In Christian history, Jesus Christ gathered twelve people to his side to be his apostles and spread his beliefs throughout the world. According to The Bible, Judas Iscariot accepts payment of thirty silver coins from the Sanhedrin priests and agrees to point out Jesus to the local authorities so that he can be captured and tried for purporting to be the Son of God. Judas’s betrayal results in the trial, crucifixion, and resurrection as depicted later in the Gospels. The traditional telling of this matter is done by the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--, but what if Judas himself got a say in the matter? In the 1970s, a papyrus codex was discovered near Beni Masah, Egypt which appears to be from Judas’s point of view. In Reading Judas, Elaine Pagels and Karen King tackle the new text to see if it can shed new light on old mythology.

There are a lot of things to learn from a shredded piece of paper from 1,700 years ago. First, Christianity was, is, and will always be an infinitely nuanced and an infinitely personal set of beliefs. Each iteration of the religion in each person begets a new system. In the Bible, each voice has a different Christianity, and in this new text, we hear the voice of the oft-reviled Judas Iscariot. The text is short, but packed with historical details, research, and annotations to the original document. It is a Coptic translation of a 2nd century Greek text, so things can definitely get lost through the years. Judas’s act, seen through Gnostic eyes, is one of love and loyalty, setting in motion the inevitable resurrection of his friend and the salvation of mankind.

Pagels’s and King’s text is nice and tight. They know that not everyone will be pleased to read about the “good” deeds of Judas Iscariot. Traditionalists will see this as a deliberate blurring of the lines between good and evil, but the codex is still a legitimate piece of history. Scholars can debate among themselves about the literal meanings of certain words and phrases, but they are more qualified than I in this matter. Overall, this was a very interesting book that illuminates a rather shady character in the Bible. ( )

Pagels and King present the Gospel of Judas like a retelling of Wicked from Judas' point of view. It's not altogether bad; I was expecting something with a little more scholarly depth. Everything is related back to many of the gnostic materials with some of the oddities that accompany many of the gnostic texts as well. Their focus seems to be more on the book as a contradiction to substitutionary atonement, which if that were the case there's been more than 1200 years of better atonement theology out there. Their other concern is trying to make it a viable gospel instead of critiquing the work as a whole to see if it bears any truth. What little they do find they confer by referencing other gnostic material, which is dated so bad that even a literary scholar would have thrown it out. ( )

I found this book a bit disappointing, as it seemed to be much more a rehash of the author's book on the Gnostic Gospels, and really didn't give enough information on the gospel of Judas, which is what I was hoping for in a book about the gospel of Judas. ( )

This is a fun one. Short and sweet, Karen and Elaine share their unique interpretation of this fascinating discovery. Scholars of the gospel of Judas would never consider it mainstream Christianity ... can any book who paints a Christian villian as a hero be mainstream? ... and yet, there remains a lot of controversy about exactly how to classify that ancient Gospel. Part of the problem, of course, is that it's far from complete; and while that's certainly not the fault of Pagels and King, it does disrupt the readability of their book when pieces of the manuscript are missing.

The subtitle of the book is "The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity." This discussion of early Christianity is, precisely, what makes the Pagels/King book interesting. They delve into the conflict between Paul and Peter, and how later writers (such as the book of Acts) purposefully glossed over this conflict in an attempt to bring unison.

The book is in two parts: First, a discussion of the gospel and it setting, and second, an interpretation of the gospel itself with commentary. Karen King translates it herself, and their understanding is unique, quite different from other coverage of the gospel of Judas, as they are unafraid to give serious attention to alternative strands of Christianity and their meaning of the cross, the suffering of martyrs, and of Jesus' divinity. These were important topics in the early years of Christianity, and Christians today are, for the most part, quite unaware of the divisive strands that existed in those days.

Pagels and King do present controversial views (I found myself often disagreeing), but regardless of your beliefs or opinions, this is a fascinating read about an equally fascinating topic. ( )

The Gospel of Judas presents, for most modern readers, an unfamiliar and uncomfortable portrait of the relationship between Jesus and Judas Iscariot. Perhaps Judas was not betraying Jesus, but instead was the only enlightened disciple, who understood that all evils all lay in the material world, and the true believers would transcend it to a higher spiritual realm once they realized that. Therefore the crucifixion would have meant very little - the true spiritual Jesus merely 'shedding' his vulgar skin - and Judas played an integral part in this plot.

Such Christian Gnosticism had been condemned as heretical in the proto-orthodox early church, but was popular among many Christians, especially persecuted ones. It's easy to see its popularity: suffering is temporary, as long as the spiritual self remains unblemished, spiritual salvation is all that matters. On the other hand, the ones doing the persecution at present will be damned to their own material and evil world. This seems to have been the society in which the Gospel of Judas was written, due to its condemnation of the 'other' apostles and support of Judas.

Reading Judas includes the full text of the Gospel, a verse-by-verse commentary, and several chapters detailing the situation and conflicts of the early Christian church. Even though the gospel is placed somewhat near the end of the book, readers should read it first to have a better sense of what's going on in the other chapters. It's a very clear and concise look at this alternate Christianity in the first few centuries of the church - a testament that the religion was hardly a harmonious movement but rather many people with many theologies adjusted to their own social climate. ( )