45 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
45 lines
2.2 KiB
Markdown
|
---
|
||
|
|
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.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
— John 1: 10, King James Version
|