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The Name “Iscariot”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2011

Charles C. Torrey
Charles C. Torrey
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

One of the puzzles of the Gospel tradition has been the interpretation of the epithet which distinguishes the betrayer of Jesus from other bearers of the very common name Judas. The attempt to explain it has brought forth perhaps as many impossible theories as any other New Testament riddle of the kind. The most recent authoritative work dealing with Palestinian affairs, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. 6 (1942), merely mentions three attempted explanations of the name: 1. “man of Kerioth”; 2. derivation from Hebrew sheker (“falsehood”); 3. from Latin scortea, meaning the “leather bag” which Judas as treasurer carried (John 12: 6, 13: 29). The reader is left to make his own choice, as no preference is expressed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 1943 , pp. 51 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1943

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References

1 The definite article in Jer. 48: 41 is probably mere dittography. In Amos 2: 2 it is not perfectly certain that a proper name is intended.

2 The sicarii described in Josephus, Antt., 20, viii, 10 (cf. Acts 21:38) came after Judas' time, and there could have been no reason for associating him with them. On the Sicarii and the Zealots, see The Beginnings of Christianity, Part I, pp. 421 ff.

3 Compare the similar case in Matt. 28: 7, where from the parallels in Mark and Luke it is evident that the present reading originated in a scribal error, some early copyist having made the extremely common mistake of writing εἶπον instead of εἶπεν.

4 Nöldeke, in the Nachträge to Schulthess' grammar, p. 151, rejects the theory, but has nothing better to propose than the old conjecture: “es bleibt bei חוידק שיא.”

5 The shortened pronunciation of an etymologically long ā seems particularly characteristic of the Palestinian speech; see my Notes on the Aramaic of Daniel, pp. 262 f., Ezra Studies, p. 194.

6 The orthography of the word appears to be purposely varied here, a device which has other illustration in Jewish literature. The lexicographers, however, hesitate over the second form. The Aruk has šaqqārai, Levy šaqqerai, Jastrow šaqrī. No one of the three proposed readings, I think, can be successfully defended. Both ways of writing the ending are regular in Talmud and Targum. It is worth noticing that the superfluous א in the diphthong ăi appears frequently in Palest. Syr. also; see Schulthess, Gramm. des christlich-palästinischen Aramäisch, p. 8.

7 Dalman, Gramm., pp. 93–95; Schulthess, Gramm., p. 28; Brockelmann, Vergleich. Gramm., I, pp. 216–218.

8 This is well illustrated in the “Western” text of John's Gospel, in the passages, already mentioned, where Judas the betrayer is named. The Aramaic translator, reproducing his Greek with meticulous faithfulness, wrote ʼīš qariōṭ, whence eventually came the new Greek reading, ὁ ἀπὸ Καρυωτοῦ, as explained above. Equally good illustration to the same effect is furnished by the Syriac versions, which all without exception treat the name in each and all of its occurrences as ending with the emphatic t.