Three versions of Judas

The gospel character of Judas clearly indicates Christian myth making. As the insider become outsider he demarcates Christian boundaries and, therefore, helps define insider identity and locate evil. Three Versions of Judas explores the mythic work transpiring in the Judases of the gospels and of subsequent scholarly and artistic interpretation from the perspective of Jorge Luis Borges' Three Versions of Judas. In that short story, Borges creates a modern Gnostic, Nils Runeberg, who doubts the canonical story of Judas and, therefore, creates seriatim three alternative versions: (1) a Judas who is the necessary, human complement to Christs redemptive work, (2) a Judas who denies himself the spirit for Gods greater glory, and, finally, (3) a Judas who is himself the incarnation. Three Versions of Judas finds three similar Judases in the gospels (and in subsequent interpretation).^ The gospels, too, offer a Judas who is necessary to the divine plan or to Christian myth, a Judas who is the determined outsider, and a Judas who is demonic. Or, in more Borgesian terms, the gospels offer a Judas who is victim of an infinite book (Judas #1), who is Jesus necessary rival and Christian scapeg