7), the cause of his apprehension
“on the ground that he was a descendant of David and
a Christian” (Hegesippus ap. Eus. H. E. iii. 32, 3) is inconsistent
with both the previous statements regarding the “martyrdom”
of Zoker and James, that they were cited as the only surviving
Christian Davididae, and that the persecution on this ground
collapsed through the manifest absurdity of the accusation.
But even if we date the rise of heresies in the reign of Domitian
instead of Trajan,[2] the attributing of this epistle against
- ↑ Other forms make him a Danite, and consider the passage in Genesis (xlix. 17) a prophecy of the traitor.
- ↑ On this point (date of the outbreak of heresy) there is some inconsistency in the reported fragments of Hegesippus. In that quoted below from Eus. H. E. iii. 32. 7 seq., it is expressly dated after the martyrdom of Symeon and death of the grandsons of Jude under Trajan. In iii. 19 the “ancient tradition” attributing the denunciation of these to “some of the heretics” is perhaps not from Hegesippus; but in iv. 22 the beginning of heresy is traced to a certain Thebuthis, a candidate for the bishopric after the death of James, as rival to Symeon. The same figure of the church as a pure virgin is also used as in iii. 32. But as it is only the envious feeling of Thebuthis which is traced to this early date, Hegesippus doubtless means to place the outbreak later.
