Judas #1

[history79]

"He betrayed the Son of God...that's not really something you can just wash away. He wakes up in Hell, feeling like he absolutely deserves to be there. But then Judas learns that he was preordained to betray Jesus. Jesus knew this the whole time and let it happen anyway. Judas then feels like Jesus betrayed him. Jesus basically sent His friend to Hell to glorify Himself, and that shatters Judas.

It's going to be very fun to flip the Biblical perspective and look at Jesus in an adversarial light. As Judas journeys through Hell, he'll make shaky alliances and learn more about the grand story he's a cog in. It's a really fun way to explore the ongoing debate of free will vs. determinism and how much of a say we really have in our lives."

- Jeff Loveness




10 pages of 30

Comments

[kamino_neko]

Well, this is interesting. I've always felt Judas got a raw deal...he was playing a completely necessary role in the narrative...it would be a serious dick move by God to set him up to have to do what he did, and then punish him for it.

[nyadnar17]

Couldn't you say the same thing about any evil person that ends up making the world a net better place?

Doesn't that go back to the whole "1st rule of time travel is don't kill Hitler"? Like if we have the power to go back in time and stop Hitler but we don't because the world is net better off because of the changes caused by his action are we then complicit in his crimes? He is less complicit because the atrocities resulted in a better world than one were he wasn't born or wasn't a monster?

I think is interesting to explore....don't have a lot of faith this title will.

[junipepper]

I don’t know - possibly God gave these same doubts to more than one person, and Judas was the one to act on them?

[nyadnar17]

I have pretty much zero faith this will be as interesting as it could be.

Like Judas spent 3 years at the feet of Jesus learning Theology. Shouldn't he be a bit past the "why is there suffering in the world". He might not like the answer but the idea that the problem of suffering was wedge which broke his faith......

But whatever. I can get past that. What I am having a huge problem with is the implication in this story that Judas had no choice. "You spoke and life could only be this", "Then the voice came and I could not look at you the same way". Like why frame this as free will vs determinism if you are going to imply that Judas is being manipulated. That misses the whole interesting point of the debate.

All choices have to have a cause. There is a reason we do things, the law of causality demands it. Everything I do have a reason for it, even if I don't know that reason. How to we balance the iron law of Causality requiring every action having a cause against our idea of free will? That is IMO a much more interesting concept to examine than "puppet in the grip of forces beyond his control"

[lissa_quon]

Welp theology sticky wicket aside...the art's nice. It works very well for this subject.

Nice touch using the red letters on Jesus' speech.

Also Judas isn't a redhead - so hooray for that.

[junipepper]

And Jesus isn’t a blond haired white man, so hooray for that too.

[cyberghostface]

“It's going to be very fun to flip the Biblical perspective and look at Jesus in an adversarial light.”

Groundbreaking.

[icon_uk]

Anyone else thinking of Judas' role in "Jesus Christ, Superstar" for one thing?

[filthysize]

I love that he has the black halo in this.

[glprime]

That was a neat touch.

[tripodeca113]

But Red Dwarf already explained Judas.

Hey, Jeff Loveness?

[captainbellman]

Mod Note!

[icon_uk]

You should know the rules by now, critique the work, NOT the creator.

[commodus]

I swear, if it ends with Jesus just chalking it up to "God said so", it will be a waste of an idea. God, in fiction, is NEVER held to account and never forced to logically explain the messed up things he does. And when any author tries, they mostly seem to settle on "What he did was good, because he's God."

This looks really well done, but I've been burned so many times by stories like this, so I'm not too hopeful.

[nyadnar17]

Same. And its FRUSTATING as all Hell because Theology has wrestled with the concept of "hold God to account" for literally millenia. Even if the Author chooses a path I, as a Reformed Christian, disagree with, it would still be more interesting than the usual same old same old we get.

[crinos]

A while ago I was looking up the tale of Moses and the Pharaoh in order to confirm whether Pharaoh's priests and wise men were purported to have magical powers in the original text or if they were always charlatans*, and I found a text of the tale where it was God who "Hardened Pharaoh's heart" into not letting Moses people go, The reason being that God wanted Moses to go head to head with Pharaoh in order to demonstrate his power (By taking down one of the most powerful nations around at the time) and to demonstrate what would happen to anyone who messed with his chosen people.

So yeah, God acting like a chessmaster and setting up the bad guys to fall or do bad things apparently a thing that totally happens, so this scans.

* And the answer is that they were apparently supposed to be real magic users, and powerful ones at that. In a later text, apparently two of those Magicians actually break into Heaven, and use their magics to keep the Angels at bay until Meteron shows up and tricks them into letting their guard down so they can kick them out. Playing with the big boys now indeed.

[icon_uk]

The Old Testament vs the New Testament is always fascinating to compare.

But when one considers the timespans involved it gets even more amazing.

There's a proclamation read in cahtolic Churches during Christmas which suggests the timespans involved between biblical events;

The Twenty-fifth Day of December, (Okay, that bit gets us off to a bad start)
when ages beyond number had run their course
from the creation of the world,
when God in the beginning created heaven and earth,
and formed man in his own likeness;
when century upon century had passed
since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood,
as a sign of covenant and peace;
in the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith,
came out of Ur of the Chaldees;
in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses
in the Exodus from Egypt;
around the thousandth year since David was anointed King;
in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
in the year seven hundred and fifty-two
since the foundation of the City of Rome;
in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus,
the whole world being at peace,

So, according to this, as much time passed between the time of Abraham and the time of Jesus as has now passed since Jesus was around to today.

[nyadnar17]

One explanation of "hardening Pharaoh's heart" is that God withdrew some one the Common Grace He freely extends to all men. The idea of God providing Common Grace to all mandkind regardless of their merit in a general sense and of having set up some kinda of restraining mechanism on man's propensity toward evil (The Great Restrainer) in in Scripture.

So with Pharaoh's one popular argument is that God actually stopped "violating" Pharaoh's free will and let Pharaoh be as evil as he actually would have been if God hadn't been holding him back.

Another explanation is that hardening his hear was a punishment. Like if we are ok with God killing people or taking away their sanity as punishment, is it really out of bounds for God force people into acting as his mortal instruments as punishment?


I would love to see EITHER of this ideas explored in fiction.

[nyadnar17]

Man what kinda of person confirms heaven is real and then decides to break in and start pissing off Angels?

Like I would like seeing Heaven with your own two eyes would spark some sort of soul searching and maybe self-reevaluation.

[imitorar]

That God always planned to harden Pharaoh's heart so as to make a bigger impression on the Egyptians is in the original, in Exodus 7:4.

As to whether or not the magicians were charlatans, that tends to come down to a divide between medieval commentators as to whether magic in the ancient world was real or not. The Bible itself certainly seems to portray their magic as having some sort of power, albeit far inferior to that of God (because they can imitate the first two Plagues, but not the Plague of Lice in Exodus 8:14-15).

I've never heard that bit about those two magicians ascending to Heaven and needing to be thrown out by Metatron. Wikipedia quotes it, but says "citation needed", and I'm not sure where I would even look for a source. Sounds like an obscure Second Temple era source (if not later), which makes it removed from the Bible by about 2,000 years. Certainly the Bible isn't trying to portray the magicians as significantly powerful in the face of angels, it's trying to portray them as the greatest power Egypt knows and yet completely powerless in the face of God's might.

EDIT: The closest I could find was this (http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/coj/coj058.htm), which is a 19th century translation of what's likely a 12th century source. I Googled up an academic book tracing every extra-Biblical reference to the magicians (https://books.google.com/books?id=MTS-ZGaxBJcC&q=Metatron#v=snippet&q=Metatron&f=false), and that was where it pointed to.

[christianconnor]

Anything with Judas reminds me of a Jorge Luis Borges short story. It basically suggests that because Judas consciously made the choice to be the instrument, to be a knowing part of The Story - he's actually the holiest of all the apostles.

It then goes onto to compare Jesus to Judas. Whereas Jesus died and returned to life, Judas chose to irrevocably damn his immortal soul - which makes his sacrifice greater than Jesus'.

Probably more provocative than this comic and "why goes God let bad things happen?"

[icon_uk]

That's an interesting take on it, and not one I'd heard before.

Again, I think it depends on what you view Judas' sin as.

I was taught (by nuns, for what that's worth) that it wasn't the fact of the betrayal, that was the result of human weakness, and it's not like the other Apostles were free of THAT;

Peter denying knowing Christ during the Passion, but understood that he could seek, and find, forgiveness.

Judas didn't think he could seek and find forgiveness, he was consumed by guilt, and took his own life, and THAT was the sin.

[nyadnar17]

That would also be interesting to explore. I believe the Apostle Paul once said if he could forfeit his soul to save everyone else he would.

Is that commendable? Moral? Is committing cosmic treason as God and being sent to Hell for it still a sin if the result is the salvation of every other moral in existence?

That also seems like an interesting comic to me.

[thezmage]

I know Spawn or one of those Top Cow horror books used that once. At least, I first recall hearing this theory in a Wizard magazine interview regarding one of those books.

[blackruzsa]

The art is nice. Already looking a little too simplistic for what it could be, but at least worth checking out.