Knox Box of Miscellany

Dawn Knox – A rearranger of words into something hopefully meaningful…

Inside the Head of Judas

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Statue heads near Canary Wharf, London

What’s he thinking?

It’s hard to imagine someone’s motives unless you know them very well – and even then, it’s easy to project your own experiences and beliefs on them and interpret their actions accordingly. So, when at the end of 2013, I was asked to write a series of monologues to tell the Easter story from the perspective of key characters, I wondered how to go about it. I chose Judas Iscariot, Caiaphas the Chief Priest, Peter, Pontius Pilate, a female bystander and Mary Magdalene to write about and then had to think how best they might explain themselves. I read the bible passages many times before I put pen to paper (or more accurately, finger to keyboard) and attempted to get inside the characters’ heads to try to discover why they’d followed a particular course of action. But the hardest head to get inside was Judas’. I spent a long time thinking about what made him tick and why he ultimately felt so guilty that he committed suicide. It occurred to me, it wasn’t so much his action in betraying Jesus that made him feel so guilty, but rather his reasons for betraying Him. After all, he took the thirty pieces of silver and in return was expected to take the soldiers to Jesus so they could arrest Him. And that seems rather odd because Jesus wasn’t in hiding. The previous week, He’d entered Jerusalem and people had lined the streets greeting Him with shouts of ‘Hosanna’ and waving palm branches. It wasn’t like Jesus had organised a spectacular procession – He’d simply turned up on a donkey, probably like many other people. So even when He might have blended into the crowds who were in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, He was recognised and marked out. And He’d attended a Passover supper with lots of other people. So He couldn’t have been too hard to find. I wondered if Judas reasoned that he wouldn’t really be needed to point Jesus out – the crowds would do that, simply by gathering round Him to listen. But if the Chief Priest wanted to pay Judas to point out someone who was so obvious to find – well, more fool them. So, in identifying Jesus, he hadn’t really done anything other than to do what the crowds had unwittingly already done. What was crucial, was why he went to the Chief Priest in the first place.

I wondered whether he thought Jesus had let him down. He’d expected Jesus to be a strong leader, who would rise up against the Romans and take back their land. As the one who kept the disciples’ money, he was skimming off some for himself and when Jesus started talking about his death, Judas may have panicked. With Jesus gone, the disciples would probably disband and the funds would dry up. I wonder whether part of Judas’ motive was disappointment and spite. If Jesus wouldn’t be the leader Judas wanted then perhaps He should learn what it was like to be let down. If Jesus knew He was going to die, then Judas’s livelihood was about to disappear, so he might as well make some money for pointing out a man who was obvious anyway.

I hope I went some way towards unraveling Judas and his motives. I hope I always give people the benefit of the doubt and interpret their actions by ascribing the best possible motives I can think of and I’ve done that with Judas. But on the other hand, perhaps I’ve been kind, and he was just a really nasty character, through and through.

Have you ever tried to write about a historical character and had to account for their actions? How did it go?

In ‘Daffodil and the Thin Place’, there are several characters who really existed: Mr. Hornsby, the schoolmaster, Catherine Hornsby, his third and last wife, Dr. Colls, the rector. Very little is known about them or what they did, other than in general terms. Mr. Hornsby, for example was schoolmaster for 48 years although I don’t know exactly how he conducted his lessons. So, it was slightly easier to weave a story around these characters.

The Easter Monologues were performed in St. Nicholas Church at Easter 2014. If you’d like to support renovation work  to our building, please buy “Daffodil and the Thin Place”, which you can find here

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