ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theological implications of the linguistic parallelism found in the New Testament and made so much of by Barth. This will be achieved by examining the arguments deployed in the tradition by those writers perceptive enough to spot that there is an issue to discuss. Discussions of the possible implications of New Testament vocabulary in relation to Judas are found most substantively in major writers such as Origen, Augustine and Aquinas. The New Testament, with the one exception of Luke 6.16, describes Judas in terms of what he does, the action he performs, rather than labelling him in this way. In Tractate 107 Augustine comments that the one handing over Christ, 'predestined to perdition, was called the son of perdition, according to the Scripture that in the one hundred and eighth psalm especially prophesied about him'. Epiphanius gives a similar account, also mentioning what he describes as a 'short writing' called the Gospel of Judas.
