A non-believing friend asked me about something that I had never heard before and was wondering what your thoughts were on the subject. He said that the History Channel ran a segment about Judas and explained that the bible has been misinterpreted about Judas’s betrayal.
I even found a forum where a couple of people talk about it. They say that Judas’s intentions were good and he was just trying to make Jesus become the hero that Judas and everyone else thought he was going to be by rescuing them from the Romans. They even go as far as to say that Judas was just doing what Jesus had asked him to do. Also Judas’s suicide probably was not out of guilt but out of shame for being falsely accused.
Here’s the thing. If we believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, as Paul said in 2 Tim. 3:16, that means we believe that whatever is in there is directly from Him, no matter who wrote it. In John 14:26, Jesus told the disciples that the Holy Spirit would remind them of everything He had told them. This is evidence that when they wrote down His words, the Holy Spirit helped them make certain it was correct.
Throughout the Gospels, Judas was characterized as the Lord’s betrayer. In John 6:70 Jesus called him a devil, and in John 13:27 we’re told that Satan himself entered into Judas at the Last Supper.
The fact that Jesus knew that Judas was the betrayer foretold in Psalm 41:9 and therefore was fulfilling prophecy, doesn’t mean He wanted Judas to do it. It simply means that He knew that it had to happen. And even if Judas thought he was doing the right thing, isn’t that an example of how Satan twists things around in our minds to get us to do evil?
In contrast to this, you have a show on the History Channel that says the disciples were out to make Judas the bad guy when they wrote the Gospels. This idea got traction recently with the publication of the Gospel of Judas, an incredibly revisionist hoax that claims Jesus didn’t die on the cross and makes Judas into the hero of the times.
Tell your friend he has to decide which account to believe, the inspired word of God, or the History Channel.