thistlechaser | The Gospel of Judas

As non-religious as I am, it probably would surprise folks how much I enjoy learning about the history and background of the Bible and such. Happily I caught The Gospel of Judas today -- it was the most interesting religious-ish thing I've seen in a long time.

I had had no idea that there were 30 or more gospels, and that one man picked which four would be in the Bible. (Four because there are four directions and four winds.) I'm sort of surprised that doesn't worry religious folks -- it very much would me. One person getting to pick what the One True Truth you believe?

Also, the various gospels were written 60-80 years after the actual events. Could you imagine a newspaper story written 60-80 years later? How accurate would it be?

ursulav (found through a link in

juliansinger's journal) worded this idea well (and very amusingly):

In many ways, I've always thought the early gospels resemble Jesus fanfic. You all get one character who was cool, and some canonical events, but how it proceeds after that was up to the individual writer

One of the reasons that The Gospel of Judas appealed so much is that the story just hadn't worked for me as-is. Judas was Jesus' friend, a close and trusted fellow, and he betrayed him why? For some money? "Just because he was evil"? As a story, it makes more sense that either he'd betray for a good reason or that he wouldn't betray at all.

For a long time I liked the way Jesus Christ Superstar handled it (Judas betrayed Jesus to save him), but the Gospel of Judas works even better for me: Judas did it because Jesus ordered him to. (The reason why Jesus would do that is way too long and complex for me to fully explain why here, but basically it was that the body didn't matter.)

Ha ha, come back to the posting window an hour or so later... Need to wrap this up, so I'll end this by saying that it didn't hurt the show at all that their actor for Judas was seriously hot. Sorry for the small screenshots, I couldn't find his name online with a quick search:

One picture.

Two.

Three.