I, Judas

by Taylor Caldwell

  After Bethabara, Jesus himself was called the Messiah or the Christ, in the Greek style, more often than not. Jude meant Praised of the Lord, and Matthew, for Levi the Publican, signified a gift of the Lord, which he surely received when he was wrested from his evil ways. In renaming Philip, Jesus had smiled and said: “I like better the word loving,” for this Philip signified. Nathaniel was a sign of the Lord’s praise. A Syrian-Greek Jew by origin, he was sometimes referred to as bar-Tholomew, the son of Ptolemy, or Tholomew. He was an amiable sort, but undistinguished like the rest.

  The Master, as always, set the example. He preferred to be called Jesus, rather than Joshua. We all were struck by this, for there was a design to everything he did. In permitting himself a Greek name, he was obviously making a declaration to the Gentiles. It was as if he were saying to all, and not to the Jews alone: “I am Jesus Christ, the Savior and Deliverer, the Anointed, the eternal Son of God.” For in the Greek, this name meant all these things.

  As for my own name, he added to it my ancestral home in Kerioth or Carioth, but gave it a connotation that could be misconstrued. Judas Iskerioth, or in the Greek style, Iscariot, he had called me. “A name,” he said, “that will live always with mine.”

  I was flattered, but liked not the abbreviation SKR, almost an anagram, which stood in our language as a symbol for the betrayer.

  He put me off with a smile. “You have not chosen me. But I have chosen each of you.”

  How else but for this would Peter have gained precedence? He was hardly the rock that his new name suggested. He seemed so gullible, so slow to grasp the obvious. Once he suggested I make an accounting to the Twelve.

  “I answer only to the Master,” I replied stiffly.

  “But,” said he, “the Master accepts whatever you tell him.”

  “And what am I to think from that?”

  A look of embarrassment made his fisherman’s face even redder than before. “There are reports,” he spluttered, “of money being diverted to weapons.”

  We had received a number of secret benefactions from the rich, such as Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea.

  “You are the rock,” I said, “and I the treasurer. When you give me the rock, I will give you the treasury.”

  He did not even know what I meant.

  Because of Peter’s insecurity, the Master felt it necessary to keep reassuring him. I would have thought Andrew, or James, the son of Zebedee, a better adjutant, since they were well organized and practical. Peter was too easily confused. But the Master obviously saw in him some quality I didn’t. It may have been Peter’s humility, but how else could he be but humble? The Master did not make a move for himself. Peter fetched his food and wine, washed and mended his clothes, and constantly hovered over him. He made a good butler, if nothing else. He didn’t seem to understand anything.

  “Every good tree,” the Master said once, “brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree brings forth evil fruit. Wherefore by their fruits you shall know them.”

  “What fruit, Master, is the good fruit?”

  All of course understood the parable, all but the Rock. The Master indulged him always. He put his arm around those hulking shoulders and said: “Whoever listens to the son is a wise man, who builds his house upon this Rock. The rains and the floods and the winds will come, but the house will stand on this Rock.”

  Jesus never did anything without a reason. He was no gentle, easygoing creature floating along with the tide. Nothing happened without his knowing about it and accepting it. His every move was intended to establish a point or to impress us with the nature of his world. He was especially concerned with directing our activities, for he counted on his Apostles and disciples to spread his word.

  “Salvation lies with the Jews,” he enjoined, “and as Jews you shall bring this salvation to every household. Go forth as lambs among wolves. Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes.”

  Some of the seventy showed their bewilderment. They had left their homes, their families, their work, and he sent them out with only a cloth on their backs to knock on strange doors.

  Although I guarded the purse strings well, I felt it wise to spare these missionaries a few pennies so they would not yield too readily to the despair of rejection. He cared less for money than anybody. Yet he stayed my hand.

  “The Lord will provide,” said he.

  “But,” I remonstrated, “if the householder shuts his door on them, where will they abide?”

  “The door to heaven, Judah, is surely harder to enter than the home of the haughtiest Pharisee.”

  “But would it not be easier. Master, if they were better equipped for their mission?”

  “Like troops separated from their baggage, they have nothing to consider but the battle.”

  “But they are novices and have not studied at your feet as we.”

  “Judas, Judas,” he said, half mocking, “you would lead troops against Rome, and you concern yourself with trifles.”

  “My soldiers would be armed,” I rejoined.

  “And so, too, are they armed, with the weapons of the Lord. For they shall heal wherever they go with the faith I send with them.”

  He paired off the two Zealots whom I had made disciples.

  “Cestus and Dysmas,” said he with a grave face, “you shall be inseparable to the end.”

  He coupled dull, heavy-witted Simon-bar-Jon ah with the bright new disciple John Mark, James with his brother John, Bartholomew with Philip, Jude with his brother James the Less, and careful Thomas with amiable Andrew.

  “You, Judah, should feel at one with Simon the Zealot.”

  I could not have asked for better.

  While dining, I sat at his right, Peter at his left, next to his heart. I was not blind to this honor, but then I was the only Judean, besides himself, the only aristocrat, and save for Matthew, who had learned to write in confiscating the property of the oppressed, the only one with formal education. Young John had been schooled by Jesus and, like Matthew, was forever scribbling, the Lord only knows what.

  He constantly encouraged us. “You are instruments of God,” he stressed, “each called for a very special purpose. You, John, and you, Matthew, shall one day send your message to the far corners of the earth. You, Peter, shall build a church that shall never die. You, James, experienced with me the transfiguration. You, Thomas, shall confirm my triumph, and you, Judah”—my heart stood still—“shall be my vehicle on the road to life everlasting.”

  The seventy were even more undistinguished than the Twelve. They were a scrubby-looking lot, with shaggy heads and beards, unwashed and disheveled from days on the highways. Though many were named by the Twelve, all were confirmed by him. But they appeared no more qualified for their missions after their baptisms than before. But, as I soon saw, he was sending out a fox to catch a fox.

  “How,” asked a bedraggled Amharetz, “does a shopkeeper like myself, a poor seller of hides, heal anybody of an illness? I am no physician.”

  Jesus looked reassuringly at this dreary appointee of Peter’s who was so like those he would help.

  “You will heal in my name, with faith in the Father. I send you in pairs, not for companionship, but because if two agree on what shall be asked, it shall be done by my Father. And where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

  He bade them take heart from what he wrought. “As I do, so you all can do with love of the Father,” he would say with each leper or lunatic he cured with a touch of his hand and a few simple words.

  But we all knew he was of different stuff. For though we sat at his feet and ate and drank with him, there was a gulf, never quite defined, but which could be likened to that between master and servant. He was removed, not so much by virtue of his manner as by our feeling that he was so much greater than any of us. We dared only speak when he gave us to speak. None, not even Peter or John, addressed him as anything but Master. For this reason, though there was a great curiosity about h
im, very little was known by the multitude. For even as he performed his miracles, he had instructed us to tell no man about his origin and his mission except as it unfolded of itself.

  He tried to make each of us think we were different, relating to different qualities in people even though our work was the same. “Theoretically,” said he, “you represent the twelve tribes, and the twelve types represented in astrology by the zodiac.”

  “Do you recommend this idolatrous worship of the Babylonians?” I asked in some surprise.

  “Only as it reflects God’s order in the universe and its relation to people.”

  “But is this not a pagan belief?”

  “Know you not the Psalms, Judah? Surely, even a backslid Pharisee has this knowledge.” His eyes lifted reverently to the sky. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day after day, it speaks, and night after night, it shows knowledge. There is no speech nor language where its voice is not heard.”

  “Is this why we carry the sign of the fish?”

  “The stars heralded the birth of the Son of Man, and they shall proclaim his death.”

  The other disciples now crowded about. “But, Master, you say there is no death.”

  “Death, Judah, is a friend well met on the way to a pasture far greener than any you have known.”

  While the disciples fanned out over the land, the main body of the Apostles remained with him. With the Baptist’s incarceration he had become increasingly cautious. On the way north from Judea, he directed that we skirt the larger communities and proceed by side roads through Samaria, which pilgrims ordinarily avoided in journeying to and from Jerusalem.

  As a Galilean, Simon-bar-Jonah knew the lot of pilgrims passing through the territory of this God-forsaken people who styled themselves Jews.

  “But, Master, these evil Samaritans take pleasure in taunting and stoning the faithful bound for the Holy City. They even mock them with huge bonfires in the night so that they will think it dawn and rise and get on their way. Would it not be simpler to pass east of the Jordan through Perea and the Decapolis, and cross by the Galilean Sea into Capernaum?”

  “Simpler, perhaps, but not as fruitful. When I see the Samaritan temple at Mount Geritzim, I am minded of the shallowness of these great churches which man builds for man. For God, not having man’s conceit, is satisfied with his own sky and meadow. Yet the Samaritans, ejected from the Temple by the Israelites, seek to outdo them in the same fashion.”

  When we still hoped to bypass this benighted people, he gave us a parable with which he had confounded a quibbler of low estate, a lawyer of Philadelphia, in the Decapolis.

  Some robbers, he pointed out, had attacked a man near Jericho, and left him for dead in the street. His plight had been ignored first by a Temple priest, then by a Levite, both crossing to the other side of the road. But then a Samaritan came along and bound up the stranger’s wounds, and brought him to an inn and had him cared for, even to paying the bill.

  “Which of the three,” the Master asked, “was a good neighbor to this hapless victim?”

  As though on cue, Simon-bar-Jonah blared out, “Why, the good Samaritan of course.”

  Simon-bar-Jonah showed, as usual, how pious he was.

  “Lord,” said he, “if my brother sins against me, shall I forgive him seven times?”

  “I say forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven.”

  Matthew had looked up at this.

  “And if we do not forgive. Master?”

  “It will not go well then. For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

  It was easier said than done.

  From Jerusalem we took the hill road at night to escape the heat of May. In the afternoon we gratefully felt the soft wind by which Boaz winnowed his barley, and by evening we came to Sychar, stopping by the well which the patriarch Jacob had dedicated to his son Joseph. Since we proceeded north, away from Jerusalem, the Samaritans did not molest us. Their fight actually was more with the hierarchy than the people. It was an ancient grudge. They had been barred from the Temple when their ancestors committed the sacrilege of casting two huge golden calves as the Lord Jehovah. In reprisal thereafter, they had stolen into the Temple and shamefully flung human offal into the Sanctuary. The feud persisted and no Temple-going Jew would abide in Samaria overnight, particularly at the well where Jesus had us camp. “The water of Samaria,” said the rabbis, “is more unclean than the blood of swine.”

  But Jesus had no scruples about dealing with the Samaritans, or with anybody who expressed interest in his Kingdom of Heaven. “My Father,” he said, smiling, “can cleanse even the blood of the Pharisees.” And so, after we made camp by this shrine of Joseph, the Master sent us into the village for provisions and reclined by the well to meditate. On our return we saw him talking to a woman who held a waterpot in her hand. As I came close I could overhear the conversation.

  “How is it that you, a Judean, ask water of me, when the Judeans have no dealings with Samaritans?”

  The Master shook his head. “There is neither Israelite nor Samaritan, Galilean nor Roman. All are children of God and may drink of the living water.”

  She gave him a puzzled frown.

  “What now is he up to?” whispered Simon Zelotes in my ear.

  “It is always the same,” I whispered back, “this Kingdom of Heaven in which all live happily ever after.”

  The Master silenced us with a glance. He gave the woman the quizzical look I knew so well. “Whosoever drinks of the water I give him shall never thirst again.”

  With some trepidation she offered him the waterpot, and he sipped from it slowly. She looked at him intently, hypnotized, as so many were, by his magnetism.

  “Sir, give me this water that I thirst not.”

  I had seen women melt under his glance before. Nevertheless, I was baffled by the encounter, the reason for it not yet being clear.

  His eyes moved over her and found her comely, in the impersonal way he had with women.

  “Your name is Deborah,” he said finally.

  Her chin dropped in consternation. “How know you my name, when I have never seen you before?”

  He still regarded her speculatively.

  “Go fetch your husband, and bring him here.”

  She hesitated for a moment. “I have no husband, sir.”

  He nodded. “You say well, for you have had five husbands. Yet he with whom you now live is not your husband.”

  Her eyes almost dropped out of her head. “How do you know this?” she cried.

  He seemed to be toying with her. “You have no children, and for this reason keep remarrying.”

  Her dull Samaritan eyes widened.

  “How know you this?” she asked again, as if the Master had divulged something of importance.

  He brushed aside her question. “This last, with whom you live, does not marry you because of his position in the community.”

  She let out a deep breath. “You are indeed a wizard.”

  For the life of me, I could not understand why the Master had stooped to such fortune-telling. Who cared whether this scrawny wench had married a hundred times? Of what moment was it to any but herself?

  “Why do you tell me all this?” she asked.

  “So you will know who I am and who sent me.”

  “I perceive,” said she, still shaken, “that you are a prophet, sent with the living water.”

  “God is the living water, and who worships him must worship in spirit and truth.”

  It was now apparent to the Apostles for whom these words were intended.

  The woman’s eyes showed her wonder as she considered the miraculous stranger.

  “I know that the Messiah of the Jews comes soon. And he will clear up all things, they say.”

  His eyes fell for a moment on the Twelve, and he said in a
ringing voice: “I that speak to you am he.”

  She kneeled in her joy, but he raised her up with a gentle smile. “You are twice blessed, who is a Samaritan and yet believes.”

  She kissed his hand devoutly and hurried off, forgetting her water-pot. In the afternoon she returned with a company of Samaritans. They immediately surrounded the Master. The leader was a shepherd named Amos, an amiable giant who looked more Syrian than Jew.

  “This is the headman of the village,” said the woman Deborah. “I told him of your wonders.”

  “You still have not married him,” said the Master with a smile.

  As always, he picked out the relationships of people with a glance. There were no secrets from him, not of this life, in any event.

  The Samaritans bowed low before the Master, their heads almost scraping his feet. They bore gifts of costly frankincense and myrrh, as if paying homage to a King. I quickly stepped forward, to accept the offerings. But the Master stayed me with a frown.

  They also brought gifts of food, but he turned these away with a smile. “I have food you know nothing about, to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work.”