As the months and years rolled by, heavy scales began to fall from his stupid eyes and he began to be deceived not by but in Jesus. We are justified in believing that Judas never even remotely appreciated the spiritual grandeur of the Christ. He probably had intellect and soul enough to be charmed and fascinated by the lofty bearing and eloquent discourse of Jesus, but after all he perceived only the necessary qualifications of a great republican leader and successful revolutionist. And after a while he doubtless began to tire of all this when he saw that the revolution was not progressing and that there was no possibility of actual and solid results. It is probable that disaffection and treachery were born and began to grow in his mind and heart at Capernaum, when Jesus was deserted by many of His followers and was forced to effect a realignment along spiritual lines. Judas was not equal to the spiritual test, and it was doubtless then that the disintegration of his moral nature began, which stopped only with betrayal, infamy, and death.
But by what process, we may ask, was the mercenary disposition of Judas converted into hatred against Jesus? The process was that of disappointment. When Judas became convinced that all the years of his connection with the Apostolic company had been lost, his will became embittered and his resentment was aroused. In the denseness of his ignorance and in the baseness of his soul he probably thought that Jesus had deceived His followers as to His true mission and he felt enraged because he had been duped. He had looked forward to worldly promotion and success. He had fondly hoped that the eloquence of Jesus would finally call around Him an invincible host of enthusiastic adherents who would raise the standard of revolt, drive the Romans from Judea, and establish the long-looked-for kingdom of the Jews. He had noted with deep disappointment and unutterable chagrin the failure of Jesus to proclaim Himself king when, at Bethphage, the multitude had greeted His entrance into Jerusalem with Hosannas and acclamations. And now, at the Last Supper, he became convinced from the conduct and discourses of the Master that his worst fears were true, that Jesus was sincere in His resolution to offer Himself as a sacrifice for the sake of a principle which he, Judas, did not approve because he could not understand. In other words, he witnessed in the resolve of Jesus to die at once the shipwreck of his hopes, and he made haste to vent his wrath upon the author of his disappointment.
The writer agrees with Renan that the thirty pieces of silver were not the real or leading inducement to this black and monumental betrayal. Having taken the fatal step, by leaving the Upper Room in the home of Mark, to deliver his Lord and Master into the hands of enemies, a bitter hatred was formed at once against the innocent victim of his foul designs, on the well-known principle of human nature that we hate those who have induced us to do that which causes us to despise and hate ourselves.
"Thou shalt not avenge or bear any grudge against the children of thy people."
Where, in the annals of the universe, do we find another such case of vengeance and grudge as this of Judas against Jesus?
"But thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
This commandment of the Mosaic law was also the great commandment of the Master of Galilee, and in violating it by consenting to betray and sacrifice Jesus, Judas assaulted and destroyed in his own soul the cardinal principle of the two great religious dispensations of his race.
And yet this informer, conspirator, and malefactor was employed by the chief priests in effecting the arrest of Jesus. Was not a fundamental rule of Mosaic law violated? Will it be urged that the rule operated against Judas but not against the chief priests? If so, it must be remembered that no wicked instrument could be used in promoting Hebrew justice. Officers of the law were not permitted to require a citizen to do an act which was forbidden by law. If Jesus was innocent, then the arrest was illegal. If He was guilty, then Judas, his Apostle and fellow-worker, was an accomplice; and no accomplice could be utilized in furtherance of justice, under Hebrew law, either in the matter of arrest or in the establishment of guilt as a witness at the trial.
According to the Talmud, there was at least one seeming exception to this rule. Renan describes it with peculiar clearness and succinctness. "The procedure," he says, "against the 'corrupter' (mesith), who sought to attaint the purity of religion, is explained in the Talmud, with details, the naïve impudence of which provokes a smile. A judicial ambush is therein erected into an essential part of the examination of criminals. When a man was accused of being a 'corrupter,' two witnesses were suborned who were concealed behind a partition. It was arranged to bring the accused into a contiguous room, where he could be heard by these two witnesses without his perceiving them. Two candles were lighted near him, in order that it might be satisfactorily proved that the witnesses 'saw him.' (In criminal matters, eyewitnesses alone were admitted. Mishna, Sanhedrin VI, 5.) He was then made to repeat his blasphemy; next urged to retract it. If he persisted, the witnesses who had heard him conducted him to the Tribunal and he was stoned to death. The Talmud adds that this was the manner in which they treated Jesus; that he was condemned on the faith of two witnesses who had been suborned, and that the crime of 'corruption' is, moreover, the only one for which the witnesses are thus prepared."[234]
Most Gentile writers ridicule this statement of the Talmud, and maintain that it was a Rabbinic invention of post-Apostolic days, and was intended to offer an excuse for the outrageous proceedings against the Christ. Schürer dismisses the whole proposition with contempt. Many Jewish scholars also refuse it the sanction of their authority. But even if it was a Talmudic rule of law in force at the time of Christ, its constitutionality, so to speak, might be questioned, in the first place; since it was, in spirit at least, repugnant to and subversive of the Mosaic provision in Leviticus cited above. It must not be forgotten that the Mosaic Code was the constitution, the fundamental law of Judaism, by which every Rabbinic interpretation and every legal innovation was to be tested.