Judas Cave is one of many karst passages and voids, inside Qarah Mountain, near Al-Hasa in Saudi Arabia. The legend has it that this cave is where biblical Judas Iscariot hid and died after his betrayal to Jesus Chris. This is not a new claim, local people in 1920s, linked this cave with biblical Abraham!
To date, there is no strong historical or biblical evidence directly linking the cave to Judas Iscariot. The name is believed to come from local folklore or religious storytelling traditions, but “every legend has a kernel of truth buried deep within it”.
Judas Cave or Judas Caves are natural karst passages and voids, inside Qarah Mountain, near Al-Hasa in Saudi Arabia.
This “mountain” is technically not a mountain at all, but rather a plateau that is flat for kms.
Qarah mountain (or plateau) is a geological wonder, formed over millennia, and features dry, natural rock walls and a network of interconnected passages.
The traditional name for this mountain is “al- maghair” (المغاير) meaning: “the -caves”. William Gifford Palgrave, who visited Al-Hasa in 1863, transliterated this name in English as: “moghor”.
According to Palgrave:
“North-east of Hasa rises a long isolated ridge,basalt and sandstone, about four hundred feet in height; its cliffs are pierced in every direction by large natural caverns, and their name, (Moghor) or (caves) has become synonymous with the mountain itself. Within these caves the air is cool, even during the hottest months of the year; and fresh water flows in a perennial supply at the mountain foot.”
“Hither accordingly the merchants and business-men of Hasa would repair when wearied of their accounts and ledger-books, and pass together a few days in the caverns of Moghor, amid the ease of familiar conversation, well-furnished tables, music, dancing, and whatever like diversions even thinking men often allow themselves when tired with hard and sedentary work.”
“I need hardly say that domestic furniture is here much more varied and refined than what adorns the dwellings of Sedeyr and ’Aared; and the stools, low dinner-tables, cup boards, shelves, and bedsteads, are very like the fittings-up of a respectable Hindoo house at Baroda or Cambay. Wood-carving is also common ; it finds its usual place on door-posts and window-frames ;lastly, decorative figures painted on the walls, though not absolutely equal to the frescoes of Giotto or Ghirlandajo, yet suffice to give the rooms a more cheerful and, if I may be allowed the expression, a more Christian took than the unvarying brown and white daub of the apartments in ‘Aared and Kaseem.”
These passages or caves are believed to be where the infamous Judas Iscariot hid and died after his betrayal to Jesus Chris.
Judas Iscariot, according to Christianity’s four canonical gospels, was one of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus Christ. Judas betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin in the Garden of Gethsemane, in exchange for thirty pieces of silver, by kissing him on the cheek and addressing him as “master” to reveal his identity in the darkness to the crowd who had come to arrest him. Judas’s betrayal led to Jesus being “handed over” to the Jewish authorities and then to the Romans for crucifixion. Connecting Qara caves to this biblical story is believed to be a “folktale”. Unfortunately, no serious research has attempted to distinguish provable truths from this legend.
Some of the denotations of the word “Judas”, in Semitic languages, are: “hand”, “to hand” or “to hand over”.
Cave of Abraham
Harold Richard Dickson, a British colonial administrator in the Middle East from the 1920s until the 1940s, visited Qara mountain and explored what he calls: “the Cave of Abraham”. This very cave is what people now call: “The Cave of Judas” or “Judas Cave”.
In his book “Kuwait and Her Neighbours”, Dickson Shares amazing details of his visit to Alhasa, and tried to figure out why the local people (in his time) connect this mountain with biblical Abraham?
Apparently, this cave has a history of being associated with biblical figures, such as Abraham and Judas.
Kernel of truth
As it has been said, “every legend has a kernel of truth”. Real historical events, people, or practices are often preserved and transmitted through exaggerated, symbolic, or fictionalized stories that become part of a culture’s mythology and folktales. Over time, the line between factual history and legendary narrative blurs.
The Arabian Peninsula is deeply woven into biblical narratives as the ancestral homeland of peoples descended from Abraham (Ishmael, Keturah’s sons like Midian, Sheba), a vital trade route for wealthy kingdoms (Sheba, Dedan), and a setting for key events like Moses’s time in Midian (Northwestern Arabia), and St. Paul’s preaching in Arabia (Galatians 1:17).
Why did Paul go to Arabia for 3 years? to meet with Jesus?:
So, it is not farfetched to believe that Judas, just like biblical Moses, Elijah & Paul, spent his final days in Arabia.
Judas colors
The colors associated with Judas are yellow and red. Historically, yellow became the color of betrayal and deceit due to its symbolic association with Judas Iscariot in Christian art.
Additionally, medieval paintings frequently depicted Judas with red hair, which led to the adjective “Judas-colored” referring to red hair.
Interestingly enough, the color of Qarah mountain is yellowish-red.
Judas of Central Arabia
Modern English “Judas” replaced Middle English “iudas“. The latter is an adoption of Latin “iudas“, which is a Latinization of Ancient Greek “Ἰούδας” (ioúdas).
The Greek name Ἰούδας (ioudas) is a transliteration and a common Greek form of the Hebrew name “יְהוּדָה” (Yehudah),
Judas in Hebrew is: “Yehudah” (יְהוּדָה)
Judas in Arabic is: “Yehuḏah” (يهوذا).
“Cave of Judas” in Arabic is: “Cahf Yehuḏah” (كهف يهوذا)
A legendary pre-Islamic leader of Central Arabia was a Nestorian Christian man, known by the name of: Yehuḏah The Hanafi (يهوذا الحنفي/Judas al-hanafi). This Arabic Judas was a leader of the Christian Najd, shortly before the advent of Islam.
Evidently, the name: “Judas” is not “new” to this part of the world.
Goatha
According to biblical scholar Johann Ludwig Krafft, the place where Jesus Christ was crucified has another name, which is: Goatha or Goath.
This toponym, can be found only in Hasa, pronounced “Juatha/جوثا” and “Juath/جواث”. (Also transliterated as “Jawatha”.)
In Proto-Semitic, the consonant [ɡ] was a hard voiced velar plosive, similar to the ‘g‘ in “game”. In Classical Arabic, this sound became palatalized to an affricate [d͡ʒ] (like the ‘j‘ in “jam”)
Semitic: [ɡ] → Arabic: [d͡ʒ] (as /j/ in jam)
A Jewish state in Al-hasa?*
In September 1917, Lord Francis Bertie, British Ambassador to France, received an unusual proposal from Dr M L Rothstein, a Paris-based Russian Jew.
Bertie explained to the Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, that Rothstein proposed the Entente Powers should equip and organize an army ‘for the conquest of El Hassa [ Al-hasa]’, an oasis region on the east coast of modern-day Saudi Arabia, for the ‘creation of a Jewish State on the Persian Gulf’.
Rothstein sets out his proposal thus: ‘I undertake to assemble, for next spring, a Jewish fighting troop, a force of 120,000 strong men’ which would double ‘in cooperation… with the troops of the Entente’. At first glance, he admits, his plan ‘may appear unrealistic’, but this would cease ‘as soon as the first thousand men have arrived on the scene’.
The troops would gather at Bahrain and, as soon they reached 30,000, a ‘coup de main’ (swift attack) would ensue, taking the ‘Turkish province of Al Hassa, near the Persian Gulf’, which ‘will become a Jewish State (un État juif)’. He predicts an ensuing ‘state of war’ with Turkey due to the invasion. Therefore, ‘the Jewish troops will immediately enter into a campaign… until the final victory of the Entente or until their destruction’.
The British rejected Rothstein’s plan outright, dismissing it as ‘wholly inappropriate’. Balfour’s private secretary wrote to Bertie on 3 October 1917 requesting that he reply to Rothstein, informing him that the British government could not give effect to his proposal.
Besides his self-description as a ‘Russian medical doctor’ and a 1938 description by Juda Tchernoff, little is known about Rothstein. He prefaces his proposal with his family’s ‘moral qualities’ and refers to Maurice Barrès who cites Rothstein’s son, Amédée, a young Russian Zionist, in his book Les Diverses familles spirituelles de la France. Although Barrès was a famous anti-Dreyfusard and popularised French nationalism, he considered Amédée as exemplifying Jewish loyalty to France due to his patriotic death at the Battle of Verdun in 1916.
*From British Library Blog.
Now, the unavoidable question is: “Why?”
Why some European Jewish elite wanted to establish a Jewish state in Al-Hasa? Why 120,000 Jewish soldiers were ready to die for Al Ahsa? There must be a religious motivation.
Historicity of Jesus
Scholars distinguish between the ‘Christ of faith‘ as presented in the New Testament and a minimal ‘Jesus of history‘, of whom almost nothing can be known. (Wikipedia).
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