Agemegos

Indeed not. Surely you realise that every adherent of any religion except Christianity, as well as every atheist or agnostic, necessarily believes that there is a great deal of fiction in the Bible. There are well-informed scholars, frequent posters on this very board, who hold that there is not even a germ of truth at the core of the Gospel story, that there never was a teacher like Jesus, a ministry, a teaching, a betrayal, or a crucifiction--any more than there was a a resurrection.

The Elder

Uh-oh. Toto just singlehandedly provided us all with reason to leave this forum to whither and die. No need to waste time bantering about all these fictional characters. :thumbs:

Chili

By your argument Judas is just as unreal as the rest of the characters but not in the poetic sense of the word or there would be no story.

Reality in the Gospels is a poetic commodity that was traded for 30 silver pieces in Matthew in the format of Mark to serve as the pattern of the mold for the Potter in the new religion for foreigners. These would become known as Catholics, I guess, since they are the only ones using that mold according to the Pope.

The reason why the high priests threw the pieces of silver out of the house of the Lord is to show that salvation belongs to the Lord and religion can only take credit for its methodology.

Ulrich

The Gospels make no mention of Judas descending to hell, in fact I am not aware that the Gospels mention hell at all. This seems to be a later addition to Christian theology. Dante Alighieri relegated Judas to his place in hell, though I thought he was found in the 6th or 8th circle (it has been a long time since I read the Divine Comedie).

dirtymatt

I'm pretty cure Judas is held in one of Satan's mouth's in the 9th circle, but it has also been years since I read the Inferno.

Agemegos

That's the way I remember it, too. Brutus and IIRC Casca are in the other mouths, which I always thought was bizarre.

John A. Broussard

Yup! Judas is right there in Satan's maw. Which bothers me, since the gist of the discussion so far--admitting Judas' existence for the sake of argument--is that he did the right thing for the wrong motives, so punishment is only fair.

So a fireman who gets paid for fighting fires and rescues a child deserves no praise?

After all, in the Christian tradition, Judas really did the ultimate good. Saved a lot of people from fire.

Chili

Judas was a welcome messager to end the illusion called faith that was created by religion. He was a hero that was generated by doubt in the mind of the believer that led to understanding to make faith redundant and therefore he spilled his guts = the end Judas is the end of faith.

Agemegos

[In the Christian tradition] Judas is not so much a firefighter as an arsonist. It turns out that the building he torched had to be demolished for slum clearance. But he didn't know that at the time, and besides, the building was inhabited when he lit it.

Or to launch another somewhat strained analogy, suppose tht it is war-time, and one of our people is spying for the enemy. We know about this, and we carefully feed the spy false information which he reports to his masters in the sincere belief that it is true. The outcome of this deception is that we win. The spy is still a traitor, and he still deserves a noose, not a knighthood.

Avatar

I still maintain a more sympathetic perspective of Judas. It just doesn't make sense to me that if he were an agent of evil, why did he go and kill himself out of regret? Depending on the perspective, one might argue that he was doing exactly what needed to be done to turn Jesus into a martyr. If he hadn't, Jesus might have died years later as an old leader of an obscure cult. His behavior suggests to me that he was tricked by the clergy of the day...committing suicide when he realized what was going to happen.

Either he wanted Jesus to take up a sword and lead the Jews against the Romans, or he simply wanted validation from the domiating faith of the land...either way the end result is a literary immortality for his teacher and a major headache for us.