Most people know of the Bob Dylan concert in Manchester in May 1966 when an angry fan jumped up and screamed â??Judasâ? in protest at the erstwhile folk singerâ??s â??treasonâ? in abandoning his acoustic for an electric guitar. It was one of rock musicâ??s defining moments. An infuriated Dylan launched into his next song with an instruction to his amped-up band to play louder than ever. Cue mega-decibel mayhem and the end of civilisation as we know it. But equally interesting was that, almost 50 years later, Dylan, in an interview with Rolling Stone, was still smarting at the insult of being called â??the most hated name in human historyâ?.
Any association with the apostle who betrayed Jesus Christ has the power to hurt, even in our liberal, secular world, where hell holds few horrors. Judas was the Moriarty of the biblical story, or, as Pope Leo the Great described him in the fifth century, â??the wickedest man that ever livedâ?.
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