In the Footsteps of Judas

Today, on Good Friday, Christians across the world

are looking again at the story of Jesus -

of his journey into Jerusalem,

his Last Supper, the Crucifixion

and, of course, his suffering.

And I'm no different - I'm going to look at that story again as well.

But I always want to know,

what is the thing in the story that I've not seen before?

What have I missed?

So this year, I want to look at the story

through the eyes of the villain of the piece.

I want to look at the story through the eyes of Judas.

# Judas, Juda-ah-ah

# Judas, Juda-ah-ah... #

Judas still has the power to shock.

The most famous traitor in history, he lives on because of a kiss...

..which sent Jesus, his friend and teacher, to his death on the cross.

His name is shorthand for treachery,

used on the football terraces ...

Judas!

..and in the political arena.

-Judas!

-Nick Clegg's a Judas!

-Judas!

When we accuse someone of "selling out",

there's an echo of Judas

and the 30 pieces of silver he traded for his friend's life.

And the kiss of death is a graphic reference

to the moment when Judas the disciple

became Judas the betrayer.

Judas' great crime is the fact that he betrays his friend.

He was the insider, the follower who turned against his master.

He's the person who CANNOT be forgiven.

And yet, at the same time,

Judas' betrayal was a vital part of the Easter story.

Without Judas, there is no death of Jesus and there is no salvation.

He is just this fascinating figure

because he's at the heart of the whole story.

Why did this man - who'd been living alongside Jesus,

who'd been walking with him, teaching with him,

preaching with him and believing in him -

betray him at his most desperate hour,

when he needed his friends more than ever?

And on Good Friday,

when we hear again that story of Jesus dying for our sins,

is Judas excluded from that redemption?

Welcome to my home from home.

Now, I always think best in a church,

so here I've gathered all sorts of evidence

so that we can get a better picture of the life and death of Judas,

this shadowy and mysterious figure.

'This is my place to think, ask questions,

'and reassemble the facts and feelings I've collected

'on my journey into the mind of Judas.'

'I've travelled to Jerusalem,

'and the places where he spent his final days

'planning and executing his treachery.'

'And to a remote English village

'for a unique and moving interpretation of his death.'

'Along the way, I've talked to fellow travellers on pilgrimage

'and to some of the best minds in the country

'to help me unravel this complex figure

'many see as the embodiment of evil.'

My journey began here, in my home village in Blyth.

My name is Kate Bottley.

I've been a Christian since I was 14

and I was ordained a priest six years ago.

I have a husband, two children, and three churches.

Oh, and Buster the dog.

This is one of my churches, St Mary's and St Martin's.

It's Sunday morning and I've already taken one communion service.

The Lord be with you.

-CONGREGATION:

-And also with you.

'At every Eucharist service, I'm reminded of the events in Jerusalem

'leading to Christ's crucifixion.

'The words are taken from the earliest source we have

'for the betrayal of Jesus,

'which is St Paul's Letters to the Corinthians in the New Testament.'

..who, in the same night that he was betrayed,

took bread and gave ye thanks...

'Paul doesn't even mention the name of Jesus' betrayer.'

It's the four Gospel writers in the New Testament

that fill in the name gap left by Paul in his letters.

Judas is mentioned in 22 verses,

and actually, that's quite a lot, second only to Peter.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12,

went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them...

When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented.

"One of you will betray me."

The accounts of the Gospel writers sometimes differ, sometimes overlap,

but they remain the oldest and most reliable source

in the search for Judas' elusive character.

The New Testament Gospels were written by people

who were in touch with the eyewitness testimony of the time,

so within a generation or two of Jesus' ministry on earth.

Mark's Gospel is generally thought to be the earliest Gospel.

John is thought to be the latest of all,

and that is the Gospel that paints Judas in the worst possible light.

There are two details about Judas on which all the Gospel writers agree.

First, that he was chosen by Jesus to be one of his 12 disciples.

And secondly, and most crucially, that he betrayed his master.

What else can the Gospels tell us?

Just who was this traitor?

One of the clues could be in his name.

"Iscariot" is rather mysterious,

and both in ancient times and in modern times,

people have wondered what this means.

One popular theory is that the name Iscariot

links Judas to a group of radical nationalists called Sicarii,

who fought against the Roman occupation

and their Jewish collaborators.

They were kind of terrorists of the 1st century in Judea,

and they got their name from this little dagger,

called a sica in Latin,

and they used to stab people, basically.

They were pretty violent.

Some scholars have this idea that Judas got his name, Iscariot,

from the Sicarius, and that he was a revolutionary.

The difficulty with that explanation, though,

is that we only know about the Sicarii

from about the '50s onwards.

Which puts Judas 20 years outside of the Sicarii timeframe.

There is a simpler interpretation of Iscariot,

and it could tell us something about the status of Judas

within Jesus' inner circle.

The most common explanation is that it simply means "man from Kerioth".

"Ish Kerioth."

But the difficulty is that we don't know exactly where Kerioth is.

People have suggested it may be a town in Judea, in the south.

And since all of the other disciples were from Galilee in the north,

that means that Judas would have been an outsider then,

not necessarily part of the mainstream group.

I've always been intrigued by this idea of Judas as an outsider,

different from all the other disciples.

In fact, when the Gospel writers do a list

of all Jesus' disciples' names, they always put Judas last,

and they always call him "Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus."

But presumably at some time, he was just as trusted,

just as respected and just as close to Jesus as any of the others.

The disciples were not volunteers.

They were chosen by Jesus

and, as part of his select group,

they were there not just to follow him

but to play an active part in his ministry.

Judas was one of the chosen few.

Then Jesus summoned his 12 disciples

and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out,

and to cure every disease and every sickness.

So what changed to turn Judas from a trusted believer to a betrayer?

The catalyst seems to have been the decision by Jesus

to take his message beyond the remote backwaters of Galilee,

in the north of the Holy Land, where he'd grown up,

and travel south to Jerusalem - the centre of the Jewish world.

In the early part of Jesus' ministry,

he'd been up in Galilee,

broadly working around the sort of places that he knew.

So he based himself in Capernaum,

and he moved around the towns and villages around the Sea of Galilee.

Some disciples maybe even went home at night.

But the last part of his ministry, when he went down to Jerusalem,

they had to leave their homes,

and so this is really a new phase in the ministry of Jesus.

I've also travelled to Jerusalem.

It's my first visit.

I want to absorb the atmosphere of the city and see the places

where Jesus walked in his final days with his disciples.

Of course,

I come in full knowledge of the momentous events of that week.

For the disciples, it was a journey into the unknown,

and particularly disturbing because Jesus predicted

that Jerusalem was where he would suffer and die.

For he was teaching his disciples, saying to them,

"The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands,

"and they will kill him,

"and three days after being killed, he will rise again."

But they did not understand what he was saying,

and were afraid to ask him.

All the way through the Gospel stories,

the disciples find it difficult to understand what's going on.

And I think particularly when it gets to Jerusalem,

and Jesus starts talking about the need to die,

I think they're all completely confused.

I certainly have some sympathy for Judas,

in the sense that he was struggling,

as the other disciples were,

to make sense of who this charismatic, unpredictable,

extraordinary person of Jesus really was, and what he required of them.

THEY SING

'Today, Jerusalem's streets are full of pilgrims,

'here to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

'But I doubt many of them are looking from

'the rarely considered perspective of his betrayer.'

I'm looking for something with Judas on it.

You know Judas?

-What?

-Judas.

-What, Jesus?

-No, not Jesus, Judas.

No, I don't have these things. I've got some other things.

-Bye for now.

-See you.

No. No.

He'll be here somewhere.

Maybe down here, look.

-Have you got anything with Judas on it?

-No.

Have you got anything at all with Judas on it?

No.

I'm looking for something with Judas on it.

-With what?

-With Judas.

-Jesus?

-No, not Jesus. Judas.

The one that betrayed Jesus.

Thank you.

But which...? Ah, there he is, look. There's Judas.

With his moneybag.

Wow. Amazing.

'Jesus and all his disciples arrived in Jerusalem

'during the celebrations for Passover,

'the holiest time in the Jewish year.'

Jerusalem is a city that's full to bursting with pilgrims

who are intent on spending at least a week, possibly two weeks there.

They're going to be having parties with their family,

lots of eating and drinking. It's a great celebration.

But there were also simmering political tensions.

The Holy Land at that time was occupied by the Romans.

And the message of Passover heightened Jewish resentment

against their military presence.

Passover celebrated the fact that, in the Old Testament,

God had rescued his people out of Egypt, rescued his people

from the oppression by their Egyptian overlords.

And so it was no surprise that many Jews

saw the oppression by the Egyptians in the Old Testament

as very much like the oppression that they were experiencing

at the hands of the Romans in the present.

There are Roman troops on the streets.

Roman troops even in the porticoes of the Temple.

Passover was a security nightmare.

There's always that threat,

always that worry that things could explode.

It was in this already charged atmosphere

that Jesus immediately drew attention to himself.

Jesus is clearly somebody to be reckoned with

from the moment he enters Jerusalem.

He comes in on a donkey. He's somebody special.

He's the king coming to claim his city.

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil,

asking, "Who is this?"

The crowds were saying,

"This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee."

That would have got the notice of the authorities.

They would have been onto him.

They would have wanted to know what exactly he was about.

The following day, Jesus went a step further.

He lashed out at the Jewish religious authorities, who,

in exchange for their acceptance of Roman military occupation,

were given money-making privileges.

Then Jesus entered the Temple

and drove out all who were selling and buying in the Temple,

and he overturned the tables of the moneychangers

and the seats of those who sold doves.

Turning over the tables -

this was the action of someone who was a troublemaker

and someone who could upset the delicate political balance

between the Jewish and Roman authorities at the time.

Overturning the tables of the moneychangers

is a spectacular way to announce yourself

as a person who needs to be taken notice of.

THEY SING

I wonder what was going through the disciples' minds?

There must have been a feeling of expectation,

that something was about to happen, but they just didn't know what.

Against this backdrop of political tension and uncertainty,

which was shared by all the disciples,

Judas took it upon himself to act.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the 12,

went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them.

When they heard it, they were greatly pleased

and promised to give him money.

So he began to look for

an opportunity to betray him.

So Judas had already taken the first steps towards treachery

as Jesus and his disciples gathered for their Passover meal -

a defining moment in Christian history,

remembered as The Last Supper.

The Last Supper took place in an upper room

just outside the walls of the Old City.

According to Christian tradition, this Gothic hall,

built by Crusaders, marks the site.

'Even though the room itself dates from centuries after Jesus,

'I feel overwhelmed.'

'I can imagine them all arriving together.'

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."

Jesus was troubled in spirit and declared,

"Very truly I tell you, one of you will betray me."

In the middle of the feasting, in the middle of the chatting

and the noise and a bunch of friends talking to each other,

Jesus announces that one person around this table will betray him.

That must have just cut the whole thing in two,

that must have just split the whole table, really,

and must have stopped them in their tracks.

And Jesus' disciples are all saying, "Well, is it me?"

Looking at each other, going, "Is it you?"

And then there's this quiet conversation

and in the middle of that hubbub,

in the middle of those men chatting and discussing,

is this moment of Jesus and Judas...

..just looking each other in the eye,

and knowing what was about to happen.

And Jesus says, "Go and do it. Go and do it quickly."

'And in that quiet conversation is the whole contradiction of Judas -

'the ambiguity of his role in the events of Holy Week

'as the perpetrator of an act that was so evil,

'but also so pivotal in God's plan of redemption for all.'

He is both the instrument of the horrible, painful death of Jesus

and also necessary in God's path of salvation for humanity.

Jesus himself says, you know,

"Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.

"It would be better for him if he hadn't been born."

That's a pretty negative thing to say about anyone.

And yet, at the same time, you can say,

"Well, if Judas hadn't done what he did, where would we have been?"

So does that excuse Judas as a hapless cog in God's machine?

Well, I strongly believe

that God allows us the freedom to make choices.

When Jesus looked him in the eye, Judas could have changed his mind.

But he didn't.

And that decision to continue on the path to betrayal

is made all the worse by what followed.

While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread

and, after blessing it, he broke it,

gave it to his disciples, and said,

"Take, eat. This is my body."

Then he took a cup and, after giving thanks, he gave it to them,

saying, "Drink from it, all of you,

"for this is my blood of the covenant,

"which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."

Jesus invited everyone round that table to eat with him,

even the person he knew would betray him,

even the person he knew would hurt him the most.

He still ate with him.

2,000 years later, the sharing of bread and wine,

the Eucharist, remains the central sacrament in Christianity.

It deeply moves me to think about that moment when, for Jesus,

suffering and death was so close.

I celebrate the Eucharist every single Sunday,

sometimes several times on a Sunday, you know, many times a week...

..and I'll confess that not always do I realise the gravitas

of what I'm doing when I break that bread and share that wine.

Sitting here...

..it feels, like, so significant and so important.

And just the sense of sacrifice,

the sense of Jesus understanding fully what was about to happen.

It's just really powerful.

It's really painful as well, it feels really painful.

BELL TOLLS

SHE CHUCKLES

BELLS TOLL

When Judas left the upper room, it was to betray his friend.

Why?

So what of Judas' motive?

The earliest Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, tells us nothing.

Perhaps that's why the later Gospel writers

offered some possible explanations as to why Judas betrayed his friend

so suddenly, so publicly and so terribly.

The most commonly held belief is that Judas did it for the money.

Then one of the 12, who was called Judas Iscariot,

went to the chief priests and said,

"What will you give me if I betray him to you?"

They paid him 30 pieces of silver.

And from that moment,

he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.

Matthew's account is supported by other hints

to suggest that Judas was greedy.

So it's John who says that he was the keeper of the purse,

so like he was the treasurer of the Jesus movement.

And he also says that...

Again, this image again that sticks with Judas all the time,

that he stole the money out of the common purse.

So is that it? Judas was simply corrupted by greed?

It's certainly been one of the most enduring portrayals

down the centuries - Judas clutching his bag of money.

One of the earliest images that we have is from the early 5th century.

It's a little ivory plaque from a Roman casket,

and it sets the tone for Judas imagery throughout the ages,

which is that these images

are not just simple illustrations of Bible stories,

but they are adding symbolic elements, moralising elements.

Perhaps one of the things that everyone would still know

if you asked them about Judas

is that he sells Christ for 30 pieces of silver.

Yet, to me, blaming Judas' treachery on avarice

seems a little too easy,

and today, there's doubt as to how plausible the accusation really is.

The Gospels might explain it was all about the money,

the reward money, but that seems a very weak reason

for someone who had been with Jesus so closely,

who would have been teaching his teaching, healing in his name.

It's very mysterious.

It was a fairly small sum of money, 30 pieces of silver.

It may have been a sort of slight incentive,

but it certainly wouldn't have been the trigger

for Judas betraying Jesus.

It's the price of a slave.

It would probably have kept him going a month or two.

It's not a huge amount.

So I think it's very unlikely that it was simply for the money.

A second explanation for Judas' betrayal

appears in the Gospels of Luke and John,

who both say that he was possessed by the devil.

And actually, in a way, that lets him off a bit, doesn't it?

Because the traditional Christian idea of being possessed by the devil

is the devil comes from the outside.

You can be a good person, the devil will still get you.

So Judas could still have been a good person,

but have just been got by the devil at that moment.

To the modern mind, it all feels rather unbelievable.

I think, in the 21st century, it's hard for all of us -

certainly it's hard for me - to get our heads around

exactly what is meant by the language of Satan

and of demons in the New Testament.

One problem I have with this explanation

is that if Judas' behaviour is put down to an inhuman force,

then he becomes a monster, and not like the rest of us.

When someone does something so terrible,

what we want to do is to separate them out from ourselves,

to label them.

But evil is part of our shared human story,

and it's part of Judas' story, too.

All human beings are capable of doing terrible things

and kind of splitting in that kind of way is comfortable deception.

It's a way of persuading ourselves

that WE couldn't do such terrible things

and WE'RE not implicated in the terrible things in the world,

and that is just plain wrong.

There is one radical theory that Judas didn't betray Jesus at all.

This different version of events appears in an ancient document

called the Gospel of Judas.

The betrayer of Jesus is transformed in the Gospel of Judas

into Jesus' trusted disciple,

the one who really receives the revelation

that none of the other disciples do,

the one who has really privileged access

to the truth from Jesus himself.

In this scenario,

the handing over of Jesus to the authorities by Judas

was a plan that they had cooked up between them

so that Jesus could fulfil his destiny.

It means there was no betrayal.

The portrayal of Judas in the Gospel of Judas, er...

is one that avoids all the difficult questions about him.

You don't have to worry any more about whether Judas can be forgiven

because he's Jesus' best friend, and being explicitly ordered

to do what he's doing, and acting just as Jesus wanted him to do.

He's the beloved disciple, if you like,

who really understands who Jesus is.

Judas as the hero rather than the villain?

Well, it's a nice thought, but these are the writings of a sect

who were not part of the mainstream early church.

The Gospel of Judas was written

about three generations after the New Testament Gospels,

and sits alongside other ancient texts

known collectively as the Gnostic Gospels.

Why were they written?

What was the context in which they were written?

They were written in the context of the early church,

the growing church expanding, having arguments around doctrine.

So what people who had a particular gripe against the official line

would do is they'd name themselves after kind of Gospel characters,

often after apostles,

and then they would contradict the official version.

And that is the context in which to see the Gospel of Judas.

If you're feeling a bit suspicious of institutions

and want to be a bit anti-establishment,

there is a great appeal in thinking,

"Yeah, these Gnostic Gospels are really what it's all about."

The idea that this is a text

which actually tells you truly about Jesus...

The other ones have a much, much stronger claim to history

than the Gospel of Judas, so read it at your peril.

My final theory for Judas' motive comes from academics

who have looked beyond Biblical and Gnostic accounts

to what was going on in that part of the world in the 1st century.

They believe that Judas

may have seen Jesus as a political activist,

a military leader who would free the Holy Land by force.

One of the scholarly theories that is held by quite a number of people

is that Judas wanted Jesus to lead a revolution against the Romans...

..to overthrow the Romans and restore a Jewish state.

And, if so, he may well have become gradually disillusioned,

particularly when the group got to Jerusalem

and Jesus started talking about dying.

And that may well have been the issue for Judas.

Jesus wasn't talking like a man of action.

Jesus was actually planning to lay down his life

and be crucified by the Romans, the total opposite

of what many Jews would have wanted a Messiah figure to do.

This notion of a suffering Messiah who would die for their sins

rather than the kind of conquering Messiah,

I mean, this is something radically new and difficult.

So that's one possible theory for why Judas betrayed Jesus -

that he gave up hope in Jesus being the kind of Messiah

that he and other Jews might have wanted.

And taken one step further,

that could mean that Judas alerted the authorities

only as a means of forcing his master to lead the revolution.

You can construct a scenario that he was trying to prompt Jesus

to sort of come out of his shell and really make a stand

and be the revolutionary,

the Che Guevara figure that could lead Israel.

For me, this seems like the most credible motive

with which to set the scene for the moment of betrayal itself -

the kiss, which delivered Jesus to his death on the cross.

I've seen the image of Jesus and Judas kissing thousands of times

in pictures and in postcards.

But what strikes me again, looking at it now,

is just the intimacy of that moment.

It's so tender, yet so terrible.

The Bible tells us that after The Last Supper,

Jesus and his disciples, without Judas,

walked across the Kidron Valley

to a place called the Garden of Gethsemane

on the Mount of Olives.

It was a place to rest, a place to pray.

"While he was still speaking,

"Judas, one of the twelve, arrived;

"with him was a large crowd

"with swords and clubs,

"from the chief priests and the elders of the people.

"Now the betrayer had given them a sign,

"saying, 'The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.' "

"At once he came up to Jesus and said, 'Greetings, Rabbi!'

"and kissed him."

The betrayal scenes remain

incredibly constant in how they're shown

through the centuries.

It captures that moment, it's held frozen in these images,

the absolute moment where Christ is betrayed.

We all know, however secular we are,

if we've never set foot in a church, we know what a Judas kiss is.

It is extraordinarily powerful.

The kiss is horrible.

It is indicative of an incredibly close relationship Jesus had

with his close disciples.

They saw each other as brothers and sisters,

they were all one family,

they were doing something that was going to change the world.

And then someone uses that emotion, that...that love,

to come up and do something that is the very opposite,

that is going to lead Jesus to horrific abuse

over the next few hours, and ultimately to crucifixion.

This is where Christians come

to remember the moment of Christ's betrayal.

Here at the foot of the Mount of Olives,

I'm walking in centuries of pilgrims' footsteps.

These are the oldest olive trees in Gethsemane -

maybe even offshoots of the trees that witnessed Christ's arrest.

The pruned branches are cherished mementos.

'I start chatting to British pilgrim Christine,

'and I'm confronted again by the paradox of Judas -

'that he is condemned for an evil act that was necessary.'

I feel quite sorry for Judas, because I feel it was God's plan.

So do you think there is a place for Judas in Heaven?

-I think there is a place for Judas in Heaven.

-Do you?

-Yes.

I wonder if we can see a bit of ourselves in Judas?

All the time, I do.

-Really?

-Yes, yes.

Because I'm on a journey,

and I haven't come to the end of my journey -

I don't mean life, I mean my journey in faith.

-Yeah.

-And I know there's a lot that I don't believe

and that I should believe.

-And my faith isn't strong enough.

-And so the idea that...

letting Jesus down in the same way that Judas let Jesus down.

-Definitely.

-Fascinating.

-Yes.

What Christine says is actually something I'd like to believe.

Yet I'm wrestling with that awful truth

of what Judas did.

He didn't just betray a friend, awful though that was.

He betrayed God, who had taken human form

to offer us all hope and salvation.

I'm going to a more secluded part of the garden to have a think.

Jerusalem is a really busy place.

There's car horns and dogs barking and just noise the whole time.

But actually, here, there's a real stillness,

a real oasis.

You can hear the birds singing, and there's a sort of peace.

And it reminds me so much

of the picture I've got in my head of Judas arriving

with all the soldiers and their flaming torches

and swords and all that sort of stuff,

and in the middle of all that,

all that sudden noise and sudden chaos,

there's this moment of absolute intimacy,

this moment of quiet, this moment of stillness

where one friend betrays another one friend.

What made Judas so different from you and me

is that he was actually there

to witness everything that Jesus did during his ministry.

Judas was in that privileged position

where he was actually with Jesus -

he actually ate with him, he walked with him,

he talked with him, he listened to him.

Not only did he betray Jesus, but he also, in a way,

betrayed all the Christians that have come after,

because...he should have made more of it.

He should have seen it for the thing that it was

and how great it was.

And instead, he chucked it all away on a kiss.

Just before we go, here in the trees in Gethsemane,

people write their prayers

and fold them and tuck them into the branches

and the nooks and crannies in the olive trees,

and it's really quite moving,

because just as Jesus prayed for his friends and for his followers,

people are praying for their friends for their family here, too.

That's so lovely.

Before leaving the Mount of Olives,

I went to see a place not visited by many pilgrims,

which I hoped might help explain a question I had

over that kiss in Gethsemane.

Why did the authorities need Judas at all?

The authorities have already decided that they want to arrest Jesus,

but what they really want to do is to make sure

that they do it secretly, somewhere quiet.

Their reason for caution

goes back to the volatile atmosphere in Jerusalem during Passover.

They didn't really want to cause any trouble in the Temple

or where there were lots of crowds.

But, I wondered, why did the authorities need Judas

to identify someone who had drawn so much attention to himself

over the previous week?

I mean, frankly, there wouldn't have been a single person in Jerusalem

that haven't heard about him, if not seen him.

Jesus went around throwing his weight around a bit -

went into the Temple, overturned the tables.

And then he goes off to the Garden of Gethsemane.

And the idea that they needed Judas

to identify Jesus at that moment is laughable.

Of course they would have known who he was.

They would have seen him all around Jerusalem.

He would have been the leader,

and, indeed, John in his Gospel acknowledges that, really,

because in John's Gospel, there is no Judas kiss.

In John's Gospel, Judas arrives

and Jesus says, "Hey, is it me you're looking for?"

and then off he goes.

The Judas kiss is incredibly powerful,

echoes down through the ages, wonderful dramatic gesture -

utterly unnecessary.

Perhaps Jesus wasn't as easy to find as tradition suggests.

A different interpretation of Gethsemane

lends support to that theory.

It puts paid to the idea of a garden

as the setting for the betrayal of Jesus.

Gethsemane means "oil pit",

or "a place of oils" and it seems that it was a place

where they pressed the olive oil

from the olive trees they grew on the Mount of Olives.

Now, if you're looking for a place that fits that description,

it's actually perfect that we have this place called Gethsemane

that is a cave, a kind of pit, a cave pit on the Mount of Olives.

'Archaeologists have discovered evidence here

'of first-century oil presses.'

Wow.

'So could this be the place

'where Jesus and his disciples came that night?'

Jesus is going to a place where he could be safe,

away from everyone.

There would have been a doorway that you would have been able to close,

and he would have been locked away quite secure in the cave.

So Judas' betrayal is all about,

"This is the place - I can show you where Jesus is tonight."

So maybe that's the true horror of Judas' betrayal -

that he led the authorities to a hidden place and let them in.

I can imagine Jesus praying quietly, in a corner, perhaps...

..and then the other 11 disciples were all asleep, snoozing,

and Judas sneaks out, sneaks out into the darkness

and leaves behind him his sleeping friends and his master

to go out and to betray Jesus

and to come back with those authorities.

And I imagine him walking alone through the quiet

and through the dark of the night and the stars

and he's completely alone and he's turned him back on everything -

his friends, his master - and he's walking towards betrayal.

As the full horror of Judas' actions unfold,

Matthew in his Gospel allows Judas one final moment of regret,

and it's the most terrifying part of his story.

"When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned,

"he repented and brought back

"the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders.

"He said, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.'

"But they said, 'What is that to us? See to it yourself.'

"Throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed,

"and he went and hanged himself."

So he does actually realise what he's done.

He does try to make amends,

and then he goes and he hangs himself.

I mean, was there ever a more lonely and appalling death, really?

It gets you there when you hear it.

Um...you know, there's a lot of despair in the world,

there's a lot of despair in most human lives.

And I don't see that very much elsewhere in the Gospels,

but I see it in that moment.

I'm making my way to Akeldama.

Translated, the name means "field of blood".

And it's here, according to tradition,

that Judas took his own life.

There are no pilgrims here.

This is the Valley of Hinnom - the Valley of Hell.

It's certainly a bleak, barren place -

a dumping ground for the city's rubbish.

Where Judas is said to have died, there's a Greek Orthodox monastery.

It's dedicated to an obscure fourth-century saint, Onuphrius.

There's no acknowledgement of Judas.

On a beautiful day like today,

it's really hard to imagine Judas here at the end of his story,

desolate and alone, taking his own life.

And it makes me wonder, who found him?

Who came across this young man?

Who cut him down from the tree?

Who took his body away?

Who buried him?

Who mourned him?

It feels as if here, his memory is obliterated.

And then, unexpectedly, I find him, inside the monastery chapel.

I love this icon, because what you've got here

is a culmination of the Judas story.

Up here, Judas with the high priest,

taking his bag of money for the dastardly deed.

And across here, in the Garden of Gethsemane,

the soldiers with their flaming torches,

and Judas betraying his friend with a kiss.

Down here, Judas seems to have changed his mind

and he's trying to give back the money.

It lays spilt on the floor.

And of course, over here...

..Judas has taken his own life, hanging from the tree.

His arms behind his back, his eyes closed.

In the moment of his death, he's completely alone.

There's nobody there, nobody with him.

It's just really sad.

Down in the middle,

an angel is offering the cup of Christ, the Communion,

but it's not Judas that's receiving.

He's excluded.

This is St Onuphrius, whose chapel this is.

There's no reconciliation for Judas at all.

On Good Friday, Jesus showed God's love to the world

by laying down his life.

But here, tucked away, in this remote monastery,

I'm confronted by the image of a man,

in the very place where he killed himself,

excluded from sharing in God's love, excluded from redemption.

Can this be true?

For centuries, that is what the Church has taught.

By taking his own life,

Judas was committing an unforgivable sin.

Giving up hope in God.

His sin became, not that he betrayed Jesus,

not that he was greedy for money, but that he despaired at the end.

The idea of despair as a terrible sin,

it was seen as something that is the direct opposite of hope,

which was a Christian virtue.

And despair was defined as not believing in Christ's mercy,

not believing that you could be forgiven for what you had done.

Jesus shows God's love and expresses that

in his laying down his life for others,

but according to Jesus,

that's for those who accept him.

And so for Judas,

as one who rejects Jesus,

he's heading in the wrong direction.

You can be forgiven of anything if you're truly sorry,

if you repent of your sin.

And so even Judas could have been forgiven,

could have made a good end if he hadn't given up hope.

Is this the ultimate meaning of the Judas story?

That because he despaired of God, Judas could not be forgiven?

I'm not prepared to condemn anyone

for taking their own life, and thankfully,

today's Church has a much more enlightened attitude to suicide.

But I do think that it's a complete tragedy

that at the very moment that Christ was dying

and opening the way to Heaven for us all,

Judas believed he was cut off from salvation.

I don't think I'm ready to light a candle for Judas just yet.

But I do think I could light one for everybody I've ever let down...

..and all the people that have let me down.

I think I can light a candle and say a prayer for them.

Before leaving Jerusalem,

there was one last place I needed to go.

It's where the Judas kiss leads us -

the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest site in Christendom,

said to be built over Calvary,

where Christ was crucified,

and containing the empty tomb where he was buried.

I love all the crosses carved into the pillars.

Generations and generations of pilgrims coming here

and leaving their mark here, and I like that.

This is where the betrayal takes us, to here.

I'm not sure how this is going to feel.

Just inside is the Stone of Unction,

marking the place where many believe

that Christ's body was prepared for burial.

Around me is a chaotic series of altars and shrines.

Each Christian community has its own part of the church

with its own daily services, its own processions.

What really hits me about in here is that there's this massive contrast

between the light of the candles and the shadows that are all around.

And actually, that's at the heart of the story of the crucifixion,

at the heart of Judas' story.

Even though Judas was in the presence

of the light of the world,

he just couldn't step into that light,

and he went into the shadows, he went into the darkness.

It brings home to me my growing frustration with Judas,

that although I feel sympathy and compassion for him

in his final moments,

I find it unbelievable that he closed his mind

to what was right in front of him -

that Jesus offers hope and salvation to everyone,

no matter what we may have done.

So I just feel really disappointed.

I mean, disappointment is a ridiculously small word

to describe how I feel about Judas,

because disappointment is something that you do,

you know, if you don't quite get what you want for your birthday

or, you know, that cake you were baking

didn't quite turn out how you wanted it to. It's just...

Oh...

I'm angry, but I'm not angry.

I'm angry at Judas for not realising,

for not realising that even he wasn't beyond redemption.

Even he wasn't...beyond the words of forgiveness.

If Jesus could forgive those people

that were actually putting the nails in his hands,

then he could have forgiven his friend.

And I don't think Judas realised that.

And that is really sad.

It makes me think - how many others have followed in Judas' footsteps?

Who, when they've heard the Christian story,

think forgiveness isn't for them,

that God couldn't possibly love them?

I think it's time to go home.

I'm back from Jerusalem,

having seen the events leading up to Good Friday through fresh eyes.

In a rollercoaster of emotion,

I've gone from sympathy to sadness to incomprehension and frustration.

Yet the question I still think about

is whether perhaps there might, after all,

be some room for forgiveness in the Judas story.

'I'm meeting with art historian Janet Robson

'to see how the Church has dealt

'with this question down the centuries.'

-Wow! Look at all these!

-Yes.

So in terms of these amazing, powerful images

that the medieval Church has given us,

what are they trying to teach me, the observer?

What are they saying to me about Judas? Are they saying,

"Be careful, otherwise you could go the same way"?

What's the message?

I think some of earlier images are very much saying,

"Look at him, he's damned," and it's a rather...

It's not a very subtle kind of message.

-It's, you know, associating him with the Devil, particularly.

-Mm.

But when we start getting to the period

of really high interest in Judas, from the 13th century onwards,

things really change.

So from the 13th century, there's a great shift

from the kind of feudal, agrarian society to capitalism.

Suddenly, avarice is thought to be the worst sin of all,

-the idea that sort of...money is the root of all evil.

-Right.

And Judas becomes the carrier of all that?

Yeah, he's the real poster boy for evil avarice

and you can see how they play on that in images like this.

That's where his eyes are looking,

his eyes are going straight down to the money.

Yeah, he's looking...

He's absolutely intent on the coins as they're being counted out.

You know, it's all about the money. The interesting thing is

it hasn't really changed to now, this is very contemporary.

We still have these issues.

So is there no redemption for Judas at all?

-Let me show you this image.

-Mm-hmm.

So this is from an illustrated Bible and this is English,

this was from the early 14th century

and this is him trying to give the money back.

Now look at him here!

-He's looking away, isn't he?

-He's looking away.

-He's got his hand up to his face.

-Yes.

He's quite stricken, sort of...genuinely suffering.

In the late medieval period onwards,

this isn't really the kind of images they want to put forward of Judas

because, you know, he looks quite sympathetic.

-Mm.

-And so this... this scene is dropped,

-so it's quite unusual even to see this scene being shown at all.

-Wow!

Do you feel sorry for Judas?

I do, in the end.

Because the Church wants to use Judas

to get those messages across -

he's forever suffering and dying and being punished.

-Such a powerful picture.

-Yeah.

So Judas became the ultimate cautionary tale,

a kicking boy for the concerns of the Church and of wider society.

And for that reason, he couldn't be shown mercy.

But this image of Judas,

the figure beyond God's love, troubles me.

I preach that God loves us all, that no-one will be turned away.

Surely that means Judas, too.

It's in search of that possibility of salvation

that I've travelled to the village of Moreton in Dorset.

In 1940, the little 18th-century church

of St Nicholas and St Magnus was hit by a German bomb

which destroyed its stained glass.

It took one decade to rebuild the church

and another three to replace its windows

with these breathtaking panels of engraved glass by Laurence Whistler.

Light and darkness is the theme which brings them together.

After completing 12 windows,

Whistler offered one last 13th panel as a gift to the church,

but its subject was so shocking

that 30 years passed before it was installed in 2014.

Whistler's gift was a depiction of Judas unlike any other.

There he is.

Wow.

You sort of have to move around

to try and get the light to hit the window right

so that you can make out the detail.

One minute, he's in the darkness,

and the next minute, he's in the light.

The reason it's so hard to see

is because it isn't actually a window at all.

Behind the glass is a wall,

which means that the engraving can only be seen

from outside the church.

Even now, Judas is excluded,

with his face turned away from us.

And yet what makes this panel so unique

is its other overriding message.

In many ways, this picture of Judas

is very like the medieval pictures we see of Judas hanging,

of him taking his own life, but there are some real differences,

and it's those differences that I especially love.

So for example, in his hand,

the coins that he's been given are falling,

and as they fall, they turn into flowers,

and there's exactly 30.

And Judas is looking up toward the light,

which is shining on him.

Whistler called it The Forgiveness Window,

and everything about it suggests

that at the moment of death,

maybe Judas did recognise God's love

and was forgiven.

It really is a rather beautiful, beautiful thing.

Here, I've had the opportunity

to pull apart and reassemble my thoughts,

and at the end of my journey in the footsteps of Judas,

I've discovered a figure beyond the cardboard cut-out

that history has created.

Judas is the character in there who, in a way,

feels the most human, feels the most like us.

If you look Judas in the eye,

you're sort of looking yourself in the eye a little bit.

Judas is rather like an image of the human condition

in which we human beings get things badly wrong.

And I, for one,

think leaving the possibility of salvation there for Judas

is rather important,

because it means the possibility of salvation is there for all of us.

I'm left with a picture of a real man

with shortcomings and failings not that different from my own.

If only Judas could have heard

those words that Jesus said from the cross -

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

There's no reason to think

that those words don't extend to Judas, too.