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| Judas reaches for the food, School of Monte Cassino, c.1100 |
I don’t have a great deal of skin in this game,
not being a Christian or believing in the divinity of Jesus – or at
least any more divinity than anyone else. Still, it is the tradition
I grew up in. The irreligiosity of my family didn’t diminish the
exposure to the story that one gets from wider society. It is a story
that few who grew up in the UK, at least around the time I was doing
so, could avoid knowing about.
Of course, without more study than even most
Christians put into it, you get a very simplistic idea of the story.
As with the Christmas story, the story we generally get through
liturgy, or being taught in school, or seeing dramatic
interpretations, is a sort of hodgepodge of the different gospel
accounts. The journey into Jerusalem, assorted miracles, the Last
Supper, the betrayal at Gethsemane. Yet all of these elements are
different in different gospels, as I noted in previous writing
concerning the Last Supper. Now, I am going to focus on the
betrayal of Jesus by Judas, a story whose meaning I’m not sure is
appreciated as best it might be – and a story that has been used
down the centuries to justify injustice.