At the end of his absorbing examination of the most notorious traitor in history, Peter Stanford recounts a conversation he had with Jeffrey Archer, who wrote a novel, The Gospel According to Judas, in 2007. When Archer heard that Stanford was preparing a rather more scholarly book about the renegade apostle, he warned him off, saying: “You won’t make any money out of it. I’d assumed that Judas’s name would sell books, but my book about him was the only one of mine that failed commercially.”
There is, of course, a satisfying irony in Archer apparently being more concerned with financial than literary matters, and then writing about a man known for betraying Jesus for money. Yet the richly detailed portrait of Judas Iscariot that emerges from this book is one riddled with contradiction and even confusion, derived from the scarcity of primary and secondary material about him. Stanford notes early on that the sum Judas received for his betrayal – legendarily 30 pieces of silver but more likely around 30 denarii – was a trifling amount of money, a fraction of the price of the ointment that was poured on Jesus’s head when he visited Simon the leper. And yet he has become the patron saint of greedy bankers, a man whose very name connotes a willingness to sell out one’s fellows for personal gain, consequences be damned.
Stanford, as befits a former editor of the Catholic Herald and the author of a biography of Satan, brings rigorous theological credentials to his subject. Beginning with an examination of how Judas is portrayed in the Gospels, and how their different periods of composition led to folk tales and rumour being incorporated as, quite literally, gospel truth, Stanford neatly debunks the idea of Judas Iscariot as the most evil man who ever lived, instead concentrating on the more likely interpretations of him as either a hapless bag-carrier who found himself embroiled in a situation beyond his understanding, or, alternatively, the chosen agent of Christ’s betrayal, crucifixion and eventual resurrection. In the first case, he deserves as much pity as contempt; in the second, he is nothing more than an unwitting cosmic pawn.
And yet his infamy has lasted through the centuries. Stanford offers some amusing detail as to how his presentation in medieval art and mystery plays often included his genitalia, which, as the early chronicler Papias described them, were “more massive and repulsive than anyone else’s”, to which the response has to be that one has to have balls to betray the son of God.
Stanford has plenty of interesting insights into how criticism of Judas is often transformed into straightforward antisemitism, with his traditional image of “Judas the Jew” used by the Nazis as part of their propagandist drive against the Jews in 1930s Germany. Even today, the insult “Judas” has the power to shock; witness the still resonating criticism of Bob Dylan when he plugged in his guitar in Manchester in 1966.
Stanford’s book is fascinating from start to finish, although some might find the travelogue material, when he goes in search of “the real Judas”, overstretched and extraneous. This isn’t an apologia for Judas but, instead, a compelling examination of how someone could become so notorious that their name would be synonymous with evil. Damned by religious leaders as “the wickedest man who ever lived”, Judas emerges from these pages as a bewildered and decidedly undemonic figure who was unlucky enough to have been used as religious propaganda for thousands of years. Perhaps, Stanford suggests, his “incident-packed life” is one that is closer to our own than we would like. To quote another teaching of Christ: let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Judas: The Troubling History of the Renegade Apostle by Peter Stanford (Hodder & Stoughton, £20). To order a copy for £16, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.
