JUDAEA, a southern district of Palestine extending in one direction between Samaria and the desert of Arabia, and in the other between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea.

JUDAH, KINGDOM OF, the kingdom in the S. of Palestine of the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin that remained true to the house of David after the revolt of the other ten under Jeroboam, who formed what was called the kingdom of Israel, a larger, but a weaker.

JUDAIZERS, a party, called also EBIONITES, in the primitive Church who sought to overlay the simple ordinances of Christianity with Judaic observances and rites, “a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear.”

JUDAS, surnamed ISCARIOT, one of the twelve Apostles of Christ, who from some infatuation that unaccountably possessed him, and to his everlasting infamy, betrayed his Master to His enemies for 30 pieces of silver; was designated by Christ as the Son of Perdition.

JUDAS MACCABAEUS, a son of MATTATHIAS (q. v.), who succeeded his father in the leadership of the Jews against the Syrians in the war of the Maccabees, and who gave name to the movement, a man of chivalric temper, great energy, firm determination, dauntless courage, and powerful physique; who, with the elect of his countrymen of kindred spirit encountered and overthrew the Syrians in successive engagements, till before a great muster of the foe his little army was overwhelmed and himself slain in 160 B.C.  See MACCABEES.

JUDE, EPISTLE OF, an epistle in the New Testament, of which Judas, the brother of James, was the author; written to some unknown community in the primitive Church, in which a spirit of antinomian libertinism had arisen, and the members of which are denounced as denying the sovereign authority of the Church’s Head by the practical disobedience and scorn of the laws of His kingdom.  For the drift and modern uses of this epistle see Ruskin’s “Fors Clavigera,” chaps. lxvi. and lxvii., where it is shown that the enemies of the faith in Jude’s day are its real enemies in ours.

JUDGES, BOOK OF, a book of the Old Testament; gives an account of a series of deliverances achieved on behalf of Israel by ministers of God of the nation so called, when, after their occupation of the land, now this tribe and now that was threatened with extinction by the Canaanites; these deliverers bore the character of heroes rather than judges, but they were rather tribal heroes than national, there being as yet no king in Israel to unite them into one; of these the names of twelve are given, of which only six attained special distinction, and their rule covered a period of 300 years, which extended between the death of Joshua and the birth of Samuel; the story throughout is one:  apostasy and consequent judgment, but the return of the Divine favour on repentance insured.

JUDGMENT, PRIVATE, assumption of judgment by individual reason on matters which are not amenable to a lower tribunal than the universal reason of the race.