Perilous, perilous and all unforeseen the course of things; for if choice had been the serving, who would have chosen this?
I, Judas Iscariot bring you greetings, and may God bless you abundantly. Since the days when the illuminated one walked among us unrecognized are long past, many are the books that have been written, and sundry are the tales related by those who knew him not. Much that.
has been said is not faithful to fact. Even I have been slandered; said to have betrayed Jesus and to have taken my own life. Therefore, so that you the reader might decide for yourself whether or not I have been the only son of a woman to betray that which is divine, I who was with Jesus throughout, and who knew him as few others, have seen fit to give my accounting of all that I saw and heard regarding the man of knowledge, his life and his ministry.
Jesus said, "So much of what passes for ethics in this world is solely a grab for privilege: politics in the guise of spirituality. Do you doubt my words?
Then look beyond them! For words are a foolish wind to those who know what words can never express, and silence is the cornerstone of wisdom."
But as for me, I can remain silent no longer. This then is my testimony; a certainty born of gladness in the service of doubt, and a home rooted in the dust of wandering. A secret for too long, I
must now tell it all, or die of my own reticence.
And this is how I came to meet Jesus: I had been many days on the homeward road to visit family and cold and weary and the night falling fast, I came upon a campfire along the road. A man calling himself Mark invited me to spend the night and to share his gain.
I said to him, "And what gain have you then?"
He said, "Look here!" And laughing, pulled out a leather bag full of Roman gold.
I gasped, "How did you come upon that?" There must have been enough to purchase a small villa.
"Ha! I found it yesterday afternoon on a dead Roman soldier. He must have collapsed and died from the heat. Nice, yes?"
"Nice indeed. But not so nice if they catch you with it."
"Bah! A Roman soldier couldn't catch the quinsy if it reached up his rump and grabbed him by the tonsils."
Doing my best to expunge that image from my mind, I took advantage of the bread, wine, and roast quail he offered me. "Well then, I suppose you've made your fortune, yes?"
He laughed so hard with a throat full of bird, he fairly choked on it. "Yes," he said, "yes I have!"
Soon enough the food, wine, and the late hour took their toll. We found sleeping places and fell quickly into a deep snore. Late the next morning, I awoke to find him gone, so I gathered my things and set out again upon my way.
By midafternoon as I was walking along, I saw in the distance a cloud of dust headed toward me at a roiling pace.
Suddenly a galloping pack of centurions on horseback surrounded me.
"You there," said their leader. "Who are you, and what business have you
here?"
"I am Judas Iscariot, and I am traveling home to my family."
He laughed so hard with a throat full of bird, he fairly choked on it. "Yes," he said, "yes I have!"
"Judas is it? Then you are the man." Turning to one of his subordinates he barked, "Take him."
Before I knew what was happening, I was shackled, with the chain tied to a rope and one end of that tied to a beast.
"We will show you what happens to robbers of the dead, especially Roman dead."
I had been betrayed. Putting together what I could on my own, it seemed that Mark had sold the Romans exactly what would allow him to go free. I was tossed into the nearest jail to rot.
"Mark?" Said one of my fellow prisoners. "Oh yes, I was there when he was stopped upon the road. I had not an hour and a half before been arrested myself for murdering my master when my captors and I came upon him. They stopped him and, finding him suspicious, searched him. Finding their gold, they
interrogated him. He told them this story: 'A man camped along the road invited me to stay the night and shared his supper with me. He showed me some gold he'd stolen from a dead Roman.
Judas he said his name was. Judas Iscariot. Well I ate his food and drank his wine, and I slept the night; but only fitfully. I was anxious to be off as quickly as possible, and so before daylight I slipped away! I determined right then that I would return the gold to the first official I could find. I call that honesty.
I'm a good pagan and I call that good pagan charity, yes sir, good Roman citizenship!'"
And so there I was, thrown in with a
pungent mix of the unbathed, the unbaptized, and the storm washed, the flotsam of Roman criminal justice and criminal Roman peace. Two men, Rufus and Sadoc, were quietly discussing something between themselves as two or three other men lay about, listening intently or sleeping. So I lay my face in my hands and sat there in the gloom
darkly pondering my fate for a while, when at the cell door there appeared suddenly the face of a trustee, one
Thaddaeus of Paneas. Thaddaeus was pig nosed, fat, and possessed just as much intelligence as grinning, drooling and eating required of him. He wore a short sparse beard of tight blond curls. His plump empty head was crowned with a huge, frizzy, lopsided, golden bramble that swayed prodigiously-like the rest of him -whenever he walked. This tumescence was in charge of delivering
the meals to both guard and prisoner alike. When he finished giving us our bowls, he served himself and sat with us in the dim light, eating his soup. He made the most obscene slurping noises, like
some toothless drunken mule at his trough. Great dribblings of it joined the remains of past meals, down the front of his shirt. It was perfectly nauseating.
"So you met him?" Rufus said to Sadoc.
"Yes, in the country at the lake of Merom. He spoke like a god, with the singular voice of poetry itself. I was sold on everything he said and would have gone with him right them and there,
when he did something truly marvelous!"
"What did he do?"
"I tell you I saw him feed, maybe, four or five thousand poor souls. I saw it with these very eyes." He said, pointing to his face.
"What?" I said, annoyed, "what are
you two clattering on about?"
"Jesus the Galilean," said Sadoc,
"haven't you heard of him? He's wandering all over the countryside preaching something called the — what? Something of heaven?"
"Kingdom," said Rufus.
"No that's not it. It's something like that though. Kingdom or realm or — anyway, it's not important what it's called. He preaches freedom!"
"And love," said Rufus.
"Yes and love and dignity and how to live with these blasted Roman lice!"
"And how to live with yourself,"
Rufus said sternly. Sadoc rolled his eyes.
"I'd sell it all if he would just teach
me how to live with Thaddaeus' cooking," someone cracked. Everyone, even Thaddaeus, had a good laugh at that. Soon the subject changed to dice, as most of the prisoners gathered round to play long into the night. Looking on in
silence, I watched them play and listened to their groans, shouts, and cheers. Their banter, and lies, and roars of victory or defeat. And very early in the morning, I finally rolled over to sleep.
In the morning, Thaddaeus had gone to look after his miserable duties, tending to the needs of our captors. These creatures were not kind to him. He had been arrested for urinating on a statue of the emperor at some God forsaken Roman outpost. Thaddaeus has no couth it's true, but he's no subversive, just a
slob without an ounce of social grace, and having been raised by field mice or something, he'd never learned how to comport himself publicly. So he'd had too much wine one day and did what
drunken nitwits do! For this, he was condemned to serve as the kicked dog to a contingent of Roman bullies. And this is what transpired: Thaddaeus went to the kitchen that morning to get the soup for his owners. As he was carrying out this task, he spilt a scalding bowl of this muck on the captain of the guard. After
receiving a thorough and sadistic beating by three Roman brutes, he was ordered to clean up the mess. Well, picking up a sponge, he proceeded to do just that. Now, as you may know when men fight—or in this case beat a defenseless man-child - things fly loose; ...
