# ‘A BLUEPRINT FOR JUDASES’ > ​ ​I'd bet a thousand bucks Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell. > ​ *JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye, 1951* >​ In this house, you'll always be Judas. >​ *Common uttering on Big Brother, 2009‒Present* <hr> I am engaged in a project of biblical revisionism. My desk is littered with heretical confetti, snippets of passages surgically removed from the King James Version. I am attempting to organise these snippets into a new gospel, addressing what I find to be a missed opportunity—or frankly, what I consider to be a cop-out—in the sudden and unfortunate death of Judas Iscariot. ![[OvidJudas_02.jpg]] ​ Luke the Evangelist supposes that the Judases of our lives will fall headlong and burst asunder, victims of the Lord’s poetic vengeance—simply sit on your hands, and await justice[^1] ​ The Apostle Matthew has hope that our Judases will repent. Although, this repentance shall require nothing from the wronged, nor their community—our enemies should simply kill themselves[^2]. ​ Papias of Hierapolis thinks our Judases will bloat uncontrollably, their penises expanding with pus, their living flesh decomposing. Eventually, each Judas shall grow too big to fit through the streets, and their late-stage abstracted form will just explode[^3]. This folklore seems to me the most truthful of the three myths—Papias uses his fable to explain the infamous stench of Akeldama, the putrescence of Judas soaking into the rug, the damage permanent.​ ​ The primary line of my testament is spoken by the archangel Zadkiel[^4] to an indolent Judas. The omen (constructed from Matthew, Acts, and Genesis) reads as follows: *“A man’s foes—even those as small as dust—shall seem to him so great a betrayer as to be renamed Judas. Therefore shall man expect Judas of them.*” ​ The myth of Judas’ death allows the betrayer to feel remorse, symbolically offload his ill-gotten goods, and then immediately self-destruct. The story short-circuits the process of *[[Teshuva]]*, of repentance: the authorities get to [[The Banality of Pontius Pilate|shrug off injustice]]; the disciples are spared a messy confrontation; the audience is presented with a tidy scapegoat; and Judas lets his work cease. The narrative can move forward cleanly to the crucifixion and resurrection—shirking the unresolved tension of what it means to betray, repent, and repair. > [!quote] Peter Stanford, 'Judas: The Most Hated Name' (2009) > *In one part of Hakeldama, one of the twelve apostles was swinging dead at the end of a rope, while in another, his erstwhile companions were in hiding. Did they hear him cry out as the rope tightened and do nothing? [...] Was it only when they summoned the courage to emerge from hiding that they discovered his body? Did they bury it? Or feel regret? Or just step over it – the bad apple getting what he ‘deserved’?* ​ Judas, the archetype of betrayal[^5]. His is the name we invoke, the role in which we cast our betrayers. Do we too intend to invoke his death? Is this name-calling also a provocation to suicide? ‘Your life is forfeit to your sins, there is no potential for repentance, no path laid before you!’ ​ If the myth of Judas acts as the canonical blueprint to repentance[^6], then perhaps we must ask—[[Teshuva|what repentance can we expect of our betrayers?]][^7] <br> [^1]: [^2]: Matthew 27:3-8 — Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. ​ And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself. And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, the field of blood \[Akeldama], unto this day. [^3]: From Cramer’s Catena — "Judas walked about as an example of godlessness in this world, having been bloated so much in the flesh that he could not go through where a chariot goes easily, indeed not even his swollen head by itself. For the lids of his eyes, they say, were so puffed up that he could not see the light, and his own eyes could not be seen, not even by a physician with optics, such depth had they from the outer apparent surface. And his genitalia appeared more disgusting and greater than all formlessness, and he bore through them from his whole body flowing pus and worms, and to his shame these things alone were forced \[out]. And after many tortures and torments, they say, when he had come to his end in his own place, from the place became deserted and uninhabited until now from the stench, but not even to this day can anyone go by that place unless they pinch their nostrils with their hands, so great did the outflow from his body spread out upon the earth." [^4]: On a stained glass window at St Michael's Church, Brighton, an angel holds aloft a dagger. *Sanctus Zadkiel* the forgiving angel who stayed Abrahams blade from slaying his son Isaac. It is believed by some scholars that the surname Iscariot derives from the word for dagger. [^5]: Peter Stanford (2015) *Judas: The Most Hated Name in History* [^6]: There is an intentional level of farce in this dramatic claim. There is a major question to be asked of this conceit; to what degree is our morality really based in “Judeo-Christian ethics”? The answer, likely, is far less than supposed by the pop-cultural relevance of Judas. I explore this question, and the literary history of Judas, in further detail as part of the essay *[[Ire of All Man]].* [^7]: Why am I contributing yet another story to the cultural canon of "male protagonists who suck and feel bad about it"? Honestly, because I don't think *BoJack Horseman* and *Barry* do a good enough job modelling repentance. I'll talk more about this in the essay [[The Male Afterlife]].