Definitions

Judas

Judas

[joo-duhs]
Judas, in the Bible. 1 See Jude, Saint. 2 Judas Maccabeus: see Maccabees. 3 See Judas Iscariot. 4 See Judah 1 (of which Judas is the Greek form). 5 In the Acts of the Apostles, owner of a house in Damascus where St. Paul went after his conversion. 6 See Judas Barsabas. 7 In the Gospels, "brother" of Jesus.

(died 161/160 BC) Leader of a Jewish rebellion against the Syrians. The son of an aged priest who took to the mountains in rebellion when Antiochus IV Ephiphanes tried to impose the Greek religion on the Jews, Judas became leader of the rebels on his father's death and won a series of victories over the Syrians in 166–164 BC. In 166 he purified the Temple of Jerusalem, an event celebrated at Hanukkah. On Antiochus's death in 164, the Seleucids offered the Jews freedom of worship, but Judas continued the war, hoping to gain political freedom. He was killed soon thereafter, but his brothers carried on the struggle. The history of the dynasty is told in the two books of Maccabees in the Apocrypha.

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(died circa AD 30) Disciple who betrayed Jesus. He was one of the original 12 disciples. Judas made a deal with the Jewish authorities to betray Jesus into their custody; in return for 30 pieces of silver, he brought the armed guard to the Garden of Gethsemane and identified Jesus with a kiss. He later regretted his deed and committed suicide; according to Matthew 27, he returned the money to the priests before hanging himself. His surname may mean “man of Kerioth,” or it may link him to the Sicarii, a band of radical Jewish terrorists.

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Judas (Greek: Ιούδας) is the anglicized Greek rendering of the Hebrew name Yehudah (Hebrew: יְהוּדָה), also rendered in English as Judah.

All subsequent holders of the name are directly or indrectly named for the Biblical one. While there few others of this name mentioned in later parts of the Hebrew Bible, by Hellenitic times it has become a common first name among Jews (whose collective name - "Yehudim" יהודים in Hebrew - is also derived from the same source) and has remained so up to the present. Specifically, it was a common first name in the First Century A.D. Jewish society inside which Christianity came into being.

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