being raised catholic only to abandon the church and become a progressive agnostic is very funny because i’m getting a wave of “man FUCK pontius pilate” at 4 AM again
growing up heard a whole lot of “pontius pilate didn’t REALLY want to kill jesus” and “pontius pilate was peer pressured into killing jesus:(“ but also at the same time from the same mouths “judas is in hell forever” and “judas was evil”……………..i am SICK of it
actually feeling dizzy as i type this…..pilate washing his hands was framed as repentant and noble…..judas killing himself was framed as an admittance to guilt…………….i’m gonna break into a catholic church and eat a tub of unconcentrated communion wafers in one mighty gulp
If Judas didn’t turn his back on Jesus then how was Jesus to fulfill the role the Church claims he had to? Why does the incredibly wealthy and powerful governor get a pass but the person who gave Jesus to the governor and felt horrid about it the whole time after get condemned?
#the answer is antisemitism from what ive read - the gospels in which the Romans are basically absolved were written when Christianity wanted #to show the Romans that the Christians were actually not blaming the Romans for their state-sponsered execution of Jesus #so like many things in history the idea of Pilate as anything close to noble was an attempt to cozy up to the powerful #hence Pilate is lionized or ennobled as an unwilling figure bowing to pressure #and the Jewish people are demonized - this is where the blood curse from Matthew originates
And a lot of the medieval traditions of depicting Judas (can’t speak to traditions before and after because I’m just a medievalist) draw on the same kinds of artistic tropes as their depictions of Jews - and, incidentally, of demons / anthropomorphised vices like Anger and Despair. Red hair and the hooked nose are the most obvious but there’s also things like angle and aspect of arms and legs, particular ways of distorting the face and drawing hte hair - and of course the act of suicide is linked with Ira/Wraþþe (Anger is portrayed as finally self-destructive) and with Wanhope (despair, which is a graver sin than we’d expect nowadays because it means not having faith that God will/can make things better). And since the Venn diagram of representations of Jews, demons, and ‘people tormenting saints in martyr tales’ is almost but not quite a circle... yep. Judas gets to be the only apostle who’s portrayed as a(n evil treacherous furious) Jew.