SHARED OPINION
FRANK JOHNSON
It was a great week for Judas: which shows that spin works
For a week now the newspapers have been full of how Judas’s newly published gospel proves that he did not betray Jesus after all. Or rather, the latter put Judas up to it. Jesus told Judas to sacrifice him so that he could fulfil his destiny. The revelation comes in time for Easter. Whoever was responsible for this burst of good publicity for one of the most hated figures in history is a PR genius.
Miss Julia Hobsbawm seldom discusses specific clients, but commented, ‘I thought it a fantastic challenge when I was asked to take on the Iscariot account. It was over a Caesar salad at the Ivy, the top London watering-hole where the movers meet the shakers in an incredible interaction of mutually beneficial concepts on both sides. Judas had had bad publicity for about 2,000 years, so we had to neutralise his negatives. Of course, it would have helped if he was gay. Well, there’s no evidence that he wasn’t. Sure, he could have been straight. But contrary to what plenty of journalists say about the PR profession, I prefer to leave my clients’ private lives out of it. So we left his sexuality open. In any case, what does it matter? In France, they could not care less if Judas had had affairs. We British are so hypocritical about sex.
‘What matters is not whom he slept with but whether Judas did his job properly, and if Jesus told him to call the Romans the moment they hit Gethsemane, that was what Judas did. My job was to make sure the press and the electronic media knew. But for some reason, when I phoned various editors and columnists and told them that new evidence proved that Judas was innocent, they thought there must be something in it for me. I just wanted to bring the two sides together. In the end, I got the client lots of great publicity by the sheer quality of my arguments and lunches. For the media it was a great story, and for Judas it was the end of a nightmare. I’m only sorry he never lived to see it, but I’m told the family are very happy.’ Max Clifford said, ‘I could have had the Iscariot account, but face it, he’s no Wayne Rooney, is he? Most people couldn’t care less who he betrayed. Sure, he now says he didn’t. But they all say that, don’t they? If he betrayed his missus, it would be different. But he’s not even a love rat. And I don’t like getting mixed up with religion. Live and let live, I say. Don’t get me wrong. I do a lot of work for charity. That’s more than can be said for your average sky pilot. Also, we’re talking about a geezer who sells himself for 30 pieces of silver. I could have got him gold. OK, he topped himself. I’m very sorry. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But, face it, he was a loser. End of story.’ Mark Bolland: ‘When I was working for Prince Charles, I tried to discourage him from making rude remarks about Judas in his diary. Otherwise, I said, it might end up in the Mail on Sunday. But he wouldn’t listen. That’s always been his problem. He treated criticism of the Judas story as if it was gospel.’ David Cameron, himself a former PR man for the television mogul Michael Green, commented, ‘Judas has changed. But it’s important that he carries on changing. Change is what has to happen. And what has to happen is change. But it’s not enough just for Judas to change. The entire New Testament must change too. But it will be a long climb. It shouldn’t promise any miracles.’ Here, at Easter, the thought again occurs that of all the attempted debunkings of the Resurrection, the least convincing is that the disciples simply faked it. They paid the guards at the tomb to look the other way, stole the body, and then proclaimed that Jesus had risen from the dead. They stuck to this story for the rest of their lives. Every Easter I feel especially qualified to refute this theory. This is not because of scholarship, but because I have spent most of my life as a political journalist. Thus I have spent much time gossiping and plotting with politicians and other journalists. From this, I know that after a while — and certainly after the passage of years — no conspiracy or agreement to keep quiet endures. Someone invariably tells. Journalists reveal it sooner, historians later. One of the apostles would have told. But the conspiracy theory of the Resurrection depends on their willingness to lie for years, and in some cases to be imprisoned and tortured for something they knew to be a lie. It is hard enough to die for the truth.
Even if the disciples did not soon gossip about the full story, they would have let slip some of it — perhaps unintentionally. The disciples would have begun to forget which aspects of it were supposed to be most secret, and assume that it was all right to let on about the less important parts. Quite often I have said to a journalist or politician, ‘That’s interesting. Who told you?’ To which the reply has sometimes been, ‘You did. A few weeks ago.’ One exceptionally well-qualified authority who can be called in to support my theory is Chuck Colson, the Nixon associate who went to prison for his part in Watergate, and who became a Christian. Thus he has been in his life both a conspirator and a believer. In his book, Loving God, he compares the Watergate conspirators’ later behaviour with that of any imaginable Resurrection conspirators. ‘With the most powerful office in the world at stake, a small band of handpicked loyalists [the Watergate conspirators], no more than ten of us, could not hold a conspiracy together for more than two weeks.... Even political zealots at the pinnacle of power will save their own necks in the crunch, though it may be at the expense of the one they profess to serve so zealously.’ Also, a group capable of perpetrating the most successful conspiracy in history — the foundation of a world religion would also have been capable of ensuring that history saw them in a good light. Yet the gospels, the source of the Resurrection story, depict them as having been rather cowardly at the time. Thomas, after all, doubts. Such human touches in the story constitute a difficulty in doubting the Resurrection.
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