Franco Zeffirelli’s miniseries Jesus of Nazareth is known for being one of a number of recent films that attempts to rehabilitate Judas Iscariot. (Not unlike the recently-released "Gospel of Judas").
In the miniseries, Judas is portrayed by British actor Ian McShane, who is best known for his role as art detective Lovejoy (pictured)–for which I have nothing against him (not having seen the show).
Judas is also portrayed in Jesus of Nazareth as not betraying Christ for money (no matter what the gospels say), though money is given to him as an afterthought.
I don’t want to downplay the other positive aspects of the series, but this is one aspect where the film gets it wrong.
So says Pope Benedict XVI ( . . . kinda).
According to Catholic News Service,
[D]uring his April 13 homily at the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper, Pope Benedict said Judas is the clearest example Christians have of someone who refuses God’s saving love.
For Judas, the pope said, "only power and success are real; love does not count."
"And he is greedy: money is more important than communion with Jesus, more important than God and his love. He also becomes a liar, a double-crosser who breaks with the truth," Pope Benedict said.
Purposefully ignoring the truth, he said, Judas "hardens, becoming incapable of conversion … and throws away his destroyed life" [SOURCE].
I acknowledge that there are unlikely ways of reasoning that Judas could have been saved, even given Jesus’ statements regarding him that
"Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me."
And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to him one after another, "Is it I, Lord?"
He answered, "He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me, will betray me. The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born."
Judas, who betrayed him, said, "Is it I, Master?" He said to him, "You have said so" [Matt. 26:21-25].
If you end up going to heaven, then I don’t see how it could have been better for you that you had not been born, so I don’t see how (on the most likely interpretation) Judas could have avoided going to hell. If you end up in heaven, it seems to me that you’ve ended up on the plus-side of being born.
But even shy of this declaration, it’s nice to see the Judas-revisionism being dealt a papal blow.
Thanks, B16!
We need such salutary warnings in an age in which people are likely to think that God will let them into heaven no matter what they do.
I find the Catholic Encyclopedia to be good reading in thinking about this whole fascination with Judas. Interestingly, they use Jesus’s statement in Matthew in the discussion about Hell, but end their entry on Judas in the following manner:
“And though the circumstances of the death of the traitor give too much reason to fear the worst, the Sacred Text does not distinctly reject the possibility of real repentance. And Origen strangely supposed that Judas hanged himself in order to seek Christ in the other world and ask His pardon (In Matt., tract. xxxv).”
But regardless of the whole salvation issue, I think the key point is the following: “But, apart from this consideration, it may be urged that in exaggerating the original malice of Judas, or denying that there was even any good in him, we minimize or miss the lesson of this fall. The examples of the saints are lost on us if we think of them as being of another order without our human weaknesses. And in the same way it is a grave mistake to think of Judas as a demon without any elements of goodness and grace. In his fall is left a warning that even the great grace of the Apostolate and the familiar friendship of Jesus may be of no avail to one who is unfaithful. And, though nothing should be allowed to palliate the guilt of the great betrayal, it may become more intelligible if we think of it as the outcome of gradual failing in lesser things. So again the repentance may be taken to imply that the traitor deceived himself by a false hope that after all Christ might pass through the midst of His enemies as He had done before at the brow of the mountain.”
From what I have read some of these Gnostics made a hero out of not only Judas Iscariot but Cain and the Sodomites. We should not be supprised then if modern evil philosophies, under the guise of good, make heros out of one or all of these, or other villans of Christian history.
People want to hear that they will go to heaven, or otherwise have a good future, despite or even because of their sins. They also generally want to hear that the Christians who tell them otherwise are wrong even about basic points of their own faith.
The book of Ecclesiastes got it right: there is nothing new under the sun. The same old heresies just keep poping up again and again throughout history. They say “this is new!” New discoveries about Jesus, new levels of consiousness, new philosophies about morality to replace the puritanical sexist values of the past, a New Age of common consciousness or whatever coming. An examination always shows they are some ancient heresy or wraped up in whatever wrapping paper has become popular.
The truely new and revolutionary thing is that God became man and died for our sins. This is precisely what they don’t want to hear, especially the last part, so they say it is old and spiritually unfulfilling.
Off topic: I loved the series Lovejoy. As the Brits would say, absolutely fabulous!
The only TV Lovejoy I know is Reverend Lovejoy, the pastor on the Simpsons…
“In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul instructed them to send ten copies to the Thessalonians and the Ephesians. But the Ephesians broke the chain, and were punished…”
Jimmy, I think you’re too hard on Zeffirelli’s portrayal of Judas, certainly when compared to what’s come out recently. In no way, e.g., is Judas presented as acting on Jesus secret command; and he takes money for his deed, though the context is, as you say, ambiguous as to whether it was pre-arranged; and the other Apostles really let him have what for.
Anyway, for all its flaws (Like “I will build what I must call my Church”, etc) it’s a fine film that merits watching. One of the few.
Zefferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth is worth watching, true, but Jimmy’s critique of the portrayal of Judas is exactly correct. True, it’s not nearly as bad as the Scorsese/Kazantzakis/Shrader Judas of Last Temptation, but as Jimmy points out Zefferelli’s Judas does not betray Jesus for money — the money is given to him as an afterthought, and comes off almost as an insult.
On the contrary, Judas is a misguided, innocent dupe who believes right up till the end that he is really helping Jesus’ mission by arranging a meeting with the Jerusalem religious establishment. Zefferelli’s film exonerates Judas of any deliberate wrongdoing or malice. The Gospels tell us that Satan entered into Judas. Does the Zefferelli portrayal in any way converge with that portrayal? Not remotely.
If you want to see a really good recent portrayal of Judas as a misguided Zealot who becomes disillusioned with Jesus and betrays him for selfish reasons, see this film.
Almost as glaring is Zefferelli’s bizarre revisionism of the Magi’s (non-)visit to Herod. I can accept the elision of the event itself — all art involves shaping one’s source material — but Zefferelli specifically makes a big point about the non-visit of the Magi by depicting Herod fuming and fretting about these foreigners snubbing him by crossing his borders but not paying him a visit, which is just all kinds of wrong.
Instead, Zef has the Magi (well, one of them) already knowing about the Bethlehem connection and going there without having to ask Herod or the scribes — which, again, isn’t undoable, but dude, gloss over your revisionism, don’t rub our noses in it like that.
FWIW, this line was never a problem for me. To me, it just says, “‘Church’ is a new concept here — bear with me.”
Hey, it beats Jesus Christ Superstar (which was probably the first modern attempt to recover Judas).
The remote ancestor of the modern takes on Judas is Dorothy L. Sayers’s series of radio plays “The Man Born to Be King”, where Judas is a talented but arrogant individual, and also a Zealot, who understands significant aspects of the “Kingdom of Heaven” preached by Our Lord that elude the other, less sophisticated apostles but he ultimately turns against Christ because he (Judas) feels like his approach to spreading Jesus’s teachings is superior to Christ’s, and ultimately he comes to see Christ Himself as a kind of traitor. Very chilling, but many commentators found the character attractive (not unlike the affection Weaselly Pilate inspires in all our Inner Weasels).
I’ll take an attractive, chilling Judas over a sympathetic, innocently duped one.
I was going to make a wisecrack about “It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” The poor-taste joke was going to be that Jesus put such a heavy guilt trip on Judas that he despaired…
The target was those who try to read too much modern psychology into Scripture.
I decided against it because the important thing is to keep the story straight: Judas did betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, despaired, and hung himself.
As for film versions, I loved Mel Gibson’s take, having Judas trying to “wipe off” his kiss.
SDG: good review of Zef. thx for link. ok, i yield to finer minds on this one (esp. since you gave a rave to Rod S for his Pilate, which I think was terrifico!)
From what I have read some of these Gnostics made a hero out of not only Judas Iscariot but Cain and the Sodomites.
The Gnostics made a hero out of the serpent in Eden.
As they believed that the God of the Old Testement was, in fact, a lesser and evil being, they believed the serpent was sent to tempt Adam and Eve from obeying that God, and instead obeying the true God.
SDG: Agreed, I’m just pointing out where the 20th c. attempts to portray Judas as something other than a plain-vanilla SOB. Interestingly, Sayers’s production notes/introductions indignantly reject the idea of Christ picking Judas out specifically for the traitor role. I think her exact word was “psychopathic” or “sadistic”. Well, ok, we knew she was smarter than the Gnostics or anyone involved in Last Temptation, but that was more proof 🙂
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