The Irish standard., 1900-08-11
A Cambridge Professor Doubts
the Bible Narrative.
IT BELONGS LARGELY TO FOLKLORE
DR.. Kings Views on Character of
the Odious Traitor.

Doubt as to whether Judas commit
ted suicide is expressed in an article il.
the American Journal of Theology, ed
tied by. the divinity faculty of the Uni
versity of Chicago. St. Matthew says
that after the betrayal of Jesus the trait
or went and hanged himself" but the
writer of the article does not accept
this statement as conclusive.
The man who casts this doubt on the
Biblical account of the fate of the traitor
is an authority on Biblical exegesis. He
is ]. Rendel Harris, professor of Cam.
bridge University, and we'll known to
Biblical scholars as an authority in his
particular branch of theology. He
finds several reasons for discrediting;
the generally accepted story of the
traitors suicide. One of these is that
in another part of the Bible, in the Acts,
it is asserted that he bought field
with the pieces Of silver, and then, "fall-
ing headlong, he burst asunder," which
Professor Harris believes means that
Judas hsied of dropsy.. Another reason
gwen by the scholar is that the suicide
is not in keeping, will, Judas character,
and in this opinion he is supported by
the opinion of many neurologists.
Taken as awl1ole the Cambridge att
tl1ority thinks the story of Judas be-
longs largely to folklore. The means
adopted by Judas to take his own life
do not harmonic in the various books
of the New Testament, and the attempts
of men to harmonic them he regards
as bordering on the ridiculous, espe-
cially in those t'rationalizing" methods
employed by Papias and Cosquin. The
professor establishes the fact that the
legendary death of Naban. nephew of
Ahikar, the Grand Vizier of Sennacher-
ib of Assyria, was in accordance with
St. Luke's story in the Acts of the
death of Judas.
This similarity between the story of
Judas and Naban seems to have been
the chief cause of leading to Professor
Harris investigation. This, he de-
clares, leads to the conference" that the
one story has been the model for the
other, or, at least, that the method
adopted by the narrators of the two
stories is conventional one, in which
case the latter series OF legends becomes
as unhistorical as the former.
"When, therefore, we say that Judas
is legendary imitation of the fcti-
tious Naban, we mean either that the
first narrator of the horrible death OF
Judas actually initiated the story of the
end of Naban-a legend which may be
shown to have been we'll known in New
Testament tines-or that he initiated
the early story in an unconscious and
indirect manner by using the same con-
ventional method of getting rid of the
villain OF his tragedy. We can see,
however, that there is so much parallel
ism between the two characters IN ques-
tion-the traitorous Naban and Judas
that it is extremely probable that the
imitation in question is direct one
In any case, the value of the early Chris
tan traditions with regard to the man
ner of death of the traitor is reduced al
most to zero"
Drawing conclusions in the final par
-agraph of this article, Professor Har-
ris says:
"Itaappears, then, that all matter OF
this Sind is pseudo historical and re-
quires to be treated with extreme cau-
ton. The historical nucleus, if one ex-
ist, is for the most part microscopically
small Nor is it safe for the historian
to make an idol out of either Josephus
or St. Luke"
DR.. Oscar A. King, neurologist, con-
sidering Judas as mere literary figure,
speaks out OF his experience with the
criminal neurotic to say that if such
character as was Judas commits sui
eide it is never from seeing the results
of his plotting and conniving; that such
types justify themselves, rather, in all
cases; that, judged by the Bible story OF
the betrayal, Judas did hang himself,
but because he had expected, in the be-
trayal, that Christ in the last moment
would have exerted his divine power to
save himself and confound his enemies
Nowhere does Professor Harris touch
afirmatively or negatively upon the
truth Of the story Of the betrayal. It