Symbolism in Mark: Rethinking the Gospel's Portrayal of Judas Iscariot
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Date written: May 11th, 2025
This post is part of our “Voices from the Academy” series—an initiative highlighting standout content from members of the Biblical Studies Academy. Each month, we feature a few of the most insightful, thought-provoking posts from our community on BartEhrman.com. The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Dr. Bart D. Ehrman.
Hearing Dr. Hugo Méndez demonstrate Mark’s creative license through the symbolism he uses (i.e. the double healing pericope, the Markan Sandwiches, parables, use of irony) reminded me of something I had read about the Judas story earlier.
Let’s face it: the Judas story in our Gospels (primarily from Mark) is weird. If Jesus was given a sentence to be crucified by the ruling authorities for some sort of significant offence like causing unrest in the temple or declaring himself to be the Messiah, or even some sort of zealot-like or violent activities, it did not require one of his followers to betray him for him to be crucified! It would have happened regardless of whether any followers stuck to him or not.
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So what are the reasons why this story may be made up?
Against a fictional betrayal story, is the “criterion of embarrassment”: It must have been embarrassing for Mark to deal with a story of one of Jesus’ own disciples turning his back on Jesus and therefore if he included the narrative in his gospel, it surely must not be invented.
But could have it been invented?
The criterion of embarrassment does not hold if Mark stood to gain something from the narrative — like an agenda or ideology. But what could he gain?
Scholars like John Dominic Crossan, Gerd Lüdemann & Robert Eisenman suggest the following.
It’s quite possibly in the name — Judas or Judah: the tribe of Israel that housed the temple cult, from where we get the words “Jew” and “Judaism” from.
Against the backdrop of the gospels, we have a hostile environment where Jews were persecuting christians for their beliefs. Could Judah’s betrayal of Jesus be symbolic of how Jews have treated their Messiah? It certainly fits with Mark’s literary profile!
It’s odd that there is only one disciple named Judas according to Mark when statistically speaking it was the third most popular name of the time.
It’s odd that there is gross inconsistency of how Judas was believed to have died between Mathew, Luke, and later Papias: indicating the story in itself may have been a bit flimsy — surely the betrayer’s life and death were well known facts.
Iscariot isn’t a Jewish name or place. A few scholars have suggested a place called Kerioth, but most are not convinced. Some have suggested it may come from the word Sicarii which Josephus tells us were a group of assassins (another way to polemicise him?) It is unclear.
Paul’s letters (likely written earlier) never mention Judas (although Paul does not write anything about Jesus ministry); and in 1 Corinthians 15 he tells us the risen Jesus appeared to “the twelve”.
So was the Judas story a symbolic myth from Mark, and the other evangelists liked the story and ran with it? It certainly fits Mark’s creative literary style and once more displays his genius!