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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Gospel according to St. Judas:, November 29, 2006
This terrific novel purports to give an alternative account of the life of Jesus, as witnessed by his childhood friend Judas who didn't, in this telling, hang himself (or even betray Jesus in the first place) being guilty only of skepticism where his fellow disciples were not. In this telling, after the crucifixion Judas lived to a ripe old age and finally got to tell his story in his dotage.
I fear Stead's novel is a couple of millennia late for Judas' global reputation to be restored; all the same, My Name Was Judas is beautifully written, thoroughly researched, and gently (and therefore devastatingly) subversive.
Subversive in exactly the same way that Monty Python's Life of Brian was - not because it is blasphemously irreverent (it isn't) nor because it is alleges itself to be true and therefore falsifying of biblical texts (it doesn't), but because the account it gives, even though overtly fictional, is so much more plausible than the traditional story. Where Brian made the "mute" man speak by accidentally treading on his toe, Judas the sceptic explains away most of Jesus' miracles in terms of more prosaic causes - often times nothing more than a bit of hyperbolic hearsay and a distinct - and entirely credible - willing suspension of disbelief from those followers who, with their own agenda, propagated the story.
The Jesus described by Stead is a much more believable radical revolutionary than the one of Christian myth. As a result, the reader is constantly obliged to ask himself, "how could I have bought the gospel stories in the first place?" - much the same question, though more deftly phrased, that Richard Dawkins has bludgeoned his readers over the head with in his The God Delusion. Stead's presentation is 100% more stealthy and, consequently, effective.
The other remarkable thing about this book is that a New Zealander like Stead should be writing a non-domestic story at all, let alone with such elan. New Zealand literary circles, such as they are (we New Zealanders, on the whole, don't go in for reading in a big way), are usually at pains to assert their domestic cultural credentials, and New Zealand literature which doesn't is viewed by the defensive Kiwi literati as either worthless or a bit too big for its boots. This "cultural cringe" factor leads to mostly worthy but humourless and dull output, which is probably *why* New Zealanders don't read much, come to think of it. Stead is one of New Zealand's foremost living writers, so perhaps he can get away with it, but in any case such an openly outward looking perspective is to be celebrated, especially when done so well.
Throughly recommended.
Olly Buxton
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A secular humanist take on the Gospels, March 10, 2008
This review is from: My Name Was Judas (Paperback)
This take on Judas Iscariot (here Judas of Kerayot) begins intriguingly with him now calling himself Idas of Sidon, now aged seventy and being a follower of Greek rationalist thought. He tells us of the friendship between him and Jesus from the time when they were six or seven years old. Stead is wonderfully inventive and utterly credible about their childhood together and about what they experienced of the Roman occupation of their land. After their adolescence, Judas lost touch for a few years with Jesus, who had gone to study with the Essenes at Qumran. The forty days he spent in the wilderness were part of the apprenticeship the Essenes imposed on a candidate who wanted to become a full member of the community: he met the test but refused to join, having found in the wilderness his mission to preach to the world. When he returns to Nazareth, Judas, grief-stricken by the loss of his young wife and solaced by Jesus, follows him - and from that point onwards we compare this Judas' account with the one given in the Gospels. For a while, as Jesus works as a healer, it beautifully embroiders on the Gospel story. Those he healed included Lazarus, whose cure was described metaphorically as being raised from the dead. Other `miracles' recounted in the Gospels, like walking on water, are also the result of metaphors being transformed in the telling into literal events.
Gradually Judas' account diverges increasingly from that of the Gospels, in fact, feeling and interpretation. Jesus is shown as positively hostile to his mother, whose mere presence is enough to turn him from preaching peace and harmony to saying that he brought not only peace but the sword. Mary Magdalen is conflated with the unnamed sinner who washed Jesus' feet. Quarrels and competition between the disciples became part of their daily lives, and Judas was especially resented because he showed that he did not surrender so entirely to Jesus' charisma. His rational mind did not much care for Jesus' parables. The other disciples already regarded as a betrayal his lack of total belief in the claims Jesus was now making. Judas feels increasingly uneasy at Jesus' increasing militancy, at his threats that fire and brimstone would consume unbelievers, at his insistence that salvation could come only through him. Judas began to worry about Jesus' sanity, and, with the terrible example of the death of John the Baptist before him, he was worried about the danger to which Jesus was exposing himself and his followers.
In Judas' account of the Last Supper, there is no reference to Jesus pronouncing that one of the disciples would betray him; and in the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane there is nothing that could suggest that Judas could have betrayed Jesus to the Romans.
And there is an ingenious explanation for the empty tomb.
Judas was present at the foot of the Cross. It was the disciples who fled who invented the various stories of Judas' guilt and disgusting end. The Judas who lived to hear the news of the destruction of the Temple by the Romans mourns for Jerusalem and for the Jewish people; but if ever he had any faith in God, he has long since lost it. He does not, however, need God to believe in the compassionate and humanistic teaching that Jesus preached at the beginning of his mission, before he preached hellfire and came to believe in himself as the Son of God. A secular humanist will certainly find this beautifully written story about Jesus and Judas more acceptable and more credible than the Gospels.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not a fairytale, February 26, 2009
This review is from: My Name Was Judas (Paperback)
This is a well written account from the perspective of the much maligned Judas about his experience with the man named "Jesus". I am a lapsed Catholic, brought up dutifully on the word of the scriptures and in the belief that Jesus was the one true Messiah and the miracle worker as claimed.
As I got older, I began doubting the message, as it just didn't ring true for me. Perhaps also a significant factor in this "doubt" was the fact the written accounts were taken down many years after the fact. Chinese, or Roman in this case, whispers, is a powerful modifier in all stories. Interpretations of his life by modern writers may cause some people to question their faith - although I think if you are truly a person of faith, fictional stories will not persuade you in any way. Although, it should be noted that the Bible itself is a work of fiction, but let us not be swayed by that little fact.
Regardless of what you believe, I enjoyed this book immensely for the presentation of a man and his power to attract followers for a message. Much of the book deals well with all the instances of "miracles" and the explanations for the "denials and betrayals" are also credible. We will never what really happened, and much debate will always rage about it, but for those of us non-believers, this work of fiction gives a possible explanation as to why the legacy of Christianity has remained. This book, as well as the fine work of Kazantzakis in The Last Temptation of Christ illustrate the much of what was written about the man we know as Jesus was to take prophecies, stories and legends and craft them around this man. Messiah or not, his life was made to fit the stories, and the stories written to create the phenomenon.
This book has certainly piqued my interest in the other works of this author and has continued to raise questions in my own mind about who was Jesus. Read it with an open mind, and make your own decision.
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