JUDAS
The Troubling History of the Renegade Apostle
By Peter Stanford
Hodder & Stoughton. 310 pages. £20.00
ISBN 978 1 444 754 728
The intention of this book is to prove that Christianity has always been anti-Semitic and that it has used Judas as a propaganda device to make Jewish people the scapegoats of society.
Sadly, from Medieval and even Reformation history the author has much genuine ammunition to fire at the church to prove his point.
Where the book is weak is in its attempt to root anti-Semitism into the New Testament itself. The author’s view is that the Gospels ‘sit broadly somewhere between history and polemics, shaped for their times’. The idea is posited that Judas’s surname Iscariot might indicate that he was from ‘the town’ as opposed to other disciples being country boys and thus there was tension among the 12 from the start. Texts referring to Judas in the Easter story are squeezed into the author’s purpose of setting one Gospel against another. Much is made of the apparent contradictions between the accounts of Judas’s death in Matthew and in Acts. The fact that the apostles were themselves Jewish people is given little airing, and Paul’s love for his own race, wishing himself accursed if only they could be saved (Romans 9.1-5), is not referred to at all.
This does not give the reader confidence in the author. The bias of which he accuses the Gospels, it seems he is guilty of himself.
Propaganda and advocates
Thankfully, no historical value is placed on the recently discovered Gnostic ‘Gospel of Judas’. Because the name ‘Judas’ and the word ‘Jew’ sound so much alike it was easy for the Medieval Church, through passion plays and paintings, to portray Judas in the worst terms and link him to the whole Jewish people.
By contrast, Enlightenment writers became advocates for Judas, seeing him as a misunderstood free-thinker driven to despair by the uncaring proto-church. I could find no reference to the well-known support of many Christian people for a homeland for the Jews. The book contains short travelog sections as places supposedly linked to Judas are visited. Interestingly the author seems to find no kind word for any of the guides or curators of these places.
Race discrimination is a sin and is an explosive topic in our divided society. This unbalanced book will stir the pot.
