Judas Iscariot
There are several explanations as to why Judas betrayed Jesus. In the earliest account, in the Gospel of Mark, when he goes to the chief priests to betray Jesus, he is offered money as a reward, but it is not clear that money is his motivation. In the Gospel of Matthew account, on the other hand, he asks what they will pay him for handing Jesus over. In the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John, the devil enters into Judas, causing him to offer to betray Jesus. The Gospel of John account has Judas complaining that money has been spent on expensive perfumes to anoint Jesus which could have been spent on the poor, but adds that he was the keeper of the apostles' purse and used to steal from it.
Judas Iscariot
In Mikhail Bulgakov's novel "The Master and Margarita", Judas is paid by the high priest of Judaea to testify against Jesus, who had been inciting trouble among the people of Jerusalem. After authorizing the crucifixion, Pilate suffers an agony of regret and turns his anger on Judas, ordering him assassinated. The story within a story appears as a counter-revolutionary novel in the context of Moscow in the 1920s–1930s. "Tres versiones de Judas" (English title: "Three Versions of Judas") is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges. It was included in Borges' anthology, "Ficciones", published in 1944, and revolves around the main character's doubts about the canonical story of Judas who instead creates three alternative versions. On April 17, 1945, the radio program "Inner Sanctum" broadcast the story "The Judas Clock", in which the cursed title object, a 16th century Italian marble longcase clock, is unable to run without the thirty silver coins of Judas being placed in its hollow weights. The episode's main character, played by Berry Kroeger, recites the fate of Judas from Matthew 27:5 (King James version) at the episode's conclusion.