---
title: "And the world knew him not (lossless compression)"
slug: /the-world-knew-him-not/
date: 2023-02-16
tags: ["random", "reading"]
---

Last night I was reading 'Three Versions of Judas' from Juan Luis Borges'
masterpiece _Fictions_ (1944). The structure is typical Borges: a cool precis of
a series of fabricated texts, replete with tokens of mock facticity (publication
dates, references to other commentaries, footnotes on errata and so forth).

The story describes the work of an obscure theologian who developed a
revisionist account of the role of Judas in the Passion, broadly in keeping with
the (real) Gnostic
[Gospel of Judas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Judas). Far from being
the perennial embodiment of self-interest and betrayal, Judas is reimagined as
an agent of the Holy Spirit. He becomes the essential catalyst in the
fullfilment of Christ's prophesy and thus the redemption of humanity.

The argument is compelling and centers on why it would be necessary to _betray_
Jesus in the first place. His activities were well known to both the Jewish and
Roman authorities. If the same Gospels that cast Judas as the betrayer are to be
believed, Jesus was constantly performing miracles, challenging social and
religious hierarchies and being a major-league nuisance. They could've come for
him at any point.

According to the scholar, Judas was the most significant disciple because he had
a presentiment of the Crucifixion and its cosmic significance, and was compelled
to "betray" Christ and shoulder eternal infamy out of this knowledge. His
suicide by hanging was a pale mirroring of Christ's own death. Hence the kiss
(an act of love) and discarding the silver at the temple (a repudiation of a
simplistic reading of the betrayal). Hence also, Jesus's to Judas at the Last
Supper: "what you are going to do, do quickly".

Anyway, this elaborate preamble has been merely to draw attention to a passage
in John that Borges quotes. Maybe it is just that I am a lapsed Catholic but I
think it is very beautiful and profound: a lossless compression of the entirety
of Christianity to a single sentence:

> He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him
> not.

&mdash; John 1: 10, King James Version
