Mark and Oz: Two portraits of Judas Iscariot

The first author who turned Judas Iscariot into a literary character was Mark, a Greek speaking Jew, who lived in the first century. He wrote his book, which he entitled “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ Son of God,” no later than the beginning of the 70s in the first century, about 40 years after the events which he turned into the first Gospel that was written. Who is Judas in his writings and what is the relationship between the first portrait that was written and the last one, composed by Amos Oz?

The name of Judas is only mentioned three times in Mark’s Gospel (3:19, 14:10, 14:43), however the character of the “betrayer” hovers over the book throughout. Mark mentions Judas for the first time in chapter 3, in the list of the twelve disciples and the last one in the list is “Judas Iscariot, who handed him over” (3:19). Immediately, it is important to note that the word “betray” (in Greek paredoken) from the Greek “paradidomi” is a central term in Mark’s writing and appears twenty times in the book. I will translate this word “hand over” (and not “betrayed”). The listener who hears Mark’s Gospel and who is fluent in the Scriptures of Israel in Greek, might identify the word “paradidomi” as an echo from the description of the Suffering Servant in chapter 53 in the Book of Isaiah, where this word appears three times in the Greek version of the Old Testament (53:6 and twice in 53:12). The first time this word appears in Mark’s Gospel is in chapter 1, there John the Baptist is handed over to his death (1:14), thus John runs before Jesus even to death.

In the narrative of Jesus’s handing over, and he was handed from person to person before his crucifixion, first into the hands of the Jewish authorities, then into the hands of the Roman authorities and finally into the hands of those who crucified him, the word appears ten times (14.10.11.18.21.41.42.43, 15:1.10,15). Three times before this, Jesus prophesied to his disciples that he would be handed over and in two of these prophesies, Jesus uses the word three times (9:31, 10:33 2x). Significantly, in Jesus’s discourse about the end of time in Jerusalem, in chapter 13, the disciples’ suffering is emphasized and this verb again appears three times (13:9.11.12).

In the Gospel, Judas is indeed the one who hands over par excellence. In chapter 14, verse 10 says this explicitly: “Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to hand him over to them” (Mark 14:10). Mark gives no motivation for this act. Judas’s readiness to hand Jesus over leads them to promise him money. When the time comes, he leads “a crowd with swords and clubs” arrives “from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders” (Mark 14:43). Mark then reveals that Judas even hands Jesus over with a kiss – however this is not the Song of Songs but rather the height of betrayal. With his kiss to Jesus, Judas disappears from the narrative and Mark does not tell the reader what becomes of him.

Matthew, Luke and John develop in greater detail the portrait of Judas, They turn him into a singular traitor and betrayer, distinct from the other disciples in his betrayal and his vocation. In Mark’s Gospel, the issue is more complex: he never loses his status as disciple and in a certain manner represents all the disciples. Mark describes the moment in which Jesus announces his handing over during the Last Supper: “When it was evening, he came with the twelve. And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me." They began to be distressed and to say to him one after another, "Surely, not I?" He said to them, "It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me. For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born" (Mark 14:17-21). The most fascinating thing is that each one asks “Surely not I?” Indeed, each one senses in the depths of his soul that he could be the one who hands Jesus over, the traitor. In fact, this experience is absolutely essential for each and every disciple of Jesus: only Jesus is ever faithful while the disciple hands him over to crucifixion each time he or she transgresses Jesus’s teaching.

In the Gospel according to Mark, the betrayal of Judas is parallel to the betrayal of the other disciples. They all have difficulty throughout their time with Jesus in understanding the ways of their Lord and teacher. Only in Mark’s Gospel, does the reader discover that the disciples are Jesus’s most persistent and pernicious enemy. Jesus says to them right at the center of the narrative: “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? (Mark 8:17-18) Mark describes the three disciples closest to Jesus, Peter, John and James, as those who place obstacles in front of Jesus again and again and it is Peter whom Jesus calls Satan… When Jesus implores them to stand watch and accompany him in his prayer of agony in Gethsemane, they sleep. All the other disciples are just like them and abandon Jesus when he is handed over, Jesus remaining alone except for a few faithful women, whose fidelity shows up even more drastically the betrayal of the male disciples whom Jesus chose.

It is important to point out that Mark uses another word derived from the verb “hand over”, “paradosis”, meaning tradition, the tradition of the Fathers. The discussion about tradition and the repeated use of the word “paradosis” is found in chapter 7. “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition” (Mark 7:8) – tradition strangles the Word of God and blocks the way of those holding on to it from recognizing Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God. Tradition constitutes a handing over which is an act of betrayal. Jesus berates his hearers: “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!” (Mark 7:9) In their narrowness, their fear, their lack of imagination, their hardness of heart, the disciples are those wjo cling to tradition and hand over their Lord.

Oz was largely inspired by the rewriting of Judas in later sources, from the second and third centuries, rejected by Christianity and identified with currents that came to be known as Gnostic. Judas was rewritten as a hero who understands in depth the vocation of Jesus and helps him fulfill his mission. It is in fidelity to this mission that Judas hands Jesus over to his enemies. Similar to these sources, Oz describes Judas as helping Jesus: “He did not want to go to Jerusalem and he pulled him along to Jerusalem almost against his will. For weeks I spoke to his heart. He was full of doubts and anxiety, again and again he asked me and the other disciples whether he was indeed the man?” (p. 272). However, Judas’s betrayal is finally his loss of faith. His gospel is that faith is an illusion. Judas believed that Jesus was God and it becomes clear to him in the terrible silence that follows his death that there is nothing, no miracle, no sign. Oz’s Judas says in terror: “I believed that still today the greatest miracle of all would take place in Jerusalem. This would be the last and final miracle after which there would be no more death in the world. After this, there would be no more need of miracles. This miracle would lead to the Kingdom of Heaven and only love would reign in the world” (p. 275). In “The Gospel according to Judas”, Jesus dies in vain. Not as a confession of sin does Judas say: “I murdered him. I lifted him onto the cross. I hammered the nails into his flesh. I spilt his blood” (p. 276), but rather as an expression of despair, which leads him to hang himself on the cursed fig tree.

Mark and Oz are both aware that the true and terrible betrayal in the story of Jesus and Judas is that of those called to be disciples of Jesus. We are so good in identifying the betrayal of others, the Jews, their leaders, a part of the people, the Pharisees, the Saducees, the scribes or the Romans, etc… However, we do not see so easily our own continuing betrayals. Mark, in fact, is not interested in accusing those who stand outside the circle of believers of the crucifixion of Jesus. He writes with a sharp and bitter consciousness that it is the disciples who prevent Jesus from reigning and bringing the Kingdom of God on earth. A keen reading of Oz, writing almost two thousand years after Mark, makes apparent the terrible consequences of the sins of the disciples of Jesus in their persecution of those they accused of crucifying him, the Jews.

There is yet another point of proximity in comparing Oz with Mark: the terrible silence at the end of the story. Mark’s tale also ends in silence: “They went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). The women who came to the empty tomb, flee in fear. As the disciples hand him over, everything ends in the silence of despair. Mark does not end his Gospel with a description of Jesus resurrected! This scandal was unacceptable and so in the second century 12 verses were added to the Gospel of Mark in order to “correct” this injustice. These verses, a cocktail of verses from the books of the Gospel of Matthew, Luke and John, added what was needed: Jesus indeed is risen. However in the Gospel Mark wrote, the move beyond despair lies elsewhere: in the tears of Peter. After Peter denied Jesus three times, a terrible betrayal which comes just after he had insisted that he would remain with Jesus right until then end, Mark writes: “Then Peter remembered that Jesus had said to him, "Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times." And he broke down and wept” (Mark 14:72). Between despair and hope, Mark emphasizes the possibility of beginning again following an act of contrition and repentance. The horizon is reopened despite the betrayal of the human person because of the fidelity of the Lord.

This year, with the marking of the fiftieth anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the document that transformed completely the relationship between the Church and the Jewish people and inaugurated an age of dialogue and collaboration in the attempt to repair a broken world, this symposium being yet another sign of that, I would like to end my talk with the prayer attributed to Pope John XXIII, a prayer that was written with many tears:

O God, we are conscious
that many centuries of blindness
have blinded our eyes
so that we no longer see the beauty
of your Chosen People.

Across the centuries
our Jewish brothers and sisters
have lain in the blood which we drew
or caused to be shed
by forgetting your love.

Forgive us for the curse
we falsely attached
to their name as Jews.

Forgive us
for crucifying you a second time
in their flesh.

For we knew not what we did. Amen