THE GHOST OF JUDAS: A SPECTRE HAUNTING THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

My hypothesis is that the events which led up to what Christians refer to as Holy Week, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter, and the way that the Christian religion has failed to deal with what the earliest disciples of Jesus did, is an important source of the ills facing the Christian religion. The ghost of Judas Iscariot has troubled not only the Christian church but all of the communities that have been touched by the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth. My purpose in this paper is to examine how that happened, using insights from Melanie Klein, W. R. Bion and Rene Girard, and to show how that has troubled not only Christian believers, but also those whom Friedrich Schleiermacher addressed in his book, On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (1799).