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Judas and Jesus: Two Faces of a Single Revelation
A radical reinterpretation of the relationship of Judas and Jesus
• Reexamines the role and the purpose the key figure of Judas played in the crucifixion story
• Reveals how Judas was “betrayed” by Jesus, and how, taken to the limits of his humanity, he lost everything he most cherished on the path to his true self
The familiar story of Judas, betrayer of Jesus, is striking because of its incomprehensibility. Why would one of Christ’s disciples and companions of the heart deliver him up to his enemies and a barbarous, ignominious, and certain death for thirty pieces of silver? Jean-Yves Leloup’s careful investigation of the gospels, various apocryphal texts, and most importantly the Coptic codex known as the Gospel of Judas, leads him to conclude that there is more to the familiar story of Judas than a simple demonstration, viewed through one man, of humanity’s inherent failings.
The betrayal of Jesus to the Romans was Jesus’s idea, explains Leloup. Jesus persuaded Judas to play the role of “evil” in humankind by telling him that this enactment was crucial to God’s plan and would set Judas by Jesus’s side for eternity: “There where I am,” spoke Jesus to Judas, “is where I wish you, too, to be.”
But to get there, Judas--a metaphorical representation of the darker side present in all human beings and the “shadow” counterpart to his Messiah dying on the cross-- must first shed all his human qualities. His failings of greed, deceit, and cowardice--and even his faith and hope--are washed away in the despair that engulfs him. A parallel moment occurs for Jesus on the cross, when he comes to know the despair of separation from God. The moment Judas “loses” his life and all that gave it meaning--his God, his law, his justice, his Messiah--is the very moment he finds that which cannot be discarded--life eternal. Thus, in the moment of his ultimate extremity, Judas receives Jesus’s true message and his intended gift.
• Reexamines the role and the purpose the key figure of Judas played in the crucifixion story
• Reveals how Judas was “betrayed” by Jesus, and how, taken to the limits of his humanity, he lost everything he most cherished on the path to his true self
The familiar story of Judas, betrayer of Jesus, is striking because of its incomprehensibility. Why would one of Christ’s disciples and companions of the heart deliver him up to his enemies and a barbarous, ignominious, and certain death for thirty pieces of silver? Jean-Yves Leloup’s careful investigation of the gospels, various apocryphal texts, and most importantly the Coptic codex known as the Gospel of Judas, leads him to conclude that there is more to the familiar story of Judas than a simple demonstration, viewed through one man, of humanity’s inherent failings.
The betrayal of Jesus to the Romans was Jesus’s idea, explains Leloup. Jesus persuaded Judas to play the role of “evil” in humankind by telling him that this enactment was crucial to God’s plan and would set Judas by Jesus’s side for eternity: “There where I am,” spoke Jesus to Judas, “is where I wish you, too, to be.”
But to get there, Judas--a metaphorical representation of the darker side present in all human beings and the “shadow” counterpart to his Messiah dying on the cross-- must first shed all his human qualities. His failings of greed, deceit, and cowardice--and even his faith and hope--are washed away in the despair that engulfs him. A parallel moment occurs for Jesus on the cross, when he comes to know the despair of separation from God. The moment Judas “loses” his life and all that gave it meaning--his God, his law, his justice, his Messiah--is the very moment he finds that which cannot be discarded--life eternal. Thus, in the moment of his ultimate extremity, Judas receives Jesus’s true message and his intended gift.
192 pages, Paperback
First published February 7, 2007
7 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Jean-Yves Leloup
116 books80 followersJean-Yves Leloup, an Orthodox theologian, is well known in Europe, North and South America as a popular author on spirituality and psychology. He is the founder of the Institute of Other Civilization Studies and the International College of Therapists. He has written more than fifty books and has also translated and commented the gospels of Thomas, Miriam of Magdala, Philip and John.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 20, 2024
To be entirely honest, I was already a bit hesitant going into this book. It claims to take most of its foundation from the non-canonical Gospel of Judas (an interesting part of religious history, to be sure, but thought to have been written around 150-300 years after Jesus' death). I'm not entirely fond of the narrative shown in this gospel, which states that Judas' betrayal only occurred because Jesus explicitly asked him to do so, as I feel it strips a lot of nuance and heartbreak from the story. However, I love Judas Iscariot, and so a book based off of a text that strives to elevate and absolve Judas did catch my attention. I thought that perhaps the book would seek to humanize Judas, where popular culture demonizes him. I was wildly wrong.
This book goes out of its way to dehumanize Judas to an almost comical scale. The very first thing we learn about Judas is that he's hideous - like, abnormally so. He's so ugly that he can only get sex from prostitutes, and even then they insist on facing away from him during the act. I already find equating beauty with goodness a cheap tactic, but when the basis of your story is Christianity - which often warns that the devil himself is beautiful - it becomes kind of an insane take. Leloup then goes even further, and claims Judas often resorts to sex with animals. I actually don't even know what to say about this other than what the fuck.
Judas is further stripped of his humanity through the (very brief, often poorly written) narrative we are shown. Leloup tells us that Judas simply cannot comprehend love, as he finds it weak and pointless. In this, Leloup takes away any opportunity for a real connection between Judas and the rest of the disciples. They are not friends - in fact, Judas doesn't seem to even like them at all. Furthermore, he is shown to have very little respect for Jesus. He follows Jesus only because of who he thinks Jesus may become rather than who he is, and is pretty much just disappointed in him the entire time. Through this, the betrayal is made a bit pointless. Is it even possible to be betrayed by someone who was never truly on your side to begin with?
He is also often given stances to take that are just so blatantly in the wrong that I found it frustrating. In this book, Judas occasionally debates with both Jesus and the disciples. This could give way to some incredibly interesting discussions about gospel, and Leloup could have taken the opportunity to prod his readers into reflecting on their own interpretations of things. Instead, Judas' opinions are typically along the lines of men being undeserving of free will and violence being placed above all else. Not only is this a missed opportunity, it also creates a very shallow interpretation of what could be a very nuanced man, had the author given just a bit of thought. In Leloup's narrative, there's nothing deeper to uncover in Judas, he's simply a messed up, bad guy.
Besides being ugly and incapable of love, Leloup gives Judas only one personality trait - he is a violent zealot. The only possible basis for this that I can find is a theory regarding the name "Iscariot." The theory poses that this name comes from the Latin word sicarius, meaning "dagger man", which referred to a member of the Sicarri. This was a group of Jewish rebels, known for committing acts of terrorism and assassination as a way of fighting the Roman occupation. However, this theory is problematic, as the group was not active during Judas' time. By making Judas a member of the Sicarri and having this play such a key role in his story, Leloup's interpretation of Judas is already based on an ahistorical narrative. I also find it ironic to make Judas Iscariot the most intense zealot, when one of Jesus' disciples is almost exclusively referred to as "Simon the zealot" in the actual bible.
Judas spends essentially the entire book thinking only of the revolution. This proves to become incredibly repetitive, and downright boring. The way the book is written does not help Leloup's case, as it is incredibly brief and lacks any real substance. We aren't told *why* Judas is so intent on overthrowing the Romans to the point where that is literally all he thinks of, just that he is. Furthermore, I would've loved to see a depiction of Judas' daily life living with the disciples. Instead, Leloup only provides brief overviews of famous bible stories which the reader likely already knows, with Judas randomly inserted in. Rather than providing at the very least an interesting look into how Judas may have felt about these famous biblical events, we're always just given the same old tune of "Jesus is weak, one day the revolution will come, etc etc."
At times, these random insertions of Judas into stories he was not actually there for proves actively detrimental to the original tales. For instance, Judas is said to spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert with Jesus. Instead of being tempted by Satan, Jesus is just stuck listening to Judas' bad takes the entire time. What Leloup seems to be ignoring is that the entire point of that story was Jesus being in the desert alone. Also, giving the role of Satan to Judas only further contributes to how insanely dehumanized Judas is in this book.
The story of Judas' betrayal has always been one that I found incredibly compelling. The idea that a man who believed in the teachings of another enough to abandon his life and follow him, who loved him enough to stay by his side for so long, could eventually lose that faith and, despite the love remaining, send him to die? Who wouldn't be intrigued? Furthermore, there is the inherent tragedy of the fact that Judas was an unwitting pawn who paid the ultimate price. Jesus *needed* to be betrayed to fulfill his mission, and for some reason God chose Judas to do this. The immediate horror after recognizing what he had done, and the suicide that followed, is heart wrenching.
However, I felt literally nothing towards the version Leloup presented, save for the small relief at realizing that the story was coming to an end. Leloup's primary promise in writing this book was to shed light on the age old mystery of what led Judas to turn in the Messiah. His way of doing so was to provide essentially no inner struggle. Judas does not gradually come to this terrible decision due to a loss of faith. Nor is he explicitly asked to complete this task, as he was in the Gospel of Judas. Instead, he very randomly decides that in some vague, unspoken way this is what Jesus is commanding him to do. He is not even a little bit hesitant, and instead expresses only excitement at the idea of Jesus finally becoming the active, violent saviour that he expects him to be. When Jesus doesn't go beast mode and slaughter everyone in the garden of Gethsemane, Judas has a lightning quick switch up and decides Jesus was a pathetic liar all along. He also suddenly decides there is no god. Given that we are provided next to no inner reflections this feels like a wild leap of logic.
We spend almost the entire book in Judas' point of view, however sometimes the book will randomly switch to the perspective of another character. This probably would've been more confusing had we actually been submerged in Judas' head, so small mercies I suppose. It is when we are in Jesus' head that the antisemitism of this book comes into play.
It must be said that story of Judas is inherently antisemitic. The tie between Judas and money is questionable at best. However, I can't possibly blame Leloup for this as silver coins have become so imbedded into Judas' story that I would've been more surprised had he not included them (though, stealing from the disciples treasury to buy arms for the revolution was a less than pleasant surprise). What I do blame Leloup for is his statement that Jesus is "weary" of all the "obsessive Jewish rules." We are invited to ignore the fact that Jews are God's chosen people, and that Jesus himself was one. Jesus is not even critiquing the old testament here, rather simply complaining about how tiresome and annoying he finds the Jewish lifestyle. The only explanation for this choice that I can possibly come up with is that Leloup wished to explain why Christian culture is so different from Jewish culture. However, if so he is once again stripping away the historical basis present. Jesus did not come to earth to invent a new culture, one just eventually developed in the midst of those who regarded Jesus as the Messiah. There was genuinely no need at all for this bit of antisemitism.
Personally, I believe this book has nothing of substance of offer. It composes an immensely shallow story of a bad man doing bad things, going out of its way to dodge any possible nuance that could be included. The fact that, in the appendices, the author has the audacity to ask his audience to reflect on how we may relate to Judas is actually absurd. I don't know what Leloup gets up to, but I certainly do not fuck animals and allow my every waking moment to be consumed by thoughts of a violent insurrection. But that's just me.
This book goes out of its way to dehumanize Judas to an almost comical scale. The very first thing we learn about Judas is that he's hideous - like, abnormally so. He's so ugly that he can only get sex from prostitutes, and even then they insist on facing away from him during the act. I already find equating beauty with goodness a cheap tactic, but when the basis of your story is Christianity - which often warns that the devil himself is beautiful - it becomes kind of an insane take. Leloup then goes even further, and claims Judas often resorts to sex with animals. I actually don't even know what to say about this other than what the fuck.
Judas is further stripped of his humanity through the (very brief, often poorly written) narrative we are shown. Leloup tells us that Judas simply cannot comprehend love, as he finds it weak and pointless. In this, Leloup takes away any opportunity for a real connection between Judas and the rest of the disciples. They are not friends - in fact, Judas doesn't seem to even like them at all. Furthermore, he is shown to have very little respect for Jesus. He follows Jesus only because of who he thinks Jesus may become rather than who he is, and is pretty much just disappointed in him the entire time. Through this, the betrayal is made a bit pointless. Is it even possible to be betrayed by someone who was never truly on your side to begin with?
He is also often given stances to take that are just so blatantly in the wrong that I found it frustrating. In this book, Judas occasionally debates with both Jesus and the disciples. This could give way to some incredibly interesting discussions about gospel, and Leloup could have taken the opportunity to prod his readers into reflecting on their own interpretations of things. Instead, Judas' opinions are typically along the lines of men being undeserving of free will and violence being placed above all else. Not only is this a missed opportunity, it also creates a very shallow interpretation of what could be a very nuanced man, had the author given just a bit of thought. In Leloup's narrative, there's nothing deeper to uncover in Judas, he's simply a messed up, bad guy.
Besides being ugly and incapable of love, Leloup gives Judas only one personality trait - he is a violent zealot. The only possible basis for this that I can find is a theory regarding the name "Iscariot." The theory poses that this name comes from the Latin word sicarius, meaning "dagger man", which referred to a member of the Sicarri. This was a group of Jewish rebels, known for committing acts of terrorism and assassination as a way of fighting the Roman occupation. However, this theory is problematic, as the group was not active during Judas' time. By making Judas a member of the Sicarri and having this play such a key role in his story, Leloup's interpretation of Judas is already based on an ahistorical narrative. I also find it ironic to make Judas Iscariot the most intense zealot, when one of Jesus' disciples is almost exclusively referred to as "Simon the zealot" in the actual bible.
Judas spends essentially the entire book thinking only of the revolution. This proves to become incredibly repetitive, and downright boring. The way the book is written does not help Leloup's case, as it is incredibly brief and lacks any real substance. We aren't told *why* Judas is so intent on overthrowing the Romans to the point where that is literally all he thinks of, just that he is. Furthermore, I would've loved to see a depiction of Judas' daily life living with the disciples. Instead, Leloup only provides brief overviews of famous bible stories which the reader likely already knows, with Judas randomly inserted in. Rather than providing at the very least an interesting look into how Judas may have felt about these famous biblical events, we're always just given the same old tune of "Jesus is weak, one day the revolution will come, etc etc."
At times, these random insertions of Judas into stories he was not actually there for proves actively detrimental to the original tales. For instance, Judas is said to spend 40 days and 40 nights in the desert with Jesus. Instead of being tempted by Satan, Jesus is just stuck listening to Judas' bad takes the entire time. What Leloup seems to be ignoring is that the entire point of that story was Jesus being in the desert alone. Also, giving the role of Satan to Judas only further contributes to how insanely dehumanized Judas is in this book.
The story of Judas' betrayal has always been one that I found incredibly compelling. The idea that a man who believed in the teachings of another enough to abandon his life and follow him, who loved him enough to stay by his side for so long, could eventually lose that faith and, despite the love remaining, send him to die? Who wouldn't be intrigued? Furthermore, there is the inherent tragedy of the fact that Judas was an unwitting pawn who paid the ultimate price. Jesus *needed* to be betrayed to fulfill his mission, and for some reason God chose Judas to do this. The immediate horror after recognizing what he had done, and the suicide that followed, is heart wrenching.
However, I felt literally nothing towards the version Leloup presented, save for the small relief at realizing that the story was coming to an end. Leloup's primary promise in writing this book was to shed light on the age old mystery of what led Judas to turn in the Messiah. His way of doing so was to provide essentially no inner struggle. Judas does not gradually come to this terrible decision due to a loss of faith. Nor is he explicitly asked to complete this task, as he was in the Gospel of Judas. Instead, he very randomly decides that in some vague, unspoken way this is what Jesus is commanding him to do. He is not even a little bit hesitant, and instead expresses only excitement at the idea of Jesus finally becoming the active, violent saviour that he expects him to be. When Jesus doesn't go beast mode and slaughter everyone in the garden of Gethsemane, Judas has a lightning quick switch up and decides Jesus was a pathetic liar all along. He also suddenly decides there is no god. Given that we are provided next to no inner reflections this feels like a wild leap of logic.
We spend almost the entire book in Judas' point of view, however sometimes the book will randomly switch to the perspective of another character. This probably would've been more confusing had we actually been submerged in Judas' head, so small mercies I suppose. It is when we are in Jesus' head that the antisemitism of this book comes into play.
It must be said that story of Judas is inherently antisemitic. The tie between Judas and money is questionable at best. However, I can't possibly blame Leloup for this as silver coins have become so imbedded into Judas' story that I would've been more surprised had he not included them (though, stealing from the disciples treasury to buy arms for the revolution was a less than pleasant surprise). What I do blame Leloup for is his statement that Jesus is "weary" of all the "obsessive Jewish rules." We are invited to ignore the fact that Jews are God's chosen people, and that Jesus himself was one. Jesus is not even critiquing the old testament here, rather simply complaining about how tiresome and annoying he finds the Jewish lifestyle. The only explanation for this choice that I can possibly come up with is that Leloup wished to explain why Christian culture is so different from Jewish culture. However, if so he is once again stripping away the historical basis present. Jesus did not come to earth to invent a new culture, one just eventually developed in the midst of those who regarded Jesus as the Messiah. There was genuinely no need at all for this bit of antisemitism.
Personally, I believe this book has nothing of substance of offer. It composes an immensely shallow story of a bad man doing bad things, going out of its way to dodge any possible nuance that could be included. The fact that, in the appendices, the author has the audacity to ask his audience to reflect on how we may relate to Judas is actually absurd. I don't know what Leloup gets up to, but I certainly do not fuck animals and allow my every waking moment to be consumed by thoughts of a violent insurrection. But that's just me.
December 26, 2008
GREAT CURE TO INSANITY OF DUALITY,NONE HARMONY
May 8, 2020
A wonderful exploration of the relationship of Judas and Jesus from both an historical and inspirational viewpoint.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews