The Gospel of Judas [Paperback]

It would be an interesting to read a novel in which Judas tells the Gospel story from his side; but don't be taken in by the title of this book, since most of it is not about that. The first mention of Judas is 140 pages into a 345 page book, then nothing substantial about him for the next 120 pages while Mawer returns to more novelettish if intricately plotted and sometimes quite powerfully dramatic material before picking up the Judas Scroll again. I must not give away the ingeniously constructed theory of who, according to this fictitious papyrus, Jesus actually was and of what happened to his crucified body, but the 30 pages, few as they are, in which the text is deciphered and commented on, are to my mind the most interesting in the book.

Mawer is very knowledgeable about the New Testament, about inter-testamentary history, about the Dead Sea Scrolls, about deciphering papyrus fragments, about the Roman Catholic Church and about the history of Imperial and Christian monuments in and around Rome. The "scholarly" parts are fine; unfortunately they are deeply embedded in a novel which is full of clich?s with which we are familiar in other and better novels about the Catholic Church: the Catholic priest, initially hovering between faith and scepticism, who falls for a seductive married woman (and later, defrocked, has another woman, too); several obligatory passages of erotic writing; nuns "pouring out their confession of peccadillo and scruples"; and, for good measure, a stock Nazi character doing stock Nazi things during the German occupation of Italy after the fall of Mussolini. The language, too, which a blurb on the back finds "poetic", actually varies from the tired clich ("red lipstick made a scar of her mouth") to the irritatingly voulu: "Leo smelt the sour and flinty stench of mendacity". (Mawer has a thing about smells). Every foreign phrase is carefully translated; and sometimes he lectures us on the etymology of words he uses (English, Italian, Greek), irrespective of whether or not that enriches the use of the word in that particular context. Occasional similes are fine (and some in this book are not at all bad), but here we sometimes have several to a page or even a single paragraph, and that device, too, quickly becomes tiresome. There is plenty of symbolism, some again not at all bad, but much of it clunkily obvious. A wilfully and initially confusing mixed up chronology, and an initially confusing alternation between the principal character writing or being written about in a first person and a third person narrative, for which I cannot see any real purpose, added to my annoyance with the mannered way in which this book is written.

If such things do not bother you, you may well be "mesmerized" and "gripped" by the book's "complex plot", as that very distinguished scholar Lisa Jardine, in one of the blurbs on the back, says she was; and you will then feel that I have harped too much on the negatives which so spoilt my enjoyment.

This haunting and ironic novel takes us into the heart, mind, and family history of a dedicated priest living in Rome, giving the reader a rare look at his insecurities, the internal battles he faces, and the constant choices he must make. Father Leo Newman is an expert in ancient scrolls from the Dead Sea. Called to investigate a new, intact scroll in Jerusalem, he makes the startling discovery that this scroll is a record of what happened immediately after the crucifixion, as witnessed by Judas and Paul. Its transcription and publication will call into question the accuracy of the more familiar gospels, all of which were written later than this scroll, and which have, until now, been the underpinnings of Christianity and its traditions.

Mawer takes us into the mind of Father Leo as he battles the demons of doubt unleashed by his discovery, and other, entirely mundane demons represented by his love for Madeleine Brewer, the wife of a diplomat. As the novel spirals from the present to the very near past and into the more distant past of Father Leo's childhood during World War II and back again, we see fascinating parallels between the betrayals Father Leo commits, and those of his mother, and of Judas. The roles of Mary Magdalen, Madeleine, and Magda, all of whom even share a name, continue these intriguing parallels and expand the novel's themes.

As Mawer investigates the many kinds of love--love of mankind, love of God, and romantic love--he also shows us the multiplicity of threats to these kinds of love, and the difficulty of facing personal challenges armed only with black and white arguments. Father Leo, an honest man doing the best he can to be true to his church, is, strictly speaking, guilty of betraying both individuals and the church, while Judas, usually thought of as the most villainous of betrayers, possesses a core of honesty here which calls into question the traditional view of him in later gospels. This tour de force of a novel is a stimulating and thought-provoking study of love and truth, connecting a modern man with a much vilified disciple and raising the big question of whether a long-range good can come from a short-term betrayal and whether the price is worth it.

This was a truly boring novel, the author skips between three time periods with no seeming reason (the story of his mother gave no added value to the main story plot.) Most of the characters are one sided and I was able to guess what would happen about a quarter of the way through. I only finished the book because I kept hoping it would get better, it never did though.

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