Judgment of Judas

Jesus told the 12 in the upper room (or after the Rich Young Ruler: Matt 19:28) that they would sit on twelve thrones judging the tribes of Israel. A number of people have noticed that Judas was present. Was this promise conditional or not? You could argue that Judas abandoned that promise, and that's probably the right answer. Or you can wallow off into the fever swamps where Judas is really the good guy doing his Master's will.

Or we could follow Williams (Terror of Light) and wonder what an apostle in hell would be doing. Judgment without mercy waits for those who have not shown mercy? He had no mercy on himself--he'd be an unpleasant judge to end up facing.

If you wanted to tell a story centered around this, you have several problems. One is simply plotting: who has to face Judas? The obvious approach would have people select him themselves, unexpectedly but appropriately. But then you run into the characterization problem. It isn't easy to assign the "tribes of Israel" distinctive personal or symbolic attributes (Meyers-Briggs?) and correlate them with the 12 apostles. For that matter, we don't have clear character sketches of most of the apostles, at least in modern literature. I don't doubt you could borrow lots of material from Origen, but he isn't part of our background culture and so the story would read as though you were making it up arbitrarily.

So, while (I think) it would be an interesting concept for a story, I can't think of many authors who could make it go. Maybe Gene Wolfe?