Muggle Religious Studies: Is Snape The New Judas?

Abstract

The intersection of biblical texts with popular culture is endlessly fascinating and always changing as culture continues to provide new materials to discuss. It is the objective of this thesis to place two well known characters, one from the New Testament and one from popular literature, into dialogue with one another in order to see how they interact with and influence each other. The character of Judas from the Gospel of John will be placed into comparative conversation with the character of Severus Snape from J.K. Rowling’s book series, Harry Potter. Reception History, with a brief section of Literary Criticism that considers characterization techniques, will be the methodological approach for this thesis study. The result of this study is to see how the character of Judas in Christian tradition has inspired and shaped the formation of the literary character of Snape, and to also consider how when seen in reverse, the character of Snape causes us to revisit our understanding of the character of Judas. The questions sparked by such a study encourage readers toward a deeper understanding of their personal theology and toward the pursuit of further explorations of Bible and Pop intersections.