The Judas story in (and outside) the Bible -- Jesus Christ Superstar (2 of 5; Episode 25)

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It is 1432 and the small, medieval French village is abuzz.  There’s a travelling theater troupe and they’re going to perform what is, far and away, the most exciting show the town will ever see.  It happens every year, but only once a year, and everyone – from the smallest child to the oldest farmer – is going to see it.  It’s like a modern musical; you’ve seen it before, but the performance itself is so spectacular you see it again.

The crowd is absolutely alight before the show even starts.  There is energy and chatter; think of a heavy metal concert crossed with a soccer match.  And it’s a heavy metal show with a huge amount of fake blood.  There’s man who gets lashed over and over, his side is pierced with a spear, nails are driven through his hands, thorns are dragged over his scalp.  His tormenters take turns pulling out his beard until his flesh comes off with it.

This tale, gory as it is, does come from original source material.  But there is one key change.  In the original version, the people killing this poor victim are Roman soldiers.  In this play, they are Jews.  And it’s not hard to tell they are Jewish – the features of the performers are grossly exaggerated so everyone, including those small children, can tell who they are.  They live on the edge of the village and you’d never hire them to work for you, but they never go away, either.

The crowd is pumped by the action.  The tormenters are pure evil; the victim is pure good.  This is a passion play of Christ, and Judas the villain is portrayed so convincingly, and his identity is so linked to his race, that everyone knows what to do when the show is over.  They move as a vigilante mob to the Jewish sections and dispense street punishments for these children of Judas, beating them, breaking their possessions, burning what they can, and of course a few will die actual deaths to atone for the staged death that everyone has just witnessed.  It will happen this year.  It happened last year.  It will happen next year.  This is just how the village celebrates the miracle of Easter.  But looking back over history, it’s not hard to conclude that this was less a celebration of Jesus than a condemnation of Judas, a man who’s name is synonymous with betrayal, a man who bears the most hated name in all of western history.

Eight centuries later two Anglicans would take up the story again, with modern and elaborate staging, but with two important differences.  Their story would include music, and their story would be told from the perspective of Judas.  

They couldn’t be more opposite in their sympathies, but neither the passion plays of the middle ages nor the modern rock opera JCS are the Biblical story of Judas – and maybe, neither one could be.  

What is the Biblical story of Judas?  It is NOT the same in all of the gospels…and a large chunk of what is considered the Judas story was added after the Bible canon was written.  What was the historical Judas, who was the Judas in the Bible, how does all that connect to JCS, and what does it tell us about life and theater?  We’ll take our own reflective walk through Gethsemane together on this episode of THM. 

[footnotes in episode 24]

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