Little Hawk:

I know and loathe the Rosselson song, because I consider it to be an aberration that totally misses the spiritual point of both Jesus and Judas, although it rightly criticizes the hypocrisy of the Christian church...but whatever you think of his reasoning his proletarian passion is certainly evident. Marx or Lenin would have loved that song.

I had no illusions that Rosselson's song would actually gain favour with the fundies (nor do I have any illusion that the fundies will change their minds about Judas with this new [perhaps too "new"?] material).

Yes, it does miss a fair bit of the good parts of the teachings of Jesus (as recounted), although it does make a few points about the nature of passivity in the face of injustice being not always conducive to the best situation in the here-and-now (not to say that the alternatives don't sometimes have their ethical drawbacks as well). That's a matter for each to decide themselves. And Rosselson does really attribute to the teacher some of the sins of the church that followed ... not entirely fair to visit the sins of the son on the father, you know what I mean.

I don't think that Rosselson was even remotely trying to portray the life and thoughts of Judas accurately; rather, I think he used the "Judas" character as a counter-point, a foil to the character traits of Jesus that he wanted to portray ... and as a bit of provocation. And I'll admit that my post was a bit of a provocation too. Imagine that; I never do such things here on the 'Cat normally....

Yes, there's definitely a pinko Commie tinge to the song. Strangely enough, though, there's those that say that Jesus was one of the world's first socialists (but more accurately, he was probably an Essene ascetic). Rosselson's brand of communism is more pro-active and more radical.

The "redemption" of Judas in the "Book of Judas" (or "Gospel of Judas") is not at all what Rosselson was about. As I understand it (but know little much of substance), the theory is that Judas had to betray Jesus, and that Jesus in fact wanted this (or at least facilitated it). This brings to mind one form of common hatred for the Jews amongst Christian extremists; that the Jews were responsible for "killing" Jesus. But, thinking about it logically, if the crucifixion and resurrection were necessary to provide the substitutional atonement, you'd think that Christians ought to be glad that Jesus was crucified, and hope that if they had been there themselves, they would not have tried to stop it. Not to mention that God set it up that way, and being fore-ordained, it couldn't have happened any differently. So, by this token, this rehabilitation of Judas is just another page from the same book.

But that's if you buy that stuff in the first place. I, personally, am probably more in line with Thomas Jefferson's thinking in these respects, in which case the crucifixion had most usefulness as a learning experience ... and an object lesson in human stupidity and cruelty.

Have I pissed enough people off yet?   ;-)

Cheers,