Come citare
Abstract
In the Western imagination, one of the archetypes of the unfathomability of evil was represented by the figure of Judas Iscariot, that has become a symbol of betrayal symbol of the Jesus Christ’s redemptive mission. The stumbling block which the hristian theologicalphilosophical hermeneutics had to face is twofold: a) the necessity of betrayal, and therefore the necessity of evil in the Christian economy of salvation; b) the problem of freedom and the responsibility of guilt that collides with the Greek heritage of predestination and fate. Judas’ betrayal, as well as his suicide, paved the way for a radical redefinition of the frontiers of good and evil, of the lawful and the forbidden, of repentance and remorse. The secularized variant of the translator-traitor’ paronymy disclosed by Joachim du Bellay in the mid-16th century also belongs to the genealogical lineage of this theological- philosophical problematic. It was subsequently complicated and co-implicated in the link between ranslation, tradition and betrayal, that is, in the ambiguous relationship between “truth” and “fidelity”. Therefore, in the final pages, some exemplary figures of the modern mythographies of betrayal are outlined, both in the literature – the novels by Nikos Kazantzakis, The Last Temptation of Christ (and the film adaptation made by Martin Scorsese), and Judas by Amos Oz – and in the anti-Semitic political manipulations of the Third Reich’s language.