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| title | slug | date | tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| And the world knew him not (lossless compression) | /the-world-knew-him-not/ | 2023-02-16 |
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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. 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