Förhärdad eller Förmänskligad? Hur evangelisten Matteus bearbetat evangelisten Markus bild av Judas Iskariot

Abstract

Judas Iscariot is an intriguing figure: Both one of Jesus’ twelve closest disciples and the one who turned him over to the Roman and Jewish authorities, at the same time a figure who seems to have played a crucial role in the passion narrative and consequently in the founding of Christianity, and one of the most despised characters in human history. Judas Iscariot is an intriguing figure, and so is today the research concerning him, his deed, and the development of the characterization of him. With the help of a variety of exegetical tools, the aim of this thesis is to establish a systematical clarification of the similarities and differences between the pictures of Judas drawn in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew, respectively. With the supposition that Matthew used Mark’s Gospel as one of his sources, as is suggested by the Two-Source and the Farrer hypotheses, this study starts with a close examination of how Judas Iscariot is depicted in the Gospel of Mark. Thereafter this picture is compared with the picture of Judas drawn in the Gospel of Matthew. This study shows that the picture of Judas in Matthew reveals six tendencies in comparison with the picture of Judas in Mark: First and foremost a tendency to preserve is easily discernable, and along with this five creative tendencies: (1) To separate Judas from the other disciples and to disparage Jesus’ election of the apostles, (2) to darken the picture of Judas, (3) to clarify difficulties, (4) to develope the Judas character and (5) to connect Judas and descriptions of him to the Old Testament. In comparison with Mark's depiction of Judas, Matthew can therefore in no way be said to simply darken the picture of Judas, as some have stated, but rather to develop the characterization of him in a multitude of ways.