THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE?

7. All mine enemies whisper together against me : even against me do they imagine this evil.

8. Let the sentence of guiltiness proceed against him : and now that he lieth, let him rise up no more.

9. Yea, even mine own familiar friend, whom I trusted : who did also eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me. (Ps. 41)

12. For it is not an open enemy, that hath done me this dishonour : for then I could have borne it.

13. Neither was it mine adversary, that did magnify himself against me : for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him.

14. But it was even thou, my companion : my guide, and mine own familiar friend.

15. We took sweet counsel together : and walked in the house of God as friends. (Ps. 55)

Given the peculiar and oniric relation of the Gospels to the Psalms, I am moved to wonder whether we might not find in these passages the beginnings of an explanation for the strange conduct of Yehuda of Kerioth. 

I have always found the explanation in John 12:6, that Yehuda (Judas) was the group’s thievish treasurer, scarcely believable; and the whole story of the actual ‘betrayal’, the kiss in the park, too theatrical to make sense. As Yeshua himself said, he was not exactly hiding himself: he taught and preached in public practically every day, and the Temple guards could have taken him whenever they wanted. He did not need to be identified.

Once again, I am transgressing Benedict XVI’s injunction against writing a ‘Jesus novel’: first, I believe that if His actual, historical existence as a man in Galilee is of such crucial importance, then whatever we can find out or reasonably deduce about that existence is worth while; secondly, a combination of a historian’s and a reporter’s mind makes me bridle at improbabilities and search for what might actually have happened. 

And in the case of Yehuda of Kerioth, there is a possible narrative. That it comes to us from the Psalms would normally invalidate it at least in part: the Psalms are poetry, and from a time much earlier than the Gospels. Yet the relation between the two is so strange and close at times as to be unnerving. Most of us discover it first in Psalm 22, parts of which read like a description of the Crucifixion even unto the foolish details of the soldiers dicing for the robe; and we meet it again in Psalm 69:22: ‘They gave me gall to eat : and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.’

Does this mean that Yeshua modelled his life upon the Psalms? That the Evangelists took Psalm passages to fill in details of the Crucifixion? Or that there was a deeply strange but real coincidence between the two? My narrative concerning Yehuda, I suppose, postulates the third of these possibilities. Here it is.

Imagine that from the beginning of the Disciples’ life as a group it was Yehuda who was the ‘disciple that Jesus loved’. That it was he who was the ‘familiar friend’, especially close to the Master; that it was with him that the Meshiach took sweet counsel in the Temple and who had the favoured place beside him at meals. 

And then, gradually, over the two or three years that we know of, Yochanan the ‘Son of Thunder’ began to make inroads upon that relationship. He it was, young and charming, who wormed his way into Yeshua’s confidence; he it was who became the new favourite. One can then easily imagine Yehuda’s feelings. Disquiet growing slowly but surely and morphing into a green-eyed monster. At first, dislike turning to hatred for the young co-disciple; and little by little a turning of that hatred to the Master himself. The verses from Psalm 55 might then equally well have issued from the mouth of Yehuda of Kerioth himself. 

That the end result was a pointless but deliberate and vengeful giving-up of Yeshua to the Temple authorities makes, in this case, perfect sense. Hell hath no fury like a loving friend and disciple scorned. And it makes all the more likely and understandable, also, his instant and total remorse once the inevitable consequences of his action began to unroll, and his swift dramatic suicide.

There are holes in this narrative, sure; but it seems to me a great deal more likely than the grubby suggestion that he had been stealing shekels. Poor Yehuda. It would indeed have been better for him had he never been born. And yet, if this story is true, may there not, at the end of time, be mercy even for him?