Life of Christ

by Giovanni Papini

According to others, Iscariot, loving his people and hoping for their deliverance, perhaps sharing the sentiments of the Zealots, had joined with Jesus, hoping that he was the Messiah such as the common people then imagined Him: the King of the revenge and restoration of Israel. When little by little, in spite of his slowness of comprehension, it dawned on him from the words of Jesus that he had fallen in with a Messiah of quite another kind, he delivered Him over to His enemies to make up for the bitterness of his disappointment. But this fancy to which no text either canonical or apocryphal gives any support is not enough to explain Christ’s betrayer: he could have deserted the Twelve and gone in search of other company more to his taste, which certainly, as we have seen, was not lacking at that time.

Others have said that the reason is to be sought in his loss of faith. Judas had believed firmly in Jesus, and then could believe no longer. What Jesus said about His end close at hand, the threatening hostility of the metropolis, the delay of his victorious manifestation, had ended by causing Judas to lose all faith in Him whom he had followed up till then. He did not see the Kingdom approaching and he did see death approaching. Mingling with the people to find out the temper of the day, he had perhaps heard a rumor as to the decisions of the meeting of the Elders and feared that the Sanhedrin would not be satisfied with one victim alone, but would condemn all those who had long followed Jesus. Overcome by fear—the form which Satan took to enter into him—he thought he could ward off the danger and save his life by treachery; unbelief and cowardice being thus the ignominious motives of his ignominy.

An Englishman celebrated as an opium-eater, has thought out a new apology for the traitor which is the opposite of this theory. His idea is that Judas believed: he even believed too absolutely. He was so persuaded that Jesus was really the Christ that he wished by giving Him up to the Tribunal to force Him finally to show Himself as the legitimate Messiah. So strong was his hope that he could not believe that Jesus would be killed. Or if He really were to die, he knew with entire certainty that He would rise again at once to sit on the right hand of the Father as King of Israel and of the world. To hasten the great day, in which the Disciples were at last to have the reward for their faithfulness, Judas, secure in the intangibility of his Divine Friend, wished to force His hand and, putting Him face to face with those whom He was to cast out, to compel Him to show Himself as the true Son of God. According to this theory the action of Judas was not a betrayal but a mistake due to his misunderstanding of the real meaning of his Master’s teaching. He did not betray therefore through avarice or revengefulness or cowardice, but through stupidity.

On the other hand others give revenge as the reason. No man betrays another without hating him. Why did Judas hate Jesus? They remember the dinner in the house of Simon and the nard of the weeping woman. The reproof for his stinginess and hypocrisy must have exasperated the disciple who perhaps had been reproved for these faults on other occasions. To the rancor of this rebuff was added envy which always flourishes in vulgar souls. And as soon as he could revenge himself without danger, he went to the palace of Caiaphas.

But did he really think that his denunciation would bring Jesus to His death or did he rather suppose that they would content themselves with flogging Him and forbidding Him to speak to the people? The rest of the story seems to show that the condemnation of Jesus unnerved him as a terrible and unexpected result of his kiss. Matthew describes his despair in a way to show that he was sincerely horrified by what had happened through his fault. The money which he had pocketed became like fire to him: and when the priests refused to take it back he threw it down in the Temple. Even after this restitution he had no peace and hastened to kill himself. He died on the same day as his victim. Luke in the Acts sets down in another way the evil end of Judas, but the Christian tradition prefers the story of his remorse and suicide.

In spite of all the unraveling of unsatisfied minds, mysteries are still tangled about the mystery of Judas. But we have not yet invoked the testimony of Him who knew better than all men, even better than Judas, the true secret of the betrayal. Jesus alone could give us the key to the mystery; Jesus who saw into the heart of Judas as into the hearts of all men, and who knew what Judas was to do before he had done it.

Jesus chose Judas to be one of the Twelve and to carry the gospel to the world along with the others. Would He have chosen him, kept him with Him, beside Him, at His table, for so long a time if He had believed him to be an incurable criminal? Would He have confided to him what was dearest in the world to Him, the most precious thing in the world—the prophecy of the Kingdom of God?

Up to the last days, up to that last evening, Jesus treated Judas exactly like the others. To him, as to all others, He gave His body, symbolized by bread, His soul, symbolized by wine. He washed and wiped, with His own hands, the feet of Judas, those feet which had carried him to the house of Caiaphas—with those hands which, through Judas’ fault, were to be nailed to the cross on the following day. And when, in the red light of the flickering lanterns and the flashing of swords, Judas, under the dark shadow of the olive trees, came and kissed that face still wet with bloody sweat, Jesus did not repel him, but said, “Friend, wherefore art thou come?”

Friend! It was the last time that Jesus spoke to Judas, and even in that moment He would use none other than that wonted word. Judas was not for Him the man of darkness who came in the darkness to turn Him over to the guards, but the friend, the same who a few hours before had been sitting with Him before the dish of lamb and herbs, and had set his lips to His cup: the same who, so many times in hours of rest in leafy shade, or in the shadow of walls, had listened with the others like a disciple, like a companion, like a friend, like a brother, to the great words of the Promise. Jesus had said at the Last Supper, “Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.” But now that the traitor was before Him, that the treachery was complete, now that Judas had added to that betrayal the outrage of the kiss laid on the lips of Him who has commanded love for our enemies, He answered him with the sweet and divine words of their habitual intercourse, “Friend, wherefore art thou come?”

Thus the testimony of Him who was betrayed increases our bewilderment instead of raising the veil of the dreadful secret. He knew that Judas was a thief and He gave him the purse: He knew that Judas was evil and He confided to him a treasure of truth infinitely more precious than all the money in the universe: He knew that Judas was to betray Him and He made him a participant of His divinity, offering him the mouthful of bread and the sip of wine; He saw Judas leading His assailants upon Him and He still addressed him as at first, as He always had, with the holy name of friend.