Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot (died AD) was a disciple and one of the original Twelve Disciples of Jesus Christ. According to all four canonical gospels, Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane by kissing him and addressing him as "Rabbi" to reveal his identity to the crowd who had come to arrest him. His name is often used synonymously with betrayal or treason. Judas's epithet "Iscariot" most likely means he came from the village of Kerioth, but this explanation is not universally accepted and many other possibilities have been suggested. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest
Serpents in the Bible Serpents in the Bible Serpents ( "nāḥāš") are referred to in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in religious and cultural life of ancient Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia and Greece. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life and healing. "Nāḥāš", Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb form meaning "to practice divination or fortune-telling". In the Hebrew Bible, "Nāḥāš" occurs in the Torah to identify the serpent in the Garden of