I think it’s safe to say that this is the most difficult parable in the Gospels. Not only are there many contradictory interpretations of it floating around, none of which is entirely satisfactory, but the passage itself offers multiple interpretations of its own, some of which contradict each other – and none of which are entirely satisfactory. At the same time, it is, in my opinion, easily the most entertaining of all the parables, and I probably had more fun writing this play than any other play so far.
In the course of writing it, I stumbled upon a possible interpretation that actually fit the parable perfectly. The only problem was that it was based on an erroneous idea: that Jesus was intending to overthrow the Romans and set up his own earthly kingdom. This is, of course, what many of the disciples often thought they were up to, but we know now that was not how things turned out, and what’s more, we know that Jesus knew it then, too. By this time in his history with the group, he’d already tried to explain to them that he was destined to die, but to no avail.
But that doesn’t mean that his disciples might not have come up with this possible interpretation, since they did still believe that the Messiah was going to be a political messiah, and so I put it into their mouths in this play. More specifically, I put it into Judas’ mouth, and thus, the play suddenly became something more than just another exercise in parable-twiddling. It became the first inkling of the downfall of Judas.