What if Judas didn't do it?

[The Grand Nudger]

Judas would be wrong. I do think it's going to be difficult to understand narratives like the one that judas presents if you're unclear on what terms like objective truth and subjective apprehension mean - and your understanding leads to statements like that.

The earliest authors of new magic book apprehended the world much as their literary predecessors in old magic book did. They were aware of the story, part of the culture, and contextualized their life and their suffering in concordant ways. Insomuch as subjective apprehension is not always discordant with objective truth - it's actually pretty easy (as a matter of historical fact) to see why the kingdom of god was believed to be perpetually betrayed by the people of god, long suffering on account of it. The factual details of the stories as-told are often ridiculous, and false, sure. Like a fish story where it keeps getting bigger. So a bunch of assholes in fleeces lobbing sticks and stones at each other between hillforts turns into a glorious empire with an iron age army of many thousands. Prophets were polemicists. Using stories about the past, however embellished or flat out made up, as instructive in the present. Mostly in the form of warnings. You can read every single one of them as "if we don't stop fucking up, it's gonna go poorly for us...just like last time." The messianic aspect of this literary tradition, however, has one major deviation on that theme. Hope. That -after- the bad thing happens, good times will follow. That, in some way, the bad thing is necessary to the good, the fruition of gods plan for gods people, and the fulfilment of their instruction not just by inspired words or revelations, but by lived experience. Jesus, as other comments have noted, chooses judas as his disciple knowing full well that judas would betray him. Judas will be enthroned in heaven, just like any number of morally reprobate characters before him in old and new magic book. It all serves gods purpose. The culmination of gods work and the end of history.

Jesus, whether we think jesus was just a character or if we believe there was Some Guy, needs to be shoehorned into this tradition as much as judas does - or else they have no meaning to the religious assertions these stories are supposed to convey. To return to comparisons to tolkien....where tolkien was free to allow his characters to do whatever struck his fancy, the people who came up with the christ narrative were constrained by a tradition that they very much believed to be true and more importantly, truth-making. Their belief was subjective. The practical necessity of narrative continuity in the old and new testaments is an objective fact of literary construction. On that count, it was hit and miss, and certainly not for lack of trying. What I think, is that there was a conflict between that necessity and the fact that the people who came up with christ did want to tell a different story, did want to make revisions, that it was a new religion. So it gets told in the style of the old story - with all the tropes and quirks that they could muster up. This made it credible to the authors and people who would be sympathetic to their new religion. It's also the basis for ongoing nutter claims about the fulfilment of prophecy. The nutters say look, really look at it, every part of the story of jesus is a call back to a story in the old testament - this proves that all was foretold, and on the basis of that fulfilment of then past prophecy, we can trust in the fulfillment of then present prophecy in the now or near future. They're absolutely right about the first part, it just doesn't mean what they think it does. Magic books aren't crystal balls, they're anthologies of political opinion pieces.