The Best Analysis of the “Gospel of Judas”

The controversy surrounding the “Gospel of Judas” raises significant and important questions for intelligent Christians.  How are we to understand this document?  What does this text suggest in terms of theology?  How do we put the entire question into context?

An excellent guide to these questions is Simon Gathercole, a bright young scholar who serves as Lecturer in New Testament Studies at Cambridge University.  In The Gospel of Judas (Oxford University Press) Gathercole offers the best available analysis of the Gospel of Judas and its significance.

The book is scholarly but accessible to any educated reader.  Gathercole addresses all the significant questions head-on and teaches his readers a good bit about the New Testament as he goes along.

His book is a needed corrective to the misleading media hype about the “Gospel of Judas” and his theological focus is greatly appreciated.

From the book:

The four Gospels in the New Testament are the only surviving Gospels which derive from the time period of the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ ministry.  Unsurprisingly, as the documents which most closely reflect the time and life-setting of Jesus, they present him as he had really been remembered–as someone who lived and breathed the Old Testament and knew himself to be playing a special role in its fulfillment, rather than as a thoroughly un-Jewish figure: disembodied, detached from the world, offering not hope but knowledge.