Note 24 — Chapter II · MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS; LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES.

An over-strained supranaturalism, proceeding from the point of view presented in the New Testament itself, namely, that the death of Jesus, decreed in the Divine plan of the world for the salvation of mankind, might even regard Judas, by whose treachery the death of Jesus was brought about, as a blameless instrument in the hand of Providence, a co-operator in the redemption of mankind. He might be placed in this light by the supposition that he had knowledge of that Divine decree, and that its fulfilment was the object at which he aimed in betraying Jesus. We actually find this mode of viewing the subject on the part of the gnostic sect of the Cainites, who, according to the ancient writers on heresies, held that Judas had liberated himself from the narrow Jewish opinions of the other disciples and attained to the gnosis, and accordingly betrayed Jesus because he knew that by his death the kingdom of the inferior spirits who ruled the world would be overthrown.24 Others in the early church admitted that Judas betrayed Jesus out of covetousness; maintaining, however, that he did not anticipate the death of Jesus as a consequence of his betrayal, but supposed that he would, as he had often previously done, escape from his enemies by an exertion of his supernatural power:25 an opinion which forms the transition to the modern methods of justifying the traitor.