Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/795

 D J U D 761 suggested etymologies of the name see Winer s Bill. Eealwdrterb., s. v.) The circumstances which led to his admission into the apostolic circle are not stated ; according to the Fourth Gospel (vi. 64), his treachery had been fore seen by Jesus from the very first, but this is not suggested by the synoptists. The motives by which he was actuated in rendering to the Jewish authorities the petty and base service of enabling them to arrest his Master without tumult have been analysed by scholars with very various degrees of subtlety and insight. According to some his sole object was to place Jesus in a position in which He should be compelled to make what had seemed to His followers the too tardy display of His Messianic power ; according to others (and their view seems the best supported by the narrative of the Gospels) he was simply an avaricious and dishonest man, who felt that his opportunities for petty peculation as keeper of the common purse, John xii. 6, xiii. 29 were rapidly disappearing. As regards the effects of his subsequent remorse and the use to which his ill-gotten gains were put, the strikingly apparent discrepancies between the narratives of Matt, xxvii. 3-10 and Acts i, 18, 19 have continually attracted the attention of Biblical scholars ever since Papias, in his fourth book, of which a fragment has been preserved, discussed the subject ; the probability is that they simply represent divergent tradi tions, one of which has possibly been coloured by the history of Ahithophel. In ecclesiastical legend and in sacred art Judas Iscariot has taken a prominent place, being generally treated as the very incarnation of treachery, ingratitude, and impiety. The Middle Ages, after their fashion, have supplied the lacuna? in what they deemed his too meagre biography. According to the common form of their story, he belonged to the tribe, of Reuben ; T 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 accomp lishment. At his birth he was enclosed in a chest and flung into the sea ; picked up on a foreign shore, he was educated at the court until an act of 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, seeks the prophet who, he has heard, has power on earth to forgive sins. He is accepted as a disciple and promoted to a position of trust, where avarice, the only vice in which he has hitherto been unpractised, gradually takes possession of his soul, and leads to the complete fulfilment of his evil destiny. This Judas legend, as given by Jacobus a 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, Bologna, 1869, and papers by W. Creizenach in Paul and Braune s Beitr. zur Gesch. der deutschen Sprache und Litera- tur, vol. ii., Halle, 1875, and Victor Diederich in Russiche Revue, St Petersburg, 1880. Cholevius, in his Geschichte der deidsclien Poesie nach ihren antiken Elementen (Leipsic, 1854), pointed out the connexion of the legend with the CEdipus story. The popular hatred of Judas has found strange symbolical expression in various parts of Christen dom. 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, 1 Other forms make him a Danite, and consider the passage in Genesis (xlix. 17) a prophecy of the traitor. vol. ii. p. 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, 2d series, v., vi., and vii.; 3d ser., vii.; 5th ser., vi. JUDAS MACCABEUS. See ISRAEL and MACCABEES. JUDAS TREE, the Cercis Siliquastrum of botanists, belongs to the section Csesalpinese of the natural family Leguminosse. It is a native of the south of France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, and forms a hand some 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 one frequently figured by the older herbalists. One woodcut by Castor Durante is a copy of LobePs cut, with the addition of the figure of Judas 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 Virginia, 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. JUDE. The writer of the epistle of St Jude ( lov Sas) calls himself (ver. 1) &quot; the brother of James.&quot; In primitive Christian times, among the Judseo-Christians to whom this epistle, from the nature of its contents, must have been addressed, there was but one James who could be thus spoken of without any further description, viz., James &quot;the Lord s brother&quot; (see JAMES). The writer of this epistle, then, claims to be the Judas named among the brethren of the Lord in Matt. xiii. 55, Mark vi. 3. He seems himself to declare by implication that he was not an apostle (ver. 17), and with this agrees the statement (John vii. 5) that at a time not long before the crucifixion the brethren of Jesus did not believe on Him. And it is some confirmation of this position that the writer of the epistle of St James in like manner does not claim to be an apostle. The brethren of the Lord are spoken of in Acts i. 14 as distinct from the apostolic body, and are placed last in the enumeration, as though latest included among the believers ; and that their feeling towards Jesus should have been changed since His death and resurrection has been thought to be sufficiently explained by the assertion of St Paul (1 Cor. xv, 7) that the Lord had been &quot; seen of James &quot; on one special occasion after he had risen from the dead. We conclude therefore that the writer of the epistle- was a different person from Jude the apostle, who appears also to have had the names Lebbseus and Thaddaeus (comp. Matt. x. 3, Mark iii. 18, with Luke vi. 16, Acts i. 13). When we consider the brevity of St Jude s epistle we can hardly wonder that it did not receive more recognition from the early Christian writers than it has met with. Clemens Alexandrinus (165-220) quotes from this epistle or alludes to its language more than once, as does Ter- tullian (200), making express mention that the book of Enoch is quoted in it. 2 Origen (186-253) gives several notices of it, and in the Latin translation of some portions of his works, of which the original has been lost, Jude is called an apostle. Nevertheless Eusebius classes the epistle amongst the dvrtXeyd/xeva, and its omission from the Syriac version shows us that in one branch of the Christian church it was either not known, or not received for canonical, when that version was made. Jerome in the 4th century a The book of Enoch (see vol. ii. p. 175) is cited in Jude 14, and allusions to it occur in 4, 6, 13. Another apocalyptic work, the Assumption of Moses, is the source of Jude 9. XIII. 96