...and I am an ethereal girl

It all started, as it so often does, with a song.

It was 1991. I was in a library, hidden back in the racks of magazines, reading Musician. I was reading about Achtung Baby, a CD I had recently acquired (okay, stole) from my brother. This article was saying that one of the songs was not simply the boy-meets-girl, boy-treats-girl-bad, boy-feels-bad song that it seemed. It was Judas talking to Jesus, a betrayal song, yes, but pulling out for its metaphor the biggest betrayal known to Western culture. It was taking the kiss at the crux of the story and placing it in a context where the genders of the participants aren't spelled out, unmasking the sexual tension by masking the actors. And so, just maybe, putting the old story into terms more understandable to our sex-drenched times--no matter whether at the time Judas' kiss carried any homoerotic weight, it does now, so let's look at it through the lens of sexual politics. By the end of the song there is even strong hint of redemption for the man Dante envisioned spending eternity gnawed on by Lucifer in the deepest pit of Hell. The article in Musician magazine pointed to an epic poem, Brendan Kennelly's "Book of Judas," as the inspiration for the song.

"When he's cold and dead, will he let me be?
Does he love--does he love me too?
Does he care for me?"
--from "Judas' Death," Jesus Christ Superstar

Of course, this is not the first reexamination of Judas' character and motive, nor is it the true start of my fascination with the story. That credit goes to a double record played at my house before Easter for as long as I remember--Webber and Rice's "Jesus Christ Superstar." To this day, I can't go into Holy Week without having some version of the perennial rock opera on the stereo--the original, with its gold-embossed angels stamped on the soft brown cover; the movie soundtrack, with Judas' frantic whisper of "we are occupied!" signaling the desperation in another sort of politics; or Daemon Records' "Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection," featuring the two Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, as Jesus and Mary Magdalene, respectively. (www.daemon.com)

Now, despite the title, there is never any question the actual star of this show is Judas. His are the eyes through which the greatest portion of the drama is seen. Webber and Rice made a wise choice, of course--Jesus' actions in the script written by St. John can't ever help but seem superhuman. Who is easier to relate to, a sacrificial lamb, or a jittery man deciding to jump off a bandwagon before the whole thing gets too dangerous? And then discovering the very action he has convinced himself will save everything undoes his whole world. When Judas tightens the noose around his neck he places the ultimate fault at God's feet, accusing Him of preordaining his part in what is now a double killing. "You have murdered me!" he cries, and his cry rings in everyone's ears afterward, never answered; a charge never denied.

"But there is a story told of thirty coins of gold
And a man who cannot rest until he spends them
But he could throw them in the sea at the darkest hour of night
And in the morning he will find they are still with him."
--David Olney, "Thirty Coins of Gold"

The modern imagination seems hardly satisfied with traditional explanations of Judas' motives. It has been pointed out thirty pieces of silver is the price set for a slave, so if profit was all Judas had in mind, why didn't he drive a harder bargain? (Even so, there is drama in the profit motive, as in the David Olney song which imagines Leonardo Da Vinci searching for a model for Judas for his "Last Supper." The only man he can find is a beggar seduced by the promise of the payment, thirty gold coins, who then is as haunted by his decision as if he'd planted the kiss on Jesus himself.) The gospel of John hardly gives Judas any culpability, or so it seems now--he says the devil entered Judas and induced the betrayer to betray. It sounds to modern ears like the Twinkie defense, the ultimate "the devil made me do it."

But my favorite theory, dealing not so much with Judas' motives as with the result of his actions, is in a Jorge Luis Borges story about a heretical sect who believe in Judas as the true Messiah--to redeem men from sin, he committed the ultimate crime, bringing about the death of an innocent man.

"If you want to serve the age, betray it."
--Brendan Kennelly, "The Book of Judas"

And that brings us back to Brendan Kennelly, the poet who let a Judas voice speak through him and came out of the experience with a twelve-part epic. He hears his Judas as a Dubliner who namedrops modern pubs as often as he namedrops Mary Magdalen or Barrabas. He is a known evil writing letters to the atom bomb and drinking wine with Hitler, but the very fact his evil is so well known makes it less frightful. His tone is so conversational, the barriers drop; one does not imagine dining at a restaurant with Charlie Manson, but it seems a little easier to do so with Judas. Then he goes and uncovers the evil at the core of things. The pop psychology anthem "Be your true, authentic self"--he says he gave that advice to Hitler, and see where it got us. "You can change the world"--yes, you can, and he did; see where it got him.

Can we trust him? Is anything he says in this book true? Which of these voices is his--the mocking, the confessional, the self-pitying, the confused? Why even ask--is it so hard to trust the word of a man we've never met, whose own words we've never heard, a man we only know through the judgments of others?

For myself, I think that if what I've been told about Judas is wrong, everything I've ever believed about my entire world is wrong. With as vertigo-inducing a notion as this, you'd think I'd stop trying to reimagine the betrayer, stop looking for these constructions of alternate Judases. But I don't stop. I keep up the search. My own Judas voice keeps me chipping away at the foundations of my world.