Happy New Year. Judas is early.
I couldn't wait to get this into your hands. The third volume is live.
Happy New Year.
I wasn’t planning to release this until later in January.
But once I finished the final edits on the manuscript last night, I realized I couldn’t let it sit on a hard drive for another few weeks. This story demands to be out in the world now.
So I am publishing it ahead of schedule.
JUDAS: THE EXPENDABLE ASSET is live.
We have been taught that Judas Iscariot was a monster. A demon. A traitor who sold out his friend for silver.
I wrote this book because I wanted to find the man behind the myth.
Judas was the only one in the room looking at the logistics. He saw a movement bleeding cash, a Roman occupation tightening its grip, and a leader focused on sharing parables instead of wielding power.
He engineered a coronation. He just made the mistake of thinking he could control the outcome.
This is the autopsy of the crash.
You can grab the full ebook edition now (paperback later this weekend). Or, if you want to see where the money went, read the first three chapters below.
CHAPTER 1
THE LEDGER
The Judean Hills
Late Autumn, 29 A.D.
The coin was light.
Judas Iscariot held the drachma to the dying fire. He inspected the milled edge with a jeweler’s scrutiny. The silver was bright, but the rim was jagged. Shaved. Some Roman shopkeeper had clipped the silver before tossing it into the collection bag. Cheating God by a fraction of a gram.
Judas didn’t curse. He didn’t have the energy. He made a notation on the parchment scroll across his knees. Asset Depreciation. 4%. He dropped the coin back into the leather pouch.
It clinked against the others. A hollow sound. It vanished into the vast silence of the wilderness.
The camp was a symphony of incompetence. Peter snored near the ash pit. A wet rattle. A saw cutting through green wood. The twins, James and John, slept in a heap of unwashed wool by the embers. They hadn’t secured the food stores. Again. If a jackal came tonight, the Messiah of Israel would have no breakfast. The Sons of Thunder couldn’t tie a knot.
Judas rubbed his eyes. Road dust grit under his eyelids. He was thirty. The only son of wealthy parents from Kerioth. He was the Chief Financial Officer of a movement with no assets. No business plan. A burn rate that terrified him.
He looked across the fire.
The Master was awake.
Jesus sat on a stone a few yards away, staring up at the stars. He wasn’t sleeping. He rarely slept. He was just being. Existing in that terrifying calm. It unnerved Judas more than any Roman shout. He looked serene. Majestic in the moonlight. Completely unbothered by the price on his head and the Romans watching every road.
Judas looked at the bag in his lap. He looked at the sleeping fishermen.
Sheep.
The word was accurate. They thought the bread fell from heaven. They didn’t know he had haggled for the flour. They didn’t know about the reserve funds in the Jerusalem deposit. The money that would keep them from starving next month.
He was the only adult in the room. The only Judean among a pack of loud, emotional Galileans. They treated the mission like a perpetual holiday. They had the passion. The faith. Judas had the ledger.
The ledger was bleeding.
He tightened the drawstring. Double-knotted it.
He loved the Master. He truly did. He believed this man could be the King. But a King needed a treasury. An army. A schedule.
Jesus had none of those things. He had stories. Miracles he refused to monetize.
And he had Judas.
Someone has to save him, Judas told himself, watching the silhouette. Someone has to force him to win.
Judas put the scroll away. He lay down on the hard earth. He placed the money bag under his head like a pillow. It was uncomfortable. Hard and lumpy against his skull.
It was the only thing in the camp he could trust.
The sun broke over the ridge like a hammer. It shattered the cool of the morning.
The camp woke in chaos. Peter was loud. He was always loud. He kicked the fire to life and shouted orders no one followed. Thomas looked for his sandals, complaining about the rocks. Philip argued with Nathaniel about the route. A pointless debate about geography.
Judas stood up. He brushed the dirt from his robes. He checked the bag at his waist. Still there. He checked the seal. Intact.
“We move to Bethany,” Jesus announced.
The Master stood in the center of the confusion. He looked fresh. As if he had slept in a palace instead of a ditch. He smiled at them. That disarming, frustrating smile. It made you want to drop everything and follow him. Even when you knew there was no lunch.
“Simon has invited us,” Jesus said. “We will dine at his house.”
A muscle twitched in Judas’s jaw. Simon. The leading citizen of Bethany. Wealthy. A Pharisee, but sympathetic. This was good. Necessary. A dinner with Simon meant real food. Wine. An opportunity to secure funding for Jerusalem. Simon had been a leper. Jesus had healed him. The debt of gratitude was high.
Judas intended to collect.
“I will prepare the gift,” Judas said, stepping forward. “We should bring something. A gesture.”
Jesus looked at him. The Master’s eyes were dark. Unreadable. They caught the morning light.
“Just bring yourself, Judas,” Jesus said softly. “Simon is a friend. He does not require a tax.”
Judas nodded. He didn’t smile. Friends, he thought bitterly. Friends are expensive. Friends eat your food and drink your wine and offer nothing but conversation.
They walked for four hours. The heat rose from the limestone. It baked the air. The road to Bethany was crowded with pilgrims moving toward the city for Passover. A river of humanity. Desperate. Hopeful. Sweating.
Judas walked at the back of the column. The rearguard. He watched the others. He watched Peter stop to talk to every stranger on the road. Wasting time. Exposing their position. He watched John stare at the clouds, lost in some private revelation.
No discipline. A traveling circus.
They arrived at Bethany in the late afternoon. Simon’s house was a fortress of white stone surrounded by cypress and olive trees. It smelled of wealth. Of order.
Judas breathed it in. It smelled like home. Like Kerioth.
Servants met them at the gate. They washed the dust from their feet. They brought cool water in clay cups. Thin and delicate. Not the rough pottery of the roadside inns.
Judas sat at the low table in the courtyard. He smoothed his tunic. He felt civilized for the first time in weeks.
Lazarus was there. The man who had walked out of his own grave sat quietly at the end of the table. He ate slowly. Deliberately. He looked at the world with the detached amusement of a man who knew the punchline to a joke everyone else was still figuring out.
Martha served. She moved with efficient speed. Directing the servants with sharp, precise gestures. Judas liked Martha. She understood logistics. She understood that dinner didn’t appear by magic.
Then Mary entered.
The air in the room changed.
She didn’t walk. She floated. She moved past the servants, past the apostles. Her eyes fixed on Jesus. She carried a stone jar in her hands. Alabaster. White and veined with gold.
Judas knew the jar. He knew the seal. Imported. Rare.
The conversation stopped. Peter stopped chewing. Simon put down his cup.
Mary walked to where Jesus reclined. She didn’t speak. She knelt on the stone floor.
She broke the seal.
A sharp crack. It echoed off the courtyard walls.
The smell hit Judas like a physical blow. Spikenard. Pure. Undiluted. Thick and sweet and overwhelming. It smelled of mountains in India. Of kings.
Of money.
Judas did the math instantly. A reflex. A disease of the mind that translated the world into columns of loss and gain.
Twelve ounces. Import duty. Transport. Markup.
Three hundred denarii.
A year’s wages for a laborer. Enough to feed five thousand for a day. Enough to fund the movement for six months.
Judas watched in horror as she tipped the jar. The oil poured out. Heavy. Amber. It flowed over the Master’s head. It ran down his hair. It dripped onto his beard.
She didn’t stop. She poured it on his feet.
She took her hair down. A Jewish woman never took her hair down in public. Scandalous. Intimate. She wiped his feet with her hair. The oil soaked into the dark strands.
The room was silent. Only the sound of the woman weeping. The heavy scent of the oil filled every corner. It choked out the smell of the roast lamb.
A cold knot formed in Judas’s stomach.
It was waste.
Pure, unadulterated financial negligence. Sentimental garbage.
He looked at the others. They stared with open mouths. Mesmerized by the theater. They didn’t see the cost. The hungry mouths that three hundred denarii could feed. They just saw a woman crying.
Judas stood up.
He didn’t shout. He kept his voice reasonable. Professional. He was the treasurer. It was his job to speak for the ledger when no one else would.
“Why was this ointment not sold?” Judas asked.
He looked at Simon. At Andrew. He appealed to their logic.
“Why was it not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”
A valid question. A righteous question. The question any responsible steward would ask. He waited for the agreement. He waited for Jesus to nod. Yes, Judas, you are right. This is too much. We must be prudent.
Jesus turned. The Master looked at Judas. He didn’t look angry. He looked sad.
“Let her alone,” Jesus said.
The words were quiet. They carried the weight of a stone dropped into a deep well.
“Why do you trouble her?” Jesus asked. “She has done a good thing. You have the poor with you always. You can do good to them whenever you wish. But you will not always have me.”
Judas froze. Blood rushed to his face.
He had spoken logic. Sense. And he had been rebuked.
He felt the eyes of the room on him. Peter was smirking. He saw it. The big, dumb fisherman enjoyed this. He enjoyed seeing the educated Judean put in his place. Simon looked down at his plate, embarrassed. Lazarus stared at the wall.
Judas stood there, exposed. The man who counted pennies while the others counted miracles.
“She has done what she could,” Jesus continued. “She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.”
Burial.
A chill went through Judas. The Master was talking about death again. Defeat. Losing.
Judas sat down. He didn’t speak again.
He ate the food, but he didn’t taste it. The smell of the nard choked him. Too sweet. Cloying. It stuck to the back of his throat like grease.
He looked at Jesus. The Master smiled at Mary. He accepted this waste. He validated this chaos.
Judas realized the truth then. It hit him with the clarity of a slap.
He was alone.
Trapped in a room of children who thought money was magic and oil was love. They were going to burn through everything. Ruin the movement before it started.
Jesus was a dreamer. And dreamers got eaten by wolves.
Judas touched the bag at his belt.
The resentment started there. In the pit of his stomach. It rose up like bile. He had given everything to this man. His father’s business. His reputation. Three years of dust and heat.
And for what? To be scolded like a schoolboy in front of a room full of peasants. To be told his prudence was trouble.
He does not respect me. The thought curdled. He uses me. He spends what I save and then he shames me for saving it.
The dinner ended. The conversation turned to the march on Jerusalem. Peter boasted about what they would do. James talked about thrones.
Judas stood up. “I need air,” he said.
He walked out of the house. Into the garden.
The night air was cool. The smell of cypress trees was clean. It cut through the scent of perfume clinging to his clothes like a stain.
He looked toward the city.
Jerusalem was a glow on the horizon. The Temple. The Sanhedrin. The Romans.
Real power. Real money. Real authority.
He knew people there. Friends. Men who understood how the world worked. Men who did not pour fortunes onto the floor to make a point.
A thought formed. Dark and cold. Solid.
If he acts like a child, he must be treated like a child.
A child needed a guardian. Discipline. Jesus would not claim the Kingdom on his own. He was too soft. Too distracted by women and perfume and burial plots.
He needed a push. A crisis.
Judas looked at the bag. He opened it. He took out a single coin.
A Roman denarius. The face of Caesar on it. Stern. Powerful. In control.
Judas gripped the coin until the metal bit into his palm. He knew what he had to do. He would go to the city. Talk to his friends. Find a way to save this movement from its own leader.
He was the only one loyal enough to do what was necessary.
He put the coin back. He turned and looked at the house. Laughter came from the window.
Let them laugh.
He would be the one to save them all.
CHAPTER 2
THE CIRCUS
The Mount of Olives
Sunday Afternoon
It was the colt of a donkey. A small, stubborn, shaggy beast that had never been ridden and looked like it knew it.
Judas stood on the edge of the road, his arms crossed over his chest. He watched the Alpheus twins throw their outer cloaks over the animal’s back to make a saddle. They were grinning like idiots. They thought this was a coronation.
Judas looked at the animal. Then he looked at Jesus.
The Master was standing calmly by the roadside, waiting for the beast to settle. He wore no armor. He held no sword. He wore the simple, dust-stained robe of a Galilean itinerant.
He is going to ride that thing into the capital. The realization turned his stomach. He is going to challenge the might of Rome and the authority of the Sanhedrin while sitting on a farm animal.
It was a farce.
“It fulfills the prophecy,” Nathaniel said, standing beside him. Nathaniel was beaming, his face flushed with the naive optimism that Judas found exhausting. “Zechariah said, ‘Behold your King comes, lowly and riding on a donkey.’”
“Zechariah was a poet,” Judas snapped. “Pilate is a governor. Pilate rides a white Arab stallion flanked by sixty cavalrymen. That is what power looks like, Nathaniel. This? This is a carnival.”
Jesus mounted the colt. His feet nearly dragged on the ground.
The crowd erupted.
They had been gathering all morning. Pilgrims from Galilee, curiosity seekers from Perea, true believers who had seen Lazarus walk. Thousands of them. They surged forward. Shouting. Waving palm branches they had torn from the trees. They threw their cloaks on the dusty road. A patchwork carpet of rags for the donkey to step on.
“Hosanna!” they screamed. “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”
The noise was deafening. The roar of a mob that smelled blood.
He heard desperation in the roar. He looked at the faces. Toothless old men. Women with sick children. Fishermen with calloused hands. A refugee column looking for a savior.
The procession started down the steep slope of Olivet. Judas walked near the back. Hood up. He didn’t want to be recognized. A burning, prickly heat on the back of his neck.
Shame.
He was the treasurer of the Kingdom of Heaven, marching in a parade that looked like a carnival act.
They rounded the curve of the mountain. Jerusalem burst into view across the Kidron Valley. The white marble of the Temple gleamed. Blinding. Massive. The fortress of Antonia loomed over it. A dark reminder of who really owned the stone.
The procession stopped.
Jesus sat on the colt, looking at the city. The shouting died. The crowd waited for the signal. For the lightning. For the command to storm the gates.
Jesus began to weep.
Judas stared.
The Master was crying. His shoulders shook. Tears ran down his beard.
“O Jerusalem,” Jesus sobbed. “If you had only known the things that belong to your peace...”
Judas felt a cold spike of adrenaline.
Peace?
They weren’t here for peace. They were here for power. To take the throne of David. You didn’t take thrones by crying over the real estate.
He is weak, the voice whispered. He is terrified. He sees the walls and he breaks.
The memory hit him. Unbidden. Sharp as a knife.
John.
John the Baptist, rotting in the dungeon of Machaerus. Judas had followed John first. He had stood in the Jordan, mesmerized by the wild man who ate locusts and screamed at kings. John had power. Fire.
And then Herod Antipas had arrested him.
Judas remembered the nights he had pleaded with Jesus. Save him. You have the power. Break the walls. Call down the fire.
Jesus had done nothing. He had let John sit in the dark. He had let Herod chop off the head of the greatest prophet born of women.
He let John die because he was afraid to act, Judas thought. And now he is going to let us die.
The procession started moving again. The weeping was over. The crowd, confused but hopeful, resumed their chanting. They reached the valley floor. They crossed the Kidron. They began the ascent to the Golden Gate.
Crowds from the city poured out to meet them. The press of bodies was suffocating.
And there, near the gate, watching with arms crossed and lips curled, were the people who mattered.
The Sadducees. The priests.
Judas saw a face he knew. Jehozar. A prominent Sadducee. A friend of his father’s family. A man who wore silk while Judas wore wool.
Jehozar spotted him. He didn’t look impressed. He didn’t look frightened.
He laughed.
He pushed through the crowd, flanked by two temple guards. He grabbed Judas by the shoulder. He didn’t whisper. He shouted over the hosannas.
“Judas!” Jehozar yelled. He slapped Judas’s back. A gesture of mocking camaraderie. “Cheer up! Why so troubled?”
Judas tried to pull away. The crowd pinned him.
“Look at this!” Jehozar gestured to Jesus on the foal. “Magnificent! Join us while we acclaim this Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews as he rides through the gates seated on an ass!”
The men around Jehozar laughed. A cruel, sophisticated sound.
“You really picked a winner, Iscariot,” Jehozar sneered. “A clown King for a clown kingdom.”
Judas felt the blood drain from his face.
This was the fear he had carried for three years. The fear of being a joke. Of having bet his life on a fraud.
He looked at Jesus. The Master was smiling now. Waving at children. Oblivious to the fact that the serious men were laughing at him.
He doesn’t understand. He thinks this is a victory. He doesn’t see the trap.
Jehozar leaned in close. His breath smelled of expensive wine.
“Get out while you can, Judas. Before the Romans stop laughing and start crucifying.”
Jehozar released him and disappeared back into the crowd.
Judas stood there, buffeted by the pilgrims. The “Hosannas” sounded like gibberish. The palm branches looked like trash.
He looked at the backs of the other apostles. Peter shouted. Andrew tried to organize the mob.
Sheep. Blind, bleating sheep following a Shepherd who wouldn’t carry a staff.
Judas touched the money bag at his belt.
I cannot let this happen. I cannot let us become a punchline.
If Jesus wouldn’t be a King, someone had to make him one. If Jesus wouldn’t fight, someone had to force him to draw his sword. John the Baptist had died waiting for Jesus to act. Judas would not make the same mistake.
The procession moved through the gates, swallowed by the stone maw of the city.
Judas followed. But he wasn’t singing. He was calculating.
He needed a meeting. A back channel. He needed to talk to the men who weren’t laughing.
The circus was over. It was time for the operators to take the stage.
CHAPTER 3
THE GHOST
The Camp at Pella
January, 28 A.D. (Eighteen Months Earlier)
The river smelled of stagnation.
Judas sat by the dying fire, his hands wrapped around a cup of warm water. He wasn’t drinking. He was watching the road to the south.
They had been waiting for two days.
Rumors had drifted up from Machaerus like smoke. A birthday feast for Herod Antipas. A dance. A drunken promise made to a girl who asked for a murder.
Judas had dismissed them. Herod was a fox, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew John the Baptist was a prophet. He knew the people loved him. Killing John would be suicide.
Besides, Jesus was here.
Judas looked across the camp. The Master was teaching. He was sitting on a large rock, speaking to a crowd of fishermen and farmers about the Kingdom. He looked calm. He looked serene.
He knows, Judas thought. He must know. He has the sight.
For a year and a half, John had rotted in the dungeons of Machaerus. A year and a half of darkness. Damp stone. Silence.
Judas remembered visiting the prison. The smell of the cell. Urine and mold and despair. John’s eyes, burning with a feverish question: Are you the one? Or should we look for another?
And Jesus’s answer?
Tell John the blind see and the lame walk.
Words were useless against iron doors.
Judas had pleaded. One word, Master. One command. The angels would tear that fortress apart.
Jesus had refused. “Suffer me also this,” he had said.
Suffer.
Judas tightened his grip on the cup. The clay cracked in his hand.
A shout came from the perimeter. Judas stood up.
Three men stumbled into the camp. Covered in dust. Clothes torn in the traditional sign of mourning. John’s disciples. The loyal guard. The men who had stayed near the prison walls, praying for a miracle that never came.
They walked straight to Jesus. They didn’t bow. They looked like men who had seen the end of the world.
The crowd parted. The silence was absolute.
“John is dead,” the leader said. His voice was flat. Dead. “Herod has beheaded him.”
Judas felt the ground tilt.
He waited for the explosion. For Jesus to stand up, eyes flashing with divine wrath. For the judgment of God to fall on Herod like a hammer.
Jesus stood up. He looked at the messengers. He looked at the crowd.
“John is dead,” Jesus repeated softly.
He didn’t curse Herod. He didn’t call down fire. He didn’t summon the legions.
“Tonight,” Jesus said, “go into joint council. Arrange your affairs. Tomorrow we go into Galilee.”
Galilee.
He was retreating. Running away.
Judas stared. A cold, hard knot formed in his chest. It was clarity.
John the Baptist. The Lion of the Wilderness. The greatest man born of women. Butchered by a drunken king to please a dancing girl. His head served on a platter like a roast pig.
And Jesus was going to Galilee.
Judas walked over to the messengers. He grabbed the leader by the arm.
“The body?” Judas whispered.
“We took it,” the man said. He wept now. Silent tears cut tracks through the dust. “We put it in a tomb at Sebaste. It was... incomplete.”
Judas let go of the man’s arm. He walked away from the fire. Away from the crowd. He walked until he reached the edge of the river.
He looked at the water.
He remembered his own baptism. John’s hand on his head. Heavy and strong. The fire in John’s voice when he proclaimed the Kingdom.
He believed, Judas thought. He believed this man was the Messiah. He gave everything to prepare the way. And this is his reward. A headless corpse in a borrowed tomb.
Judas looked back at the camp. Jesus was dismissing the crowd. He was calm. Already thinking about the next sermon. The next parable. The next town.
He let him die.
The thought was treason. It felt like truth.
He has the power to save, but he lacks the will to use it. He is too high above us. He sees eternity, but he doesn’t see the blood on the floor.
If Jesus wouldn’t save John. His cousin. His herald. His friend.
Who would he save?
Would he save Peter? Would he save Judas? Or would he let them all rot in Roman prisons while he preached about the lilies of the field?
Judas touched the knife at his belt. A small thing. Useless against a legion. But solid.
I will not end like John, he vowed to the dark water. I will not be a martyr for a passive King.
If the Messiah refused to fight, then the Messiah needed a general. Someone who wasn’t afraid to force the issue. Someone who understood you couldn’t build a Kingdom with words alone.
John had waited for Jesus to act. And John had died waiting.
Judas Iscariot would not wait.
He turned back toward the camp. The firelight flickered against the darkness.
He would follow Jesus to Galilee. He would carry the bag. He would keep the books.
But he would never trust him again.
The ghost of John the Baptist walked beside him. Headless and accusing. Whispering the lesson Judas had finally learned.
Power unused is not virtue.
It is negligence.
And Judas would not be negligent.
<3EKO
Thank you for reading and sharing. Starting the year with a finished project feels right. I hope you enjoy the file, and I’ll see you next week with more.
Wow! No other words. Thank you.
My amazon cart has all of your books in it ready. I can’t wait to read all of them!