It is based on the far from new idea that Judas did not commit suicide after the crucifixion by hanging himself on the fig tree once cursed by Christ. He lived on, a wandering Jew, his memory hated by the growing numbers of Christians and eventually was considered to be the Devil himself. Stead has him as a man who survived that terrible Passover to escape to Sidon on the Mediterranean coast. He had not betrayed Christ with a kiss but grabbed his arms in Gethsemane and told him to run for it. There were no 30 pieces of silver to fling away onto earth that never afterwards bore fruit. He simply walked off into another country back to the merchant class to which he belonged, passed himself off as a Greek, married and raised a family and is still hale and hearty at 70 years old. The agonies and ecstasies of his time with Jesus do not leave him, but he sees the whole thing as a pitiful mistake:
Our friend was
not the Messiah nor
will there be one.
This is the truth
I write,
It will not hurt you.
Grasp it.
Stead introduces Judas as a child of six. He is a brilliant boy from a privileged background and shares a Greek tutor with the even more brilliant Jesus, son of the carpenter. Judas is befriended by Jesus’ family (secretive Mary he calls ‘weird’) and goes about with them, and to the temple in Jerusalem. The two boys play and fight together, have adventures, once secretly watch a crucifixion which horrifies them. Later Jesus disappears into the desert to live with the Essenes and returns, changed. Judas has married and lost his young wife in childbirth. A broken-hearted man, he is called by Jesus to join his disciples. He does so but has difficulties in getting on with the rough fishermen and in believing that his pal of 20 years before has turned out to be the only son of God. One sees what he means.
The story is ‘imaginary’. Stead’s pugnacious boy-Jesus is as speculative as the flaxen-haired youth in the carpenter’s shop of the old illustrated bibles. And this is of course acceptable, since in fiction there should be nothing unimaginable. It is no longer considered blasphemous to put words into the mouth of God. Half a century ago the nation sat gravely and nervously listening to Dorothy Sayers’s The Man Born to be King when ‘Jesus’s’ voice was heard on the air for the first time (like King George V’s).
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