©2005 UrbisMedia
Like a “cold case file” the story of that New Testament rat-fink, Judas Iscariot, has always had a bit of a smell to it. I alluded to the “necessity” of Judas in my last Easter essay (No. 7.1), but this time I mean to try to delve a bit more into this whipping boy for the Evangelists.
Judas was reputedly paid to thirty pieces of silver; that, by my calculations, discounted to First Century piasters, was about enough to buy a 54 inch flat screen TV on which he could have watched the NASCAR chariot races. The money was for Judas to ID the Christ to the local gendarmes when they went to bust him at Gesthemene. Now already this begins to have a whiff to it. Mind you the Christ, you will remember, had arrived in town (we used to love to blaspheme in high school) “riding on his ass,” and with full entourage and palms. He had been preaching all over the place and was probably the equivalent of a rock star of the time. So how come nobody in the authorities knew what he looked like if you put him in a line-up of him and twelve apostles? I don’t buy it.
But the clincher in deconstructing Judas is that if you take him out of the passion story what do you have? OK, I’ll tell you; you have no story . Nobody would finger the Christ is, so Passover goes as usual; Jesus, MaryMag, and little Barabbas go to the Dead Sea shore for a little r’n’r and the Christ fades into Biblical obscurity (along with the whole New Testament), and thousands of evangelical preachers have to go back to selling used cars and roofing and siding. No Judas dropping a dime on the Christ = no story, no box office, no Easter Bunny. Those Bible thumpers should be saying “Praise Judas,” whose name, by the way is derived from the Hebrew Judah, which means, conveniently, “praised.” Why was the Christ so difficult to finger? He’s the one who looks like a male model and has the PantenePlus hairdo and the Bill Blass robes. Don’t those Jerusalem cops go to the movies?
Now, if this is all fore-ordained, as the Bible like to have things, then Judas was written into the script to do just what he had to do for there to be a crucifixion-resurrection . So Judas has to “take the role” of a rat-fink, kill himself, and spend the rest of eternity as the Bible’s No. 1 creep. His name lives in infamy. Nobody names their kid Judas. Would Jude Law seem so cute if his parents named him Judas Law. No way.
Then there’s the discrimination. Do you know the last names of any of the other apostles? Nope, no surnames, except for Judas Iscariot . Turns out that Judas is from Iscariot [Heb. “a man of Kerioth” or Carioth, which is a city of Judah (cf. Joshua 15:25)]. Other apostles get cool names like Peter, “the Fisherman,” or Thomas, “the Doubter,” or Bruce, “the Hairdresser” (just kidding). So why do the evangelists make a point of this? Because Judas is the only guy who is not from Galilee, that’s why. “The dude is from the neighborhood of Judah, man; like he’s really not one of us, man, the guy’s a mole, man.” Can’t you just hear Doubting Thomas kvetching about the guy? If anybody of the “chosen twelve” is going to have to take the fall, it’s this Iscariot guy.
It gets worse for Judas. There’s the purse thing. John brings it up a couple of times (12: 4-6, and 13: 9). Apparently, Judas was the treasurer or something for the Christ and his apostles. He even complained that some of the money should be given to the poor. But the point is that “the guy carried a purse!” (Did he have a pair of matching pumps?) The evangelists are trying to paint Judas as a cross-dresser, or a flaming queen. He was probably borrowing some of MaryMag’s outfits to hit the Jerusalem gay bar’s on the weekends. You know where they are going with that one; yup, right to same-sex marriage (probably between Judas and one of those swishy Pharisees), and there goes the sacred union of marriage right into the toilet.
It’s time to take a look at this case again’ it isn’t cold any more. Maybe it was like the Gesthemene “Survivor” reality show, and the Christ just got voted out of the garden by the other guys. That way everybody gets to take the rap. Isn’t that what “dying for our sins” was supposed to be about anyway?
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©2005, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 3.25.2005)