Bestselling author redeems Judas in new book

Disgraced master storyteller, Lord Jeffrey Archer, has taken up the role of being the rather unlikely successor to Jorge Luis Borges and Nikos Kazantzakis by publishing his radical re–telling of the story of Judas Iscariot: The Gospel According to Judas.

Like his predecessors, Archer has set out to rescue the reputation of history's most infamous traitor, a move which many see as an attempt to resurrect his own flagging career after he was convicted for perjury and perverting the course of justice and jailed in 2001 after lying in a libel trial against a newspaper which said he had had sex with a prostitute.

Like his other best–sellers which have till date sold 125 million copies worldwide, the latest book promises to live up to its hype if indications are anything to go by: Archer has already roped in respected Australian theologian and papal adviser Father Francis Moloney and has received the 'blessings' from Vatican. And the plotline? The book, written in verses contains tales of love, deception and betrayal and claims that Judas, far from betraying Jesus, actually sought to save him. The story, which also contends that Jesus was a prophet (Jesus did not walk on water, he did not turn water into wine at the marriage feast at Cana or calm the storm in the Sea of Galilee) rather than the Messiah, is told by the (imaginary) son of Judas, Benjamin Iscariot, who claims that his father did not commit suicide.

"This is a gospel – and I think we're the first people to do that," said Lord Archer sitting elbow to elbow with Prof. Moloney and the Pontifical Biblical Institute's rector, Father Stephen Pisano at a press conference in Rome, March 20, and patting the slim brown tome he was presenting.

The 101–page book looks and feels like a canonical gospel. It is written in verse and printed with gilded edges. Its glossary notes about the Biblical texts was written almost entirely by Maloney.

"I wanted the final work to look and read like a gospel, not a short story or a novel," Archer said.

And though it is believed to have received the quiet endorsement of the Pope Benedict XVI himself, its contents are likely to raise eyebrows among practicing Christians. The reason: The 'gospel' is written through the eyes of Benjamin Iscariot, Judas' imaginary eldest son according to whom Judas did not hang himself, as recounted in Matthew, but lived into old age and died as Jesus did – crucified by the Romans.

The authors of the novel have argued that Judas should not be treated as a traitor, but as a man whom history has treated unfairly.

"Judas' story in 'The Gospel According to Judas' is about handling failure. And although it is Judas' story, the hero of the story is Jesus of Nazareth," Melbourne–born Maloney said.

"[A] fiction backed up by scholarly research" is how Archer has put it. "I thought this would not be credible if it were a Jeffrey Archer novel. I wanted it to be a gospel, I wanted it to look like a gospel, I wanted it to be in verse, but most of all I wanted it to have credible scholarship."

Archer claims he came up with the idea 17 years ago, prompted by an interest in the mysteries surrounding Judas in the New Testament. He felt that Judas had been historically misunderstood and singled out among the disciples. "All of them showed their human failings, but every one of them ended up...a saint," Archer said. "And Judas, who showed his failings, ends up as the most vilified person in history. It was the extreme black and white that annoyed me."

"And I decided to look into it more carefully. The result of that was that I looked and found that only one gospel suggests that Judas hanged himself, and that is pretty well certainly taken from Zachariah," he said. "Matthew took that from Zachariah and put it in. It's not in Luke, John or Mark. And then I looked at the garden of Gethsemane where he betrayed him. But in John, it said Jesus knew all things that would come to pass."

"Well, if he knew all things that would come to pass I thought that's a bit rough on Judas. So I thought I'd like to write the story of Jesus of Nazareth seen through the eyes of Judas, but I needed a leading scholar to back me and was lucky enough to find Professor Moloney," he said, adding, "And together we worked for a year and we have The Gospel According to Judas."

So how did Moloney, who served as President of the Catholic Biblical Association of America and Chair at the Catholic University of America and was appointed by the Pope John Paul II in 1984 to the International Theological Commission to the Holy See, where he remained for 18 years, get involved in this?

According to people in the know, the professor was drawn into the project by no less a figure than Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, his former teacher and the Pope Benedict's only serious rival for the papacy. The cardinal, in turn, had been contacted by Father Michael Seed, a British Franciscan who is an old friend of Lord Archer. All of which goes to prove the value of networking, even in the Roman Catholic Church.

Moloney's collaboration was also the key to securing help from the Pontifical Biblical Institute.

Looking uncomfortable, however, Father Pisano, stressed his presentation of the book did not mean "the institute, the Vatican or the Pope endorses this book."

Pisano said the pontifical institute had no commercial interest in the book and Moloney's contribution was largely historical and theological.

"The book is a novel, there is no ancient document as there was for the recently published Gospel of Judas," he said.

According to Moloney, one reason for his cooperation in the work produced by "fertile imagination of Jeffrey Archer" was because scholarly works like his own "had made little impact on the increasing skepticism surrounding the Christian Church (and increasingly, within the Christian Church), while deeply flawed and uninformed works like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion have become bestsellers."

Maloney wanted to write a text that shows the philosophy behind what a gospel is and to show that they were not written "to communicate the brute facts of history" but "to communicate a message about what God has done for humankind in and through Jesus Christ." The word "gospel" stems from the ancient Greek for "good news."

The Gospel According to Judas, which comes in a mock–leather cover with purple flyleaves, was meant to look and read like a gospel, said Archer.

It recounts the traditional story of Jesus's life, but seen from the standpoint of the apostle who betrayed him and with some novel twists that Moloney said were all possible, though not necessarily probable.

Instead of Judas as the betrayer of Christ, the book has him trying to smuggle Jesus out of Jerusalem to safety in Galilee.

The plan fails when the pair is betrayed to the city's elders who demand that Jesus be crucified.

Judas was not paid 30 pieces of silver. He did not intend Jesus to be captured. He did not hang himself or die in a ghastly accident, but survived to a ripe old age to die, as did Jesus, crucified by the Romans.

No doubt, such a comprehensive rehabilitation is bound to raise questions about the Catholic church's view of what Lord Archer called "the most vilified sinner in history."

Moloney said another reason for taking part was to "tell a story of Judas in which every single one of us can find themselves. Failure lies at the core of human experience and both human and Christian maturity emerge from an ability to handle failure."

Moloney added that he had a tough time trying to keep Archer from writing "dramatic conclusions" and getting him to stick to the facts.

"Time and time again Jeffrey wanted to write dramatic Jeffrey Archer conclusions, which would make great reading but I had to continuously say 'Jeffrey, that is not possible in terms of 1st century Judaism and Christianity,'" he said.

The biggest disagreement involved Judas' opinion of Jesus. In the book Judas begins by thinking Jesus is the Messiah, but comes to reject this. Archer wanted him to change his mind again and be converted after Jesus' death.

But Moloney told him "That's impossible. If it happened there would be something in the tradition that would tell us that."

Maloney said Pope Benedict "may well have read" the book and recalled the pontiff's October 18, 2006 message to the faithful: "To understand the life of Judas means to understand decisive aspects of the mystery of man's relationship with God."

Both the authors know that the book is bound to generate controversy.
"In the Church there is an extreme right wing and there is an extreme left wing and they will not like it for two totally different reasons," Archer said.

"People on the extreme left wing won't like it because we are not sufficiently radical...the extreme right wing that will say 'how dare you even tamper with these texts,'" Moloney added.

'The Gospel According to Judas,' launched in Rome, March 20, with simultaneous publication around the world in eight languages – English, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, German, Spanish and Serbian – is accompanied by a CD (audiobook) narrated by Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu of Cape Town.

"It's so authentic. It sounds just like the kind of thing someone's son would do to try to rehabilitate their father's name," Archbishop Tutu said.

Proceeds of the book are to be used to build a school in Samoa.

Meanwhile, Archer has fiercely contested any notion that he identifies with the reviled Biblical villain, or that he is attempting a similar rehabilitation of his own name.

One thing that certainly sets Archer's (who claims to be a lifelong Anglican) own position apart from Judas's is his likely earnings: the author, whose talent for turning out bestsellers remains undented by his time in prison, stands to make considerably more than 30 pieces of silver.

Another thing: The 'gospel' – which does not carry the names of its authors on the cover – has no relation to the so–called "Gospel of Judas," a controversial second century religious text.

About the Book

Jeffrey Archer's 22,000–word book "The Gospel According to Judas" is an engaging work whose publication follows last year's discovery of an ancient Coptic manuscript known as the Gospel of Judas, which maintains that Jesus actually asked his disciple to betray him.

A pure work of fiction, like other Christian conspiracy thrillers, including Dan Brown's 'The Da Vinci Code,' this 'gospel' is a fast–paced, mostly plausible exploration of why one of Jesus' handpicked disciples betrayed him with a kiss, setting in motion the trial for blasphemy that led to the crucifixion on Golgotha.

Archer's conclusion – that Judas was duped into fingering the Son of Man – is provocative, as is the book's mock leather cover and pages with gilded edges. The text resembles scripture, with numbered verses, margin notes and a burgundy ribbon bookmark. The language is as laconic as the Greek of the original gospels, and the whole book is designed to look like the real thing – or, more mischievously, to cast doubt on the veracity of the New Testament.

Straying away from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Archer's 'gospel' attempts to rehabilitate Judas.

Interestingly, the Gospels in the New Testament say little about Judas expect that he was one of the 12 disciples, and he "covenanted" with the chief priests to swap Jesus for cash. Only the Gospel of Matthew speaks about the end of Judas: it says that Judas repented and hanged himself. But this scarcity gives us leeway to reconsider who Judas was. And, Archer makes the most of it, notably by anchoring Jesus in the Jewish culture of his age.

Archer's narrator is Benjamin Iscariot, the first–born son of Judas who was reared "in the strict traditions of the Torah." Like his father, Benjamin has "come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet and a true son of Israel, but not the long–awaited Messiah." His account dismisses the virgin birth and the resurrection.

This sets the tone for a story that emphasizes how the disciples repeatedly asked whether Jesus was the Messiah and, if so, why he flouted so many Jewish customs. Why would a man of God break traditions of purity by touching "the hand of a woman who is not his wife," as Jesus did when he cured Simon's mother–in–law, let alone touch a leper to heal him?

Archer also inserts Judas into familiar scenes. When people bearing a man "sick of the palsy" could not reach Jesus, they climbed on a roof and "let him down through the tiling," the Bible says. In Archer's version, Judas "advised" them to do so and "even helped them remove some of the tiles."

The journey to Jerusalem here becomes a road story in which Jesus' actions – how could he sleep under the roof of a sinful tax collector? – lead Judas to conclude that Jesus was "no more than a prophet," and a dangerous one at a time of Roman occupation.

Thus, fearing for both Jesus and Israel's survival, this Judas confides in a Scribe, who pledges to help spirit Jesus to safety. But the Scribe was a double agent who was working for Jerusalem's Jewish elders and handed Jesus over to be killed.

Thus Judas is horrified when his kiss turns Jesus over to the Sanhedrin, where Chief Priest Caiaphas has determined Jesus must die. In short, Judas was betrayed.

All in all, though Archer's "gospel" may outrage some readers, it will give others a renewed appreciation of who Jesus was and why he was nailed to a cross.

'The Gospel According to Judas' is published by Macmillan (101 pages, $16.95, 9.99 pounds).