Judas helped Christianity survive
By vanny
@vandana7 (98827)
India
February 20, 2018 1:36am CST
In retrospect I think that way.
Being out of both Jewish and Christian/Catholic religions, I can be clinical in my approach.
So here are my reasons why I say Judas was not a bad man.
a. The scriptures don't tell us whether he needed that money for ailing wife, sibling, child, parent. If the money was needed for such purposes, all of us would have compromised. May be he was threatened that his wife, or child will be killed.
b. He did not become so rich as to hunt down other apostles so that his "crime" would never be spoken of, did he? Here I am ignorant - I admit. May be somebody can enlighten me. But if he did nothing of the sort, then he was not greedy enough.
Life of Christ must have been worth quite a bit! How did he settle for less?
c. If he had not betrayed, each and every apostle would have been captured and tortured till they all died. And so would Christ. Would Christianity have survived?
Just rationalizing.
10 people like this
5 responses
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
20 Feb 18
This is not a good analysis because you are trying to read 'evidence' and motives into the story which are simply not there and cannot be considered 'evidence'. If any judge or counsel in a court of law tried to do this, they would be thrown out for bad legall practice.
First of all, Judas was already known to be an unprincipaled man and a thief. In an earlier incident recounted in John 12, Judas objects to Mary Magdala's use of an expensive perfume, saying that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor but, John adds, "He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it." Of course, again this is 'opinion' rather than fact but it does seem to have been a known character trait.
There is a fairly serious discrepancy in the two accounts of what happened after Judas betrayed Jesus. Matthew 27: 5-7 asserts that Judas threw the thirty pieces of silver down in the Temple, then hanged himself and it was the priests who bought the land with the money. Acts 1: 18 says (rather graphically) "Now [Judas] acquired a field with the price of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his intestines gushed out."
One interpretation of this discrepancy (by E.W. Bullinger), says that the land referred to in each story are different pieces of land and purchased with different sums of money. He bases this on the use of different words ('agros' and 'chorion') for the land and the reference (in Acts) to the "wages of iniquity", in other words, some other ill-gotten gains than the 'blood money' paid for betraying Jesus.
I think that there is no doubt that Judas was what we call a 'bad lot' but, if his actions were necessary in order to fulfil a prophecy and were therefore 'preordained', where does that leave us in our belief that God is all and only 'good' if He incorporates such 'evil' into the essential thread of the story?
4 people like this
@jobelbojel (34729)
• Philippines
20 Feb 18
I remember that part where Judas rejected their decision to sell the perfume. Thank you for the explanation.
3 people like this
@toniganzon (72285)
• Philippines
20 Feb 18
There is a theory that it was Jesus who ordered Judas to betray him. According to the theory, Jesus knew that it was only Judas who really loved him so much as to obey what he had to say and the only one who could ever really be courageous.
4 people like this
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
20 Feb 18
@toniganzon The theory you refer to is the account written in the Gnostic text known as 'The Gospel of Judas' which was one of many such texts rejected by the early Church when compiling the Bible we know today. Its existence was known about, since there is a reference to something by this title by Irenaeus of Lyons but it seems that an incomplete copy of the actual text - or rather, a translation of it into Coptic - was only discovered in the1970s.
The book is very incomplete but it seems to consist of conversations between Jesus and Judas Iscariot in which Jesus tells Judas his 'true message' and implies that it wasn't revealed to the other apostles and that Judas was the one whom Jesus trusted and that he actually asked him to betray him so that He could be released from His human body.
All in all, it sounds like just the kind of devious story which someone might concoct to justify themselves (or someone whom they had some personal reason to support) or, perhaps, to throw doubt on the validity of the other gospel writers. If so, one can't help wondering why it seems to have been written (according to those who have studied it) some 100 years after the events it describes.
It seems to me to be an early "conspiracy theory"!
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@toniganzon (72285)
• Philippines
20 Feb 18
@Daelii I forgot to add that in the theory, Judas was the only disciple Jesus trust.
2 people like this
@JESSY3236 (18923)
• United States
20 Feb 18
I had read a book that said that maybe Jesus had told Judas to take the money and he wasn't really betrayed.
2 people like this
@vandana7 (98827)
• India
20 Feb 18
We don't really know what happened back then. But accepting that Judas took the money and betrayed Christ, it seems it turned out well for Christianity because had he not done that, all apostles as well as Christ would have been killed. So nobody would remain to spread the word of god.
2 people like this
@vandana7 (98827)
• India
22 Feb 18
@jstory07 If it ended being a good thing, why hatred and mistrust persist? And why people are not open to this aspect?
Ask my 4 years old princess is Cinderella story true, yes she will say. As grown ups our reasoning needs to support our religious beliefs, but people are not prepared to listen. Time will make them realize.
Ironically, this realization can harmonize the relations between two different religions. Wouldn't Jesus be pleased with that outcome? I think he would be.
1 person likes this
@andriaperry (116860)
• Anniston, Alabama
20 Feb 18
It was what it was, I was not there so I will not play the guessing game.
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