annihilated. The mode of betrayal, with a kiss, has justly excited
loathing, but it is totally unintelligible. Why should he have taken
the trouble to be so base when the movement of a finger would have
sufficed? Why was any sign necessary to indicate one who was so well
known? The supposition that the devil compelled him to superfluous
villainy in order that he might be secured with greater certainty and
tortured with greater subtlety is one that can hardly be entertained
except by theologians. It is equally difficult to understand why Jesus
submitted to such an insult, and why Peter should not have smitten down
its perpetrator. Peter was able to draw his sword, and it would have
been safer and more natural to kill Judas than to cut off the ear of the
high priest's servant. John, who shows a special dislike to Judas,
knows nothing of the kiss. According to John, Jesus asked the soldiers
whom they sought, and then stepped boldly forward and declared Himself.
"Judas," adds John, "was standing with them." As John took such
particular notice of what happened, the absence of the kiss in his
account can hardly have been accidental. It is a sound maxim in
criticism that what is simply difficult of explanation is likely to be
authentic. An awkward reading in a manuscript is to be preferred to one
which is easier. But an historical improbability, especially if no
corroboration of it is to be found in a better authority, may be set
aside, and in this case we are justified in neglecting the kiss.
Whatever may have been the exact shade of darkness in the crime of
Judas, it was avenged with singular swiftness, and he himself was the
avenger. He did not slink away quietly and poison himself in a ditch.
He boldly encountered the sacred college, confessed his sin and the
innocence of the man they were about to crucify. Compared with these
pious miscreants who had no scruples about corrupting one of the
disciples, but shuddered at the thought of putting back into the
treasury the money they had taken from it, Judas becomes noble. His