Bible Synapse

When did Satan enter Judas: before the Last Supper or during it?

Hard question · The death and resurrection of Jesus · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate

Two different events
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The passages

Luke 22:3–7

Before the day of unleavened bread, “Then entered Satan into Judas”, and he went to bargain with the chief priests.

Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money. And he promised, and sought opportunity to betray him unto them in the absence of the multitude. Then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed.

John 13:2

During supper, the devil had “already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot” to betray Jesus (WEB).

And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him;

John 13:26–27

After Jesus gave Judas the morsel, “Satan entered into him”, and Jesus told him to act quickly.

Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.

The objection

Luke says Satan entered Judas before the Last Supper, when he went to make his bargain with the chief priests. John says Satan entered him during the supper, after Jesus handed him the morsel. Critics ask which is right.

The answer

Both are right, because they describe two stages of Judas’s fall, and John himself mentions both. Luke 22:3 tells how, shortly before the feast, Satan entered Judas and he went to the chief priests to arrange the betrayal. John agrees that Satan was already at work in Judas before the supper: during it, he writes, “the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot” to betray Jesus (John 13:2; the Greek ēdē beblēkotos means he had already done so). Then, at the table, after Jesus had given Judas the morsel and so shown that he knew, “Satan entered into him” (John 13:27), and Judas went straight out to do it.

The same Greek verb (eiserchomai, ‘enter’) is used both times, but nothing in it means a single, once-for-all event: Satan could take hold of a man for his purposes more than once, first for the plotting and then for the deed. In the same way an evil spirit troubled Saul again and again (1 Samuel 16:14–23; 18:10). Barnes reads John this way: the devil had already put the plan into Judas’s heart, but at the supper Satan ‘now excited him to a more decided purpose’. Since John reports the earlier stage himself, he can hardly have meant to deny Luke’s account of it.

Other answers Christians give

One process, two vantage points

Others read Luke 22:3 as a summary of Satan’s growing hold on Judas, told at the point where the plot began, which came to a head at the supper. On this view too Luke and John describe one process from different points in it.

From the classic commentators

Satan entered into him - The devil had before this put it into his heart to betray Jesus John 13:2, but he now excited him to a more decided purpose. See Luke 22:3Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on John 13 (1832)

Sources

Further reading

Raised by: W. H. Burr, Self-Contradictions of the Bible (1860), EvilBible.com, The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. Only the verse references come from these lists.

Checked 2026-10-22. All hard questions