Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/449

 pose; that Judas Iscariot was a respectable man, probably with a character as good as most of his neighbors had, though he may have been considered by some of his acquaintance, as a close, sharp man in money matters; for this is a character most unquestionably fixed on him in those few and brief allusions which are made to him in the gospel narratives. Whatever may have been the business to which he had been devoted during his previous life, he had probably acquired a good reputation for honesty, as well as for careful management of property; for he is on two occasions distinctly specified as the treasurer and steward of the little company or family of Jesus;—an office for which he would not have been selected, unless he had maintained such a character as that above imputed to him. Even after his admission into the fraternity, he still betrayed his strong acquisitiveness, in a manner that will be fully exhibited in the history of the occurrence in which it was most remarkably developed.

Iscariot.—The present form of this word appears from the testimony of Beza, to be different from the original one, which, in his oldest copy of the New Testament, was given without the I in the beginning, simply; ; (Scariotes;) and this is confirmed by the very ancient Syriac version, which expresses it by (Sekaryuta.) Origen also, the oldest of the Christian commentators, (A. D. 230,) gives the word without the initial vowel, "Scariot." It is most reasonable therefore to conclude that the name was originally Scariot, and that the I was prefixed, for the sake of the easier pronunciation of the two initial consonants; for some languages are so smoothly constructed, that they do not allow even S to precede a mute, without a vowel before. Just as the Turks, in taking up the names of Greek towns, change Scopia into Iscopia, &c. The French too, change the Latin Spiritus into Esprit, as do the Spaniards into Espiritu; and similar instances are numerous.

The very learned Matthew Poole, in his Synopsis Criticorum, (Matt. x. 4,) gives a very full view of the various interpretations of this name. Six distinct etymologies and significations of this word have been proposed, most of which appear so plausible, that it may seem hard to decide on their comparative probabilities. That which is best justified by the easy transition from the theme, and by the aptness of the signification to the circumstances of the person, is the First, proposed by an anonymous author, quoted in the Parallels of Junius, and adopted by Poole. This is the derivation from the Syriac (sekharyut,) "a bag," or "purse;" root cognate with the Hebrew (sakhar.) No. 1, Gibbs's Hebrew Lexicon, and  (sagar,) Syr. & Arab. id. The word thus derived must mean the "bag-man," the "purser," which is a most happy illustration of John's account of the office of Judas, (xii. 6: xiii. 29.) It is, in short, a name descriptive of his peculiar duty in receiving the money of the common stock of Christ and his apostles, buying the necessary provisions, administering their common charities to the poor, and managing all their pecuniary affairs,—performing all the duties of that officer who in English is called a "steward." Judas, or rather "Scariot," means therefore "Judas the ."

The second derivation proposed is that of Junius, (Parall.) who refers it to a sense descriptive of his fate. The Syriac, Hebrew, and Arabic root, (sakar,) has in the first of these languages, the secondary signification of "strangle," and the personal substantive derived from it, might therefore mean, "one who was strangled." Lightfoot says that if this theme is to be adopted, he should prefer to trace the name to the word which with the Rabbinical writers is used in reference to the same prim-