It is read in a certain history, though apocryphal, that there was a man in Jerusalem named Reuben, who by another name was called Simon, of the tribe of Dan, or according to Jerome of the tribe of Issachar. He had a wife who was called Cyborea. One night, then, when they had paid each other the marriage debt, Cyborea, falling asleep, saw a dream, which, terrified, she told to her husband with groans and sighs, saying: 'It seemed to me that I bore a wicked son, who would become the cause of perdition for our whole people.' Reuben said to her: 'You utter a wicked thing, not worthy even of telling, and you are, as I think, seized by a soothsaying spirit.' She replied:
'If I find that I have conceived and shall bear a son, then without doubt it is no soothsaying spirit, but it was a sure revelation.' As time went on, then, when she had borne a son, the parents were greatly afraid, and began to consider what they should do with him. And since they shrank from killing their son, yet were unwilling to rear the destroyer of their own race, they placed him in a little basket and exposed him to the sea. The waves of the sea drove him to an island called Scarioth. From that island, then, Judas was called Iscariot. Now the queen of that place, having no children, went out to the seashore to take the air, and seeing the basket tossed by the waves of the sea, she ordered it to be opened; and finding there a child of beautiful form, sighing she said:
'O if only I might be comforted by the solace of such offspring, lest I be deprived of an heir to my kingdom!' She therefore had the boy reared in secret, and feigned herself to be pregnant. At last she pretended that she had borne a son, and this report was famously spread through the whole kingdom. The prince exulted greatly over the offspring received, and the people rejoiced with immense gladness. He therefore had him brought up according to royal splendor. But not long afterward the queen conceived by the king, and in due time gave birth to a son. Now when the boys had grown a little, they often played together. And Judas troubled the royal boy with frequent annoyances and injuries, and often provoked him to weeping.
Now the queen, taking this ill and knowing that Judas did not belong to her, beat him rather often. But not even so did he cease from troubling the boy. At last the matter was disclosed, and it was revealed that Judas was not the queen's true son, but a foundling. When Judas learned this, he blushed deeply, and secretly killed his supposed brother, the king's son. Fearing a capital sentence for this, he fled with the tribute-bearers to Jerusalem and bound himself to the court of Pilate, then governor. And since like things are well suited to one another, Pilate found Judas to agree with his own character, and therefore began to hold him very dear. Judas was therefore set over the whole court of Pilate, and everything was arranged at his nod.
One day, then, Pilate, looking out from his palace into a certain orchard, was seized with so great a desire for those apples that he seemed almost to faint. Now that orchard belonged to Reuben, Judas's father; but neither did Judas know his father, nor Reuben his son, because Reuben thought that he himself had perished in those waves of the sea, and Judas was utterly ignorant who his father was or what his homeland had been. Pilate therefore, having summoned Judas, said: 'I am seized with so great a desire for those fruits that, if I am cheated of them, I shall breathe out my spirit.' Judas, roused, leaped into the orchard and very swiftly plucked the apples. Meanwhile Reuben came and found Judas plucking his apples. Both therefore contended fiercely and heaped insults upon each other.
After the insults they rose to blows and afflicted each other with mutual injuries. At last Judas struck Reuben with a stone on the part where the neck joins the throat, and killed him outright. He then took up the apples and related to Pilate what had happened. Now as the day was declining and night coming on, Reuben was found dead, and was thought to have been overtaken by a sudden death. Then Pilate handed over all the goods of Reuben to Judas, and gave Cyborea, the wife of Reuben, as wife to Judas. One day, then, while Cyborea was sighing heavily and Judas her husband carefully asked what was the matter with her, she answered:
'Alas, I am the most unhappy of all women, for I drowned my little infant in the swelling waves of the sea, and I found my husband overtaken by death; but to my grief, wretched that I am, Pilate added grief, for he gave me, most sorrowful, in marriage, and most unwillingly joined me to you as a wife.' And when she had related all about the little infant, and Judas had told her of the things that had happened to him, it was discovered that Judas had taken his own mother to wife and had killed his own father. Led therefore to repentance, at Cyborea's urging he went to our Lord Jesus Christ and implored pardon for his offenses ... And the Lord made him His disciple. [...]