judas: now a book

it is still early into the investigation if you ask me. but all the buzz lately is about the discovery of the book of judas. they say judas was asked by Christ to turn him in. as i watched the news, i sat there as reporters asked questions such as "will this change what they teach in sunday school this week?" i wondered to myself the same thing. would it change? we have grown up thinking of it as a betrayal. then they talked to another "scholar" who said that the word betrayal in greek means to hand over. which i checked. it does.

it all goes back to did Jesus really tell Judas to turn him in. the answer, maybe. Jesus did tell judas that he would be the one to betray him. however Jesus told him this after judas had already went to the chief priests and agreed to turn Christ in for 30 silver coins. this would be comparable to 4 months of work.

the whole controversy with this book is that if Jesus really told judas to betray him then it would not have really been a betrayal in the first place. it would have been judas following orders.

aside from the book of judas, i wonder what he was really like. how deceptive a man was he. we have heard that he kept the money for the disciples and possibly could have stolen from that. but i wonder what was going through his mind when he turned jesus in? did he really do it for the money? was the greed in his life so big that he turned in a friend of three years? did he turn him in so he could see the prophecy fulfilled? did satan really take over his body so the judas that all the other disciples knew was totally different? these are the questions that go on in my head every so often. specifically during this time of year.

i realize this was a bad thing for judas. Jesus said "it would be better for him if he had not been born." but in the long run someone had to do it. someone had to turn the Christ in so he could be arrested and give His life for us on the cross. i am personally very thankful for the man they called a traitor. it had to happen somehow.