Machingura, The Judas Iscariot episode in the Zimbabwean Religio-Political debate...Papias (ca 130 C.E) preserved another interesting tradition about Judas,
that he died from neither hanging as reported in the gospels nor falling
as in Acts but from a horrible, disfiguring and shameful disease. Papias
claims that:
After many such tortures and punishments, they say that he died on his
own property, and that on account of the stench the place is desolate and
uninhabited even until now, and that even today no one can go through that
place without stopping up his nose with his hands, because the stench of his
flesh spread out over the land so much.^15
All the above narratives about the actions of Judas Iscariot and his death
have one important message that, Judas is an important lesson on the
wages of sin. So punishments are deliberately heaped on him to drive
the message to the audience that they must avoid sin like that of loving
money to selling out thereby face similar consequences that befell Ju-
das.^16 For Luke, that is the kind of death that befall wicked people, which
is similar to the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5: 1-11) and
Herod Agrippa (Acts 12: 20-23). Luke, like his contemporaries, and gen-
eration of story tellers, saw deaths like that of Judas as direct and neces-
sary punishments from God, who shows how ‘those who commit sin
and do wrong are their own worst enemies’ (Tob 12:10).^17 Such kinds of
death are then viewed as meant to put the wheels of justice in place as
well as to promote its future existence for those who dare stray in the
first place. It is not surprising that, ZANU-PF finds it much easier to
incorporate the Judas character as a ‘willing and suggestive label’ for
opposition groupings in a bid to convey a clear message that “those who
engage in opposition politics” are engaging in sin and wishing for a
chaotic society as done by Judas Iscariot. The consequences that befell
Judas are then deemed as justifiable when they befell on opposition
groupings and those who then commit violence against them are taken
as agents putting the wheels of justice in place. The hands of Satan in
fuelling discontentment through violence are then overlooked in such
circumstances where certain people because of their privileged political
orientation commit crimes and not held accountable.
(^15) J Kürzinger, Papias von Hierapolis und Evangelien des Neuen Testaments, Regensburg:
Pustet, 1983, 104.
(^16) S R Garrett, The Demise of the Devil: Magic and the Demonic in Luke’s Writings, Minnea-
polis: Fortress Press, 1989, 53.
(^17) Paffenroth, Judas, 22; See A W Zwiep, Judas and the Choice of Mathias: A Study on the
Context and Concern of Acts 1:15-26, Tübingen: Siebeck Mohr, 2004, 42.