Judas. Why?? By Ben Jeapes

Image by falco from Pixabay

It’s a question that comes up every Easter, strangely enough. Why, how, could someone who had seen what Judas had seen – miracles performed, demons cast out – betray the son of God?

There’s a popular theory that Judas wanted to push Jesus, to force him into revealing his glory. That’s essentially the plot of Jesus Christ, Superstar (great tunes, theological depth of a wet pavement). Humans like to have satisfying explanations. Even a villain must have a bit of grand nobility. We don’t live evil to be pointless or banal.

But that’s not how Matthew describes it. In chapter 26 we get the scene where Jesus tells the disciples off for complaining about the waste of good perfume: ‘The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me’. That’s Matthew 26.10-13. In the very next verse, Matthew 26.14, we are told, “Then one of the Twelve — the one called Judas Iscariot — went to the chief priests …” That ‘Then’ says that the line follows chronologically and logically from the one before. Judas was in a snit after being told off by Jesus. Which isn’t grand or noble at all. But it is pretty banal.

All we really know is that Judas betrayed Jesus … because.

Which is utter rubbish from a plotting and characterisation point of view. No good editor would let you get away with that in a novel (which adds to its verisimilitude in real life, but that’s not the point).

So how, if you were writing a Judas character – or any villain – should you do it?

There’s always the Don John option from As You Like It: “I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain-dealing villain.” In other words, the story requires a baddie, and that’s me. Still not great. 

Other options: 

• I like to think – and this is just me – that it might have been the cumulative effect of three years of hard teaching and a Messiah who resolutely refused to act like one. Maybe all those little negative experiences eroded the positives in Judas’s head. 
• Or, you could make it clear we’re all somewhere on a spectrum that ends in the death of Christ. Judas just happened to be the one. On another day, maybe it would have been someone else. 
• Or, I should say there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the Jesus Christ, Superstar version, dramatically speaking; that show’s real failing is denying Jesus’s divinity so that it’s his actions that make no sense.
• Or, show the battling forces in Judas’s head, good and evil grappling together until finally one bursts out. (Caution: probably requires psychological insight.)

But whatever way you do it, you would have to true to the story and, fundamentally, treat your villain as a real person: which from a Christian point of view means someone equally loved and unique. As someone on the ACW Facebook page said recently, maybe the real test of being a good Christian is whether you can love Judas.

Ben Jeapes took up writing in the mistaken belief that it would be easier than a real job (it isn’t). Hence, as well as being the author of eight novels and co-author of many more, he has also been a journal editor, book publisher, and technical writer. His most recent title is a children’s biography of Ada Lovelace. www.benjeapes.com