Bloody hell, just when you think the Cable News Network (CNN) may have some redeeming features, it publishes a piece of such mind-boggling stupidity that you scratch your head in wonderment. Such a piece is Craig Gross’s new Easter lucubration, “Is Judas in hell?” Read it—it’s short. And after you do, I’ll be you’ll wonder why CNN would not only publish such a thing, but even pay somebody to write it. (If Gross wasn’t remunerated, he was still paid too much!)
First, let’s identify Craig Gross. His CNN bio says this: “Craig Gross is the pastor and founder of XXXchurch.com. He has written seven books and speaks across the country on a range of topics.” (His longer and “official” bio is here.) And Wikipedia identifies XXXchurch.com as
“. . . a non-profit Christian website that aims to help those who struggle with pornography. It targets porn industry performers and consumers. The organization describes itself as “the #1 Christian porn site designed to bring awareness, openness and accountability to those affected by pornography.”
So, as Easter approaches, the supposedly respectable CNN hosts a self-debate on whether the apostle who betrayed Jesus is in hell! Actually, Gross doesn’t think that question is answerable, or even worth considering, since it demands a certainty he can’t find. He says this:
Recently, I asked on my Facebook page: “Is Judas in heaven or hell?”
The first response was:
Judas is in hell today. He has been there for 2,000 years and he will be there forever.
There is a button on Facebook that I have started to love. It is called “unfriend.” I won’t unfriend you because you believe differently than I do, I just don’t need more theologians as my friends on Facebook who speak with such confidence when it comes to someone’s place in eternity.
A debate continues on my Facebook wall. I love how everyone is so convinced they know whether Judas is in heaven or hell.
Yet Gross speaks with remarkable confidence about other Christian stuff. I find the following passage remarkable, especially in light of what he said above (emphasis is mine):
Let me tell you a little bit about what the Bible says about Judas:
He was personally chosen to be an apostle by Jesus.
He spent 3 1/2 years traveling with Jesus.
He saw all the miracles of Christ in person.
He watched as Christ healed the sick, raised the dead and cast out demons.
In terms of experience with Jesus, whatever you can say about Peter, James and John, you can say about Judas.
On top of all this, he handled the money, which is most of the time the most trusted one in the bunch. No one suspected that Judas would betray Jesus, which tells me he was a believer.
His life was changed.
He knew Jesus personally.
In a dark moment of his life, he made a mistake. A big one. He sold Jesus out for 30 silver coins or so. The moment he knew what he had done, he felt remorse, and he killed himself.
I am not here to debate theology. The facts are the facts.
Seriously? Those are facts? Who says so? Clearly, for Gross “facts” consist of “whatever the Gospels say.” But doesn’t CNN do fact-checking? Is it a “fact” that Muhammad traveled from Mecca to Jerusalem and back on a flying horse? That’s a belief of Muslims that comes from the Qur’an. Is it a “fact” that there was a worldwide flood that destroyed all but eight humans? That’s in the Old Testament! Is it a “fact” that Jesus came to North America, and that Native Americans are of Middle Eastern ancestry? That’s in Mormon scripture? And is it a “fact” that Xenu stored millions of people in volcanoes and then blasted them with hydrogen bombs? That’s in Scientology scripture.
Gross also says this:
Do I believe in heaven and hell? Yes. I believe one is dark and one is light, and they both last forever.
What we have here is a credulous man who passes off the most ludicrous assertions of Bronze Age mythology as “fact”, and then unfriends people who “believe” that Judas is in hell. Well, he’s a Christian, and so he belongs in that asylum.
But if I were a Christian, the answer would seem clear to me. Without Judas’s betrayal, Jesus might not have been crucified, and his whole mission—to expiate the sins of humanity—would have been a dismal failure. Judas thus played a necessary role in saving all of us, and so he should find his reward in heaven. Even Gross sort of alludes to Judas’s critical role:
We all fall short and deserve death, but because of what Jesus did on the cross 2,000 years ago, we are able to have life. And I believe that where you end up, God only knows.
(Note that it should be “only God knows” in the final sentence.) Given this role, why should Judas be eternally immolated in molten sulfur! It was predetermined that he did what he did, and what he did saved all humanity from sin—at least if they believe in Jesus as their savior.
But the question of whether Judas is in hell is far less important than this question: Why did CNN publish such a ridiculous piece?
h/t: Chris
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You wrote, “(Note that it should be “only God knows” in the final sentence.)”
Tell that to Brian Wilson!
He was wrong, too!
If he was wrong, I don’t wanna be right;)
Anyway, wouldn’t it be nice if CNN didn’t publish this garbage?
That’s B-side the point.
Ken, no.
(Ok, now I’m pushing it.)
Not Caroline, No?
Actually, “God only knows” works because he sure isn’t doing anything else with that knowledge.
But lyricists must have poetic license to violate the rules of syntax, usage, and grammar! (If Dylan’s song on Nashville Skyline had been a tense-proper “Lie Lady Lie,” it would have been taken not as a love song, but a tune about distaff dissembling.)
Without such poetic license, much of the Cole Porter catalogue would be caput, to say nothing of Roger Miller’s line “England swings like a pendulum do.”
My favorite is Louis Jordan’s “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”
That’s one of my favorites, too.
These are not so much syntactical or grammatical solecisms, as enallage, the intentional violation of standard grammar for rhetorical effect — like the boxing manager’s plaint after a disputed decision goes against his fighter that “we wuz robbed,” or the Tammany Hall reflection that “I seen my chances and I took ’em.”
Xians keep overlooking one thing – if Jesus is not killed, no xianity. So why be mad at Judas or the Jews? I think it is possible that an apocalyptic Jewish preacher named Yeshua from the Galilee was executed by the Romans and served as inspiration for the Jesus movement which became xianity. As Monty Python showed, apocalyptic Jewish preachers were common back then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmyuE0NpNgE
Yeshuah was a common Jewish name. Romans had no problem executing perceived troublemakers.
For xian to work, Jesus had to die. Fundamental to the theology. Substitutionary atonement and all that. So Judas was just doing his job.
Sorry for embedding the video – meant to follow the Roolz.
Really, Judas should be their freakin’ hero! And didn’t one of the non-canonical gospels say that Jesus actually asked Judas to turn him in?
Yes, the appropriately named Gospel of Judas. I had a look at it a few weeks ago, and it is really funny. It is a constant refrain of the disciples or Judas coming to Jesus with a question, and then Jesus telling Judas that all the other disciples are idiots and that Judas alone understands his true teachings.
“Father Francis Mulcahy: So what you’re saying is, Judas didn’t really have a choice?
Captain Chandler: Being Judas, what else could he do?”
It’s weird that this Judas question is news. Was it written a few centuries ago and recently discovered? Nope, it’s an advert for a new tv show. Is CNN turning into one of those tv channels like MTV, History and Nat Geo where they just play reality tv and conspiracy theory shows?
Judas didn’t kill himself, he used the money to buy some land, tripped over something and exploded. Acts is pretty clear on that.
Like the Pranksters in La Honda? Even the faked death fits the pattern.
Judas hanged himself, Matthew is pretty clear on that.
Oh no, contradiction, what are we to do?
Why did CNN publish this piece? Because it will attract readers. Atheists read it because it’s short enough and we can wonder at the ongoing ability of so many to think this stuff is real. And Christians love it – they find it “deep and meaningful”.
Guaranteed clicks is the new meaning of life.
Dawkins should add plaga to gene and meme, a unit of persistent click-bait that is transmitted and spread within the web.
Second this concept, given how entire chunks of the article have been ripped word-for-word from top search results of any topic re: Judas and heaven/hell. Wonder how much CNN paid for straight plagiarism, and if they know (or care).
Yep. CNN has been frantically scrambling to find a strategy to compete with Faux News and, until earlier this year, slipping further behind. It’s pretty certain their “news” executives are aware that some of their best ratings this year come when they use Jeebus as their anchorman.
Shouldn’t they finish solving the angels dancing on heads of pins before tackling more weighty matter such as this?
I am going to write a paper which proves what forms Zeus *really* took when appearing to mortal women. It will be so credible so as to avoid all doubt.
Make sure you get CNN to cut you a check when they publish it.
That’s bull.
And I love how this faux humility and nod to the virtue of uncertainly is continuously offered up as evidence that religion can be open-minded and nonjudgmental. Sure — within certain fixed parameters grounded in faith. Which is to say, grounded in the dogmatic refusal to consider a hypothesis AS a hypothesis, approaching it instead as if it were an amazing piece of art, a noble virtue, or a shivering little child who only wants to be loved.
Which places atheists … where? Not in hell — unless it be one of our own making. Alas.
Views. Plus, otherwise intelligent people — even atheists — will see this vague theological handwave over to “gosh, how do we know?” as a small capitulation to the march of enlightenment reason and tolerance.
And maybe it is, at that. This is after all a “liberal” Christian. But the alternative to “liberal” religion doesn’t have to be conservative, traditional, or fundamentalist religion. It could be the capacity to ask questions AS questions — instead of yet another quest to shore up faith.
I love your last two sentences in particular. That’s indeed how the debate is presented in many liberal circles, leading to the creation of faithiests also.
Somehow I don’t think pr0n consumers “struggle” with pornography the way Gross thinks. But maybe that thought is too gross…
To make certain that its readers are in hell?
The whole question was settled years ago:
youtube.com/watch?v=C9_1RFAcjMU
[This is my first attempt to non-embed a video — apologies if it didn’t work!]
Yep, I seem to remember Tony Robinson doing a soliloquy basically Judas arguing with himself about what he pretty much had to do
An imaginary debate about an imaginary person in an imaginary place…
Nice.
In view of the threat of Global Warming the burning lake of sulphur has been extinguished…
Here’s a “fact” from The Lord of the Rings:
The three elven rings, Nenya, Narya and Vilya, were not forged by Sauron, but by an elf-lord named Celebrimbor.
That article opens with the most non-sequiturish non sequitur I’ve ever seen: Do prawn users consider themselves the greatest sinners of all time? Probably not — that was Judas. And while we’re talking about Judas…
WTF???
Speaking of Non Sequitur…
It’s an absurd statement anyway.
Are pr0n users greater sinners than murderers or thieves or money-grubbing evangelists? Arguably not.
And even if they were, it’s doubtful they’d consider themselves as such.
I just can’t get past thinking that this is exactly like a bunch of grown adults arguing over whether or not there’s been enough sustained applause to keep Tinkerbell alive (and possibly resurrect her) or if she’s pining for the fjords despite the best attempts of true believers over the years.
b&
If you hadn’t nailed her to the perch…
‘Twern’t no perch. ‘Twas a salmon.
b&
Whether or not the gospel accounts are accurate, what Judas did after betraying Jesus is one of the contradictions so the minister’s argument falls flat for that reason.
Mark and John don’t say what happened.
Matthew depicts him as remorseful, returning the money, and hanging himself (location unstated) then the temple authorities buying a potter’s field with the returned money to be used as a burial place for foreigners (not stated to be the place where he hung himself).
Luke/Acts (almost universally considered to have been written by the same author) has Judas buying a field with the money gotten from the betrayal and then “there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out”. No remorse here but a sudden death.
BTW the initial item is almost certain to be click bait for evangelicals.
There doesn’t appear to be a comment section to the article on CNN. I suppose we should be grateful for that.
Dante answered this question 700 years ago. Satan has three faces, see, and he has one of the three greatest traitors in history (Judas, Brutus and Cassius) in each mouth and chomps them for all eternity. Dante saw this with his own eyes and described it in “The Inferno.” These are facts.
In the short novel *Pontius Pilate* by Roger Caillois (1963), Pilate finds Jesus innocent of any crimes and releases him. Jesus leads a long life and dies peacefully of old age. Christianity is forgotten. If only…
A though occurred to me of late: did Judas have free will? As I remember the story, Jesus said ahead of time that someone would betray him. Could Judas have chosen not to betray him in which case Jesus is wrong, is not martyred, etc.? If Judas could not have chosen otherwise, should he have been punished?
When my father converted to Catholicism, he had this very discussion with a priest. Did Judas have free will? Certainly. So he could have chosen not to betray Christ? Yes. Then Jesus would have been wrong. He said that the priest smiled and said, “That’s where faith comes in.” Well, that clears that up.
If you ask an intelligent question and expect an intelligent answer, that’s where faith comes in.
What would Judas be in hell for?
Unpaid parking tickets.
“The Scofflaw King of Galilee”?
Aha, could I bail him out? Do you know the ticketing office
All of this is IIRC, but with that caveat: the ‘official’ crime would be bearing false witness, accusing his buddy of a crime he didn’t commit. Judas told the authorities that Jesus claimed he was God, when Jesus had said no such thing.
Which brings up a curious theological issue:
1. Either Jesus never made that claim bceause he never wanted to claim or imply he was god – in which case, Judas did indeed bear false witness to the authorities…but Christianity is wrong.
2. Or Jesus never made that claim even though he believed himself to be god – in which case, Christianity’s god is a dissembler and lies through omission.
3. Or Jesus did make the claim to be God (either explicitly or strongly implicitly) – in which case Judas was merely reporting a crime to the authorities, ‘rendering unto Caesar what is Caesars.’ No crime in that. Maybe a d*ck move, but not an immoral act.
In Luke’s narrative of the trial, there is no mention of his being god, he was never tried for blasphemy but for sedition. The charge of blasphemy is never brought before Pilate.
1. In reading the gospels, one finds a Jesus who doesn’t want to be known. He performs a miracle and tells the recipient of the miracle to shut it. In fact, in many occasions it is the devil- like in the case of the legion that declare he is the messiah
2. plausible
3. another plausible case.
Judas H Priest (as an old neighbor was fond of exclaiming) but people find things to waste their (and others!) time on.
Someone please remind me. How exactly did Judas betray Jesus? Were the Romans having trouble finding a religious dingbat with a tendency to gather crowds wherever he went?
The Romans were too busy fixing the poor grammar of Latin illiterates from the Judean People’s Front attempting to write “Romans, go home!” as graffiti.
Romanes eunt domus.
My god, I learnt some Latin. From Monty Python, no less.
And then apparently didn’t know what he looked like. Beats me why it would be so hard to find the only non-Roman white guy in the middle east, or at least I assume he was based on all the pictures the church artists have printed up.
Good point.
Exactly. The Gospels are religious fiction. The church wanted to hide that there was a successor (probably to John the Baptist, not ‘Jesus’ who is just as fictional as Judas). Judas is James the Just wherever you see him in the narrative. All one has to do is read First and Second Apocalypses of James, and Apocalypse of Peter from Nag Hammadi and you will find the ORIGINAL ‘Betrayal’ story, only as a Mastership succession inverted into a ‘Betrayal’ by the church-commissioned writers of the Pauline New Testament. The discovery of the Scrolls at Qumran (which say James was the Righteous Teacher, or SAVIOR, NOT JESUS, and the Nag Hammadi/Al Minya hoard of gnostic texts in Egypt prove that there was a church cover up of James. They wanted to write their OWN rules without interference from the legitimate successor, whom Paul KILLED. That is according to a CHRISTIAN historian: Clement of Alexdandria, Pseudoclementine Recognitions, 1:70.
Clement:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf08.vi.iii.iii.lxx.html
First James:
http://gnosis.org/naghamm/1ja.html
Second James:
http://gnosis.org/naghamm/2ja.html
Peter:
http://gnosis.org/naghamm/apopet.html
In Gospel of the Hebrews, thought by many to be the original Matthew, the bread goes to James, not Judas (John) or the disciples (the Synoptics). The ‘kiss’ is a sign of spiritual succession in the gnostic Apocalypses of James and is inverted into a kiss of deatth in the canon. The list goes on. “Flesh is weak”, “armed multitudes seizing”, “stripped and rising naked”, “I am he [Jesus saying he is James, spiritually]”, “I know whom I have chosen” meaning Jesus chose JAMES, not Jesus. This is the overwritten story in the Betrayal ficition: Matthew 29, Mark 14, Luke 22, John 13/18. There is so much to this it will take a book. When I get time. And the insanity to do one. I already tried that: “The Bible says ‘Saviors’ – Obadiah 1:21”. It’s on Amazon.
Matt 5v13 has Jesus say,”You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”
And Judas replied,”Who cares, just mine some more from under Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. There is enough there to supply 9 million tonnes a year for centuries. Throw it out on the roads of North America to be trampled under by cars, saving them from having an accident on ice. I’m going to stake ma claim right now, then I’ll be God e rich.
The salt is thought to have been laid down during the Silurian age, 430 million years ago, when a salty sea repeatedly dried out.
It is capped by dolostone which was formed 380 million years ago and contains fossilized coral. Yet more evidence to show the Babble is wildly mistaken about the idea that the Earth started 6000 years ago. So you’ve had your chips Jesus, liberally sprinkled with sea salt”
I read about it on “How the earth was made” by History channel, episode,”The great lakes”
35% of North America’s salt comes from these mines. Thin black lines in the walls of the salt mine show separate layers of deposition.
The Goderich mine can also be seen on Youtube
“The world’s largest salt mine”, Toronto Star channel
Bart Ehrman’s “The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed” & “Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Early Christianity” by Elaine Pagels & Karen King came out after the Gospel of Judas was published in 2006. They make a good point that Judas was the one with the most faith in Jesus because by “betraying” him it would provoke Jesus into taking down the Roman oppressors and establishing the Kingdom of Heaven on earth headquartered (naturally) in Jerusalem. I can’t imagine how disappointed and disappointed Judas felt when Jesus turned out to be just another dude who talked a good game but was easily snuffed out by the mighty Romans. (If there actually was a historical Jesus which is in serious doubt)
Right. According to the non-canonical “Gospel of Judas” that popped up in Geneva in ’83, Judas played Sundance to Jesus’ Butch, with the rest of the apostles relegated to the role of Hole-in-the-Wall-gang extras. It claimed that Judas was doing His bidding by snitching Jesus off to the heat with his Gethsemane kiss. All part of the plan to give the story a proper big finish.
Then again, no man is a villain in his own “autobiography.”
This idea is referred to in the Borges short story I mention at #35, Three Versions of Judas.
‘The organization describes itself as “the #1 Christian porn site….”
Bah humbug. That ain’t no porn site. I just looked and there’s not a trace of porn on it. Waste of time…
😉
At least the ignorance is naked.
“Why did CNN publish such a ridiculous piece?”
To sell ads.
Saying that Judas is in Hell is like saying Tarzan is in Africa or that Santa is at the North Pole. It’s sad to see an official news outlet talk about literary figures as if they were real people.
It makes one wonder about the *rest* of the information one hears on CNN, actually…
Couldn’t you consider Judas’s home in hell as something a bit more cozy — like Holmes & Watson at 221-B Baker Street, or like Travis McGee aboard the “Busted Flush” in Slip F-18 of the Bahia Mar Marina?
That may be the worst thing I’ve ever seen from CNN, and it’s not as though I had much esteem for them prior to reading this piece.
After reading that piece, I did a little research on Craig Gross and his surname is pretty fitting.
Rather than “helping” which is really just proselytizing, he’s reinforcing the canard that sex workers are sub-human, professional victims. It is precisely the shame and guilt about sexuality, instilled by a Judeo-Christian code of morality, that forces sex work underground onto the black market which then leads to a situation in which sex workers are exposed to violence and abuse with little to no recourse or opportunity to escape their situation.
The condemnation of marginalized people by holy-rollers accomplishes nothing other than to give holy-rollers the opportunity to feel morally superior to to other people.
There are organizations, like the red umbrella project, that do advocate for sex workers and they do so with out scorn or judgement.
Speaking of Xtian porn, they do love to fantasize about who’s being punished for eternity, do they not? They take a little too much pleasure in it, for my taste.
The Judas episode makes no sense – not that making sense is a requirement for bible stories! Judas supposedly approached the Romans and offered to deliver him and asked what the information was worth. If there was not a bounty on JC’s head, why was he worth a shekel to the Romans? If the Eomans were seeking JC, why did they need an informer? It’s not like he was hiding in an underground bunker: the guy you’re looking for draws crowds everywhere he goes, guys!
Judas is the hero of the story. He’s the only apostle that actually, you know, did something. His actions set up the climax of the the whole enterprise.
It says a lot that theology deems the Judas tale at all credible. Each and every participant in the gospels is plainly a puppet in god’s little passion play: none of them could have chosen otherwise. If you’re going to think the people depicted were real, how are any of them responsible for anything they do, good or bad? You might as well think the actor who plays Roose Bolton is going to hell for killing Robb Stark.
I think the story goes that Judas snitched Jesus off to the Sanhedrin (which accounts, I suppose, for two millennia of western anti-Semitism). Only one of the four canonical gospels puts a Roman in Gethsemane at the time of the fateful smooch (though the Romans did mete out the final punishment). Of course, the Sanhedrin would have presumably been more familiar than the Romans with the Nazarene rabble-rouser, making Judas’s betrayal even more contrived as a plot device.
Actually, you’ve got that backwards.
Christianity was, from the very get-go, very much about anti-Semitism. There’s the “brood of vipers,” “Pharisees” made a swear-word (a Pharisee is a member of a certain academic Rabbinic sect), the havoc at the Temple, the cursing of the fig tree (an ancient symbol of Torah study), the poo-flinging portrayal of the Sanhedrin, and on and on and on and on and on….
b&
So before there was an Alexander Portnoy, before there was a Nathan Zuckerman or a David Kepesh, Jesus was fiction’s ur-self-hating Jew?
Sorta. Jesus isn’t exactly Jewish, and he doesn’t express (that I recall) any self-hate for being Jewish. Rather, he’s pretty transparently a classic Helenistic demigod who just happens to wear a yarmulke. Indeed, come to think of it, there really isn’t anything Jewish about Jesus save the name and geography.
You find a very unmistrakable parallel with Orpheus. We all think of Orpheus as a Greek demigod, but he was really ostensibly Thracian…and his story is as virulently anti-Thracian as Jesus’s is anti-Jewish. Just as the Jews are presented as spiteful and often downright evil bumbling idiots, so are the Thracians. Lots more parallels between the two…and, frankly, that’s because both are cut from the same heroic archetype that traces its roots to the death / resurrection / salvation demigods of previous generations, especially Osiris and Dionysus. Walking on water, turning water into wine, descending into Hell before returning victorious over death, an unjust trial and execution…you get those themes everywhere you look. It’s a lot like how you know that the character in question is a comic book superhero by the tight tights and cape and mask and signature catchphrase….
Cheers,
b&
So it turns out Mary Magdalene scored herself a Greek shegetz?
I agree on the essential parallels between the story of Jesus and those of archetypal Hellenic heroes. But I think you overstate Jesus’ non-Jewishness. After all, he had a bris. He went to Temple. He observed Jewish dietary and hygienic customs (mostly). He endorsed the law of Moses. He celebrated Passover. He even wore tzitzis. And there was that thing about his relationship with his mother. I mean, what more’s a boychick gotta do to demonstrate his Jewishness to you, Ben — refuse to shop retail? 🙂
Anyway, there are those who contend that Roth’s characters weren’t “really Jewish,” too.
Either way you cut it, I think we both can agree with the redneck narrator of Kinky Friedman’s song when he says “They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore.”
In fairness, many (most? all?) of the examples you give…Jesus perverted. He went to Temple, yes…but the first time he was a young lad who astonished all the rabbis with his superior-to-them wisdom; the second time, to play bull-in-a-china-shop with the moneychangers outside. He celebrated Passover…by reworking it into a carbon copy of the Mithraic eucharist with himself in the starring role. That sort of thing.
Gotta agree with Saint Kinky, though. Not only ain’t they making Jews like Jesus any more, I’m not sure they ever did….
b&
“I think the story goes that Judas snitched Jesus off to the Sanhedrin (which accounts, I suppose, for two millennia of western anti-Semitism).”
Not in my case. A fair chunk of any anti-semitic feelings I may have had was directed at this Jesus creep, who was entirely responsible for my suffering and loss of liberty and precious free time on Sunday mornings and why the hell are we taking any notice of this foreign dick who wasn’t even a bloody Englishman? Judas acquired a certain degree of mild approval on the grounds that (a) he tried to settle Jesus’s hash and (b) these annoying preacher people are saying such awful things about him, he must be a good guy. (Along the lines of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ – it wasn’t Judas who was killing my Sunday mornings).
“Judas thus played a necessary role in saving all of us, and so he should find his reward in heaven.”
That’s assuming that Yahweh is good, but I think it’s well within his character to punish Judas even if Judas’s actions were necessary. Consider a different Bible story, from Exodus. Pharaoh was ready to let the Hebrews go a few times, but Yahweh actually hardened Pharaoh’s heart, just to make the story better. And Yahweh still punished Egypt – not only Pharaoh, but even the non-Hebrew slaves. Yahweh is not a nice character, and if I had to guess one way or the other how this character would deal with Judas, I’d guess it would be eternal damnation.
Seems like the yeoman’s work done by Judas should’ve at least scored him an upgrade to purgatory-class, if not a seat at the front of the empyrean cabin.
A more interesting question which I’d love to see theologians debate is “Is Jesus in Hell”? Most Jewish and Muslim theologians would say he is.
If “l’enfer, c’est les autres,” then hell yes, he is. Or, to mash-up Sartre and
C. Hitchens, who wants to be at a party from which there is No Exit?
Not true – Islam holds that Jesus is actually the second most important prophet, and has yet to play his complete role in the divine drama, etc.
So Islam’s got nothin’ going for it then. 😉
Hmm. But isn’t it christian belief that no one goes to heaven or hell until the day of judgement, which is after the second coming?
Or have most christians comprehended that there cannot be a second coming as defined in the bible as it is 1,900 years too late and pretend that the judgement day thing is now sidelined for instant judgement?
To paraphrase the great Sam Cooke, “Don’t know much about eschatology.”
The so-called experts on Gospel of Judas claim there is none in the text, but they’re wrong. It’s at 36.1-3.
“Judgment day” is the day of YOUR death.
None of this comes as a surprise considering the tripe CNN is peddling in their new series on the “historical” Jesus. It’s essentially the same schtick.
I am reminded of Borges short story, Three Versions of Judas. In Borges faux academic review of fictional treatises Borges coins one of my favorite phrases about the Christian religion, ‘the mysterious economy of redemption’:
The imaginary scholar being reviewed goes on to argue that Judas was justified, and indeed good, in playing his role in Redemption:
This is the first version of the hypothesis, which posits merely that Judas was a faithful servant of God. By the third version, Judas is described as actually being the redeemer:
When I first read this decades ago, I was fresh out of my religion. The logic of this argument, as gripping as it was taboo, made my heart rush. Here, in one very short story, the absuridty of a lifetime of religious study was laid bare.
Yeah, about that “sacrifice”: J dies from circumstances he already knows about. Takes three days off, comes back, and then lives forever at his dad’s right hand.
“Sacrifice”…
In the Bible Universe (yeah, I take is as Tolkien-is fiction), Judas should be praised and lauded for his work in the successful completion of the good ol’ prophecy.
There is a very good book about it by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: The Gospel According to Pilate
The first part is an endearing first-person account of Jesus’s doubts and fears about his destiny, laden with snipets of Juda’s part in the scheme. The second part is Pontius Pilate turning to religion (with his hilarious philosopher/mentor masturbating every morning in public to “get it out of the way”).
If you like fiction, I recommend it. I wouldn’t recommend the Bible, though, it’s badly written and very boring at times.
This Gospel of Judas is the end of a phony religion. James the just was judas. Aeon Byte radio March 14 has my interview with Miguel Conner. Start at 18:00