The Slow Rehabilitation of Judas
2006 looks to be a pretty good year for the great betrayer Judas Iscariot. First a group of scholars from The Vatican are trying to portray a more sympathetic Judas who was never delibrately evil. This isn’t a fringe movement either, the scholars are supported in their efforts by Vittorio Messori, a Catholic writer close to Pope Benedict XVI.
Secondly, National Geographic will soon be publishing the Gospel of Judas, an ancient Coptic text discoverd back in the 1970s. Scholars say the gospel claims that the betrayal or “handing over” of Jesus was at the behest of God and not motivated by greed or a frustration with the pacifistic methods of Jesus towards the Roman empire. This reevaluation of Judas has been popping up throughout the history of Christianity and has often been condemed as heretical. But it looks like there has been some “softening” on the role of Judas, especially considering what some see as a institutional trend towards taking a wider view on salvation in Benedict’s papacy (from a Catholic perspective of course).
For those into comparative mythology and for Pagan traditions that draw heavily from Frazer and Murray this will seem to draw Jesus ever more deeply into the role of the “Sacred Kingship” and “Life, Death, Rebirth” deity. Casting Judas in the Murray-ite mold of appointed holy “slayer” of the “divine king”. According to her book “The Divine King in England”, the English (and very Christian) monarchy (and clergy) were actually secretly part of a Witch-cult constantly re-enacting the slaughter of the divine king (all for the good of the land don’t you know). This fanciful theory was popularized in the Katherine Kurtz novel “Lammas Night”, where a group of Wiccans must off (willingly) a minor member of the English royal family to save England from the evil of Hitler (and here you thought Da Vinci Code was pulpy).
Not that there aren’t some surface similarities between gods like Balder and Dionysus and the Jesus of The Bible, but there has never been much proof for a deeper connection, let alone the damaging reductionism of putting mythological and religious figures into neat little categorical boxes. No matter what Joseph Campbell tells you. In any event, as I said in the beginning, it looks like it might be a good year to be Judas. Maybe we will even see a saint card for him someday.
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