No reputation remake planned for Judas: Vatican
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
Fri Jan 20, 12:38 PM ET
Despite reports to the contrary, the Roman Catholic Church is not planning to rehabilitate Judas Iscariot, the Biblical figure who betrayed Jesus and gave his name to generations of traitors, a Vatican official has said.
The name Judas, his reward of 30 pieces of silver and the kiss he gave Jesus to identify him to Roman soldiers have been symbols of treachery in Western culture for two millennia. In Dante's Inferno, he languishes in the lowest circle of Hell.
But the disgraced apostle raises a difficult question for theologians -- if Jesus was supposed to die on the cross as part of a larger divine plan, did Judas not simply play his part in the drama by turning him over to the Roman occupiers?
And is Christianity not supposed to be about forgiveness?
The Times of London reported last week that Vatican historian Walter Brandmueller wanted to rehabilitate Judas and present his act as "fulfilling his part in God's plan."
The story sparked lively chatter on the Internet. The Toronto Star daily asked: "Ready to rethink the fink (villain)?"
"This news has no foundation," Brandmueller, head of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences, said.
"I can't imagine where this idea came from," he told the Rome-based Catholic news agency Zenit this week.
Judas was one of Jesus's 12 apostles. In the Bible's New Testament, the Gospel of St. Matthew says he quickly regretted his treachery, returned the silver to the Jewish chief priests who gave it to him and hanged himself.
LONG-LOST MANUSCRIPT
One reason why interest in Judas has suddenly arisen is that a long-lost "Gospel of Judas," an apocryphal or inauthentic account of Jesus's life, is due to be published this spring.
The New Testament contains four Gospels -- by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- but many more were written in the century or two after Christ's death and attributed to apostles such as Thomas and Philip or to his female follower Mary Magdelene.
Many were written by Gnostics, early Christian heretics who believed that secret knowledge was the key to eternal salvation.
The original second century Greek manuscript of the Gospel of Judas was lost long ago but an ancient Coptic translation found in Egypt is now being translated by a Swiss foundation.
There has been speculation that any text purporting to be written by Judas would show him in a better light and prompt a rethink of his reputation, but New Testament experts are wary.
"Until we see the text, we won't know exactly what it says, but it seems to be a Gnostic writing and unlikely to change our view of what happened back then," said Richard Dillon, theology professor at Fordham University in New York.
Some experts argue that rehabilitating Judas could help Vatican relations with Judaism, since anti-Semites sometimes use his story to condemn all Jews, but Brandmueller did not agree.
"The dialogue between the Holy See and the Jews continues profitably on other bases," he told Zenit.