Some might wonder
what the point of reading about Judas is – the best we could hope
to learn is what NOT to do?
However the way that
the Church, and wider society, have related to Judas reveals a lot
about what they thought about both good and evil. As Stanford shows
the Biblical accounts of Judas leave us with more answers than
questions, details from each Gospel could be used to build different
pictures.
Central to
Stanford’s exploration is the question of whether Judas' action, in
leading the authorities to Jesus and kicking off the final events of
Jesus' arrest, crucifixion, and, for Christians, resurrection, are
the work of the “devil”, ie killing the Son of God, or the work
of God, as part of the salvation of the work - something which
remains contested and about which Stanford does not conclude.
But it points to the
complexity of the very idea of “betrayal”. John le
Carré in
A Prefect Spy has one of the characters say
“Love is
whatever you can still betray. Betrayal can only happen if you love.”
And Stanford explores the kiss as a token for the relationship that
must have existed between Jesus and Judas, and might have endured
even across the act of betrayal? And we can recall Andrew
Lloyd-Weber & Tim Rice giving Judas the song “I don't know how
to Love Him” points to this same tension.
One of the points of
departure for my interest in thinking about Judas was his presence at
the Last Supper – what does it tell us about the Eucharist that
Jesus shared it with Judas, according to at least some of the
accounts, despite (or maybe because of) knowing Judas was going to
betray Him.
Pope Francis wrote,
in Evangelii Gaudium, “The Eucharist, although it is the fullness
of sacramental life, is not a prize for the perfect, but a powerful
medicine and nourishment for the weak”. And holding on to Judas at
the table is a good way to remind ourselves of this fact.
4 of the Church of
England's 7 Common Worship Eucharistic Prayers recall that it was “on
the night that he was betrayed” that the Last Supper took place.
We might not think of Judas as part of our liturgy, although unnamed,
his presence is there in our central act of worship.
However the
structure of these Prayers, which begin the narration of the
institution of the Eucharist with “... on the night that He was
betrayed He ...” places in your mind the betrayal before the
Eucharist and perhaps clouds your recall of Judas being there. But
hen Jesus offers His the bread and wine as his Body and Blood, and
says take this “all of you”, that all is addressed to Judas as
much as anyone else.
There is a common
approach to that of James Goodman's book on Abraham and the Sacrifice
of Isaac – looking at the textual origins of the story, the
development of interpretation over the centuries, and end with
reflections on contemporary understandings.
The first question
in this case is whether the texts we have inherited bear witness to
actual historical events, and if they do is their witness accurate.
Stanford contends that scripture “deserve to be taken seriously but
not literally as historical accounts” - that is he wishes to resist
the two extremes, both those who would write them off entirely as
well as the literalists.
At the end of the
day Stanford finds that much of the story of Judas serves little or
no theological propose. This, in his mind, points towards its likely
historical accuracy, details are included because they are what
people remember actually happening rather than to assist the
evangelist's polemical agenda.
Much of the book is
painful reading, as the Churches for most of their history have used
Judas as exemplar for the whole Jewish people, and bound references
to Judas and his betrayal directly into wider anti-Semitism. We
might place this in the distance Medieval past, but we have to be
more honest, it was not until after the horror of the Holocaust that
the Churches have made genuine and (near but not) universal efforts
to separate themselves from anti-Semitism.
But it is the
exploration of contemporary depictions of Judas that are of most
interest – one might see some of these to be playful. There is
something of a more rounded humanity to Judas that inspires people,
artists and writers, to engage with his story in a way that they seem
uninterested in most of the other Apostles. (Perhaps Peter's denial
is one of the few other opportunities).
Standford writes in
an engaging style, covering a huge amount of material in under 300
pages – and signposting plenty of sources to go and explore if you
want to go deeper into particular issues.
As a little aside,
while in the Holy Land he sees a sign, aimed at tour guides, “Please
No Explanation in the Church” - and it made me smile, because as he
notes some have perhaps taken that to be a much more general rule...
