When Judas was branded a villain, he was meant to stay that way - forever
“You will sacrifice the man who clothes me,” this account of Jesus’ life has him tell Judas, having already confided to him secrets vouchsafed to nobody else. He also, significantly, tells his friend and future betrayer that Judas will be “cursed by the other generations”.
Not, let it be noted, “the next generation”. The Judas curse was going to last, if not into infinity, at least through hundreds of generations. On the other hand, if you wanted to retrieve Judas’s reputation, you might usefully start with the fact that the curse is not infinite and carries no threat of eternal damnation. (It doesn’t carry any great promise, either, although, according to this account, Judas was assumed into heaven before any of the less temperate followers of Christ could lop an ear or anything else off his person.) The rehabilitation of Judas would be the ultimate PR challenge. First of all, the powers-that-be wouldn’t like it at all. Which wouldn’t necessarily be a disadvantage. Look what the Vatican did for The Da Vinci Code. Long before the two writers who now owe two million in legal costs got litigious about Dan Brown’s book, the Vatican had taken a lash at it.
