The Gospel of Judas: A Novel

Simon Mawer is brilliant and definitely up there among my favourite writers.The Gospel of Judas is the fourth book I have read by this writer and he never disappoints.The story line centres around Leo,a catholic priest who has an affair with a married woman and the dire consequences of that affair. He plays a leading role in translating an ancient scroll which is believed to be written by Judas and there are consequences to that. As with other stories by Mawer we are taken back in time (World war 2) to be introduced to Leo's mother which provides another insight into Leo. The story is complex in many ways which provide the reader with much opportunity for thought.Leo was perhaps difficult to place, his character not very well defined, I felt, but small criticism for a wonderful book.I love Simon Mawer's use of language which he obviously loves to play with, and I suspect he has a deep respect and liking for women! (Even though some of them are such manipulative wenches!)I recommend highly The Gospel of Judas to anyone who enjoys intelligent but easy to read literature.

The initial premise of the book was so great that I couldn't wait to read it, by the time I got to the end I couldn't belive that I had read it. The flash backs did nothing to move the book forward or to explain anything that happened later. The priest and his mistress sub-plot didn't either. The central issue of what finding a document like a gospel written by the hand of Judas Iscariot would mean to Christianity was treated with a cop-out sort of ending. Also the fact of Judas being alive after the crucificion when two different gospels in the bible give two completely different accounts of the death of Judas would also seem to be an interesting avenue to explore, since this gospel seems to contradict both accounts as much as they contradict themselves. In the long run the revalation of something like a gspel written by Judas would probably not change anyones ideas about religion. People who don't belive would have a lit tle more confirmation of their disbelief and people who did believe would write it off as a hoax, but the idea could have been explored in a much better fashion.

This is a must to read. As said, " The truth always finds the light". It is wonderful. Marsha, Enchanticals

The characters are not developed to the full, rather they are indulged upon: their most interesting side would be their atonement but again this aspect is superficial and self-assolutory. The prose has a repetitive mannerism that is preposterous enough that you can recognize right away which sentences are going to be found after a page.This was my first reading of Mr. Mawer, I hope "The Glass Room" will be better.

This book lets us look at the character of Judas in his own time and feelings of those around him.

I didn't realize it was a novel.I was looking for an apocryphal letter frrom the 4th century. Thanks anyway. Bob

I found the first part of the book interesting, well written - but seemingly very slow, tedious and I was actually ready to put it down (something I always hate doing...). I then did my usual process reserved for these moments - i started reading the book backwards from the last chapter...what an incredible book! The last 50-100 pages, which deal with the unraveling of the actual gospel relics, are superb - yes, there is the necessary foundation laid in the first part of the book, but this is the very essence of the novel. The message here - skim through the first part, and really enjoy the last third!I do find the story line about Leo's mother not really contributing much to the somewhat powerful novel; could have easily been omitted. I am not historically versant in the Judas gospel, but it certainly compels one to hit the reference books for some background information!The book, the story and to a great extent - the ending - will linger for a while...well worth the read.

While it has a papyrus from a Dead Sea cave that offers a radically different version of Christ's life and the founding of the church, like Da Vinci Code and its numerous imitators, this is not a thriller.It is a novel about a priest's doubt, a complex drama in which the discovery of a putative "Gospel of Judas" plays a decidedly minor role and only really in the last third of the book. The story of Father Leo Newman, a British papyrologist who lives in Rome, has as much in common with Bernanos' Diary of a Country Priest and J.F. Powers' Morte d'Urban as it does with the garden variety biblical thriller.Mawer in fact has such an understanding of the celibate's mind, the emotional stunting that accompanies the vow of chastity, the fragile foundation in faith for this type of dedication, that it would seem he was in the seminary. If he was, his bio gives no indication of it, so perhaps he has simply gotten to know a number of priests well in his 30 years of living in Rome. In any case, he describes those feelings with considerable insight.Less surprising is how Mawer can make Rome palpable with a few deft strokes. These are not elaborate descriptions but telling details that betray an intimacy with the sights, sounds and smells of the Eternal City. I've only spent a smattering of weeks in Rome, but the city came rushing back into my memory in Mawer's narrative.There is more to say about the plot but it is the language that is in the forefront. It is a muscular prose, as vivid in its description of the tangible as the intangible. It is a sophisticated, sinuous narrative that has room for Latin, Italian, Greek, German seamlessly embedded in the text. He works at it, as evidenced in this statement from an interview he gave:"To write decent novels you have to be in love with the language. You have to feel the texture of it between your fingers, mould it like clay, carve it like marble. Despite all the creative writing programs in the world, I am sure this ability cannot be taught. So I try to use the meanings of words, of place names, of personal names, to inform the narrative."This is exactly what comes across. In this book, just for instance, Mawer uses the redolent names of Rome's churches to convey the grandeur, the historicity, the plasticity, even, of these monuments -- Santa Maria Maggiore, San Crisogono, Santa Maria dell'Anima, San Lorenzo fuori le mura. His descriptions in various vignettes from the past of the picnics and outings that his mother, the wife of the German ambassador to Italy, made in wartime Rome evoke the splendid ruin of Italy's history. Such pursuit of civilized leisure even as the Axis war machine rains terror on the rest of Europe is reminiscent of Visconti's "The Damned."Judas Iscariot, the apostle, is the author of the gospel that Leo comes to believe is genuine. But the novel is full of other Judases. Leo's mother betrays her lover in a way that can know no forgiveness (except from the betrayed), and Leo himself earns the title of Judas for his work on the Gospel of Judas.The details of the gospel are interesting, how it transforms the narrative of Jesus' life simply by shifting a couple of small facts. Whether genuine or forgery, whether a truthful account or deliberate misinformation, the gospel of Judas has little chance of challenging the centuries-old Christian faith. History has too much invested in the received tradition to accept any other truth, even if factual. Yes, the gospel has information that could shake Christianity to its foundations, but it can never earn the credence that would allow this to happen.Just where the author stands in all this become clear in his account of Leo's "pilgrimage" at the end of the book, which explains why the church will remain triumphant and why it's futile to seek the truth.Mawer clearly doesn't set out to write bestsellers. This is anything but a potboiler, though it is a compelling read and has its own suspense. Nor will his willingness to question Christianity and make a faith-challenged priest his hero endear him to legions of believers. But the reader doesn't have to identify with Leo. The reader can see him as a flawed, in some ways tragic individual. The Gospel of Judas is a question, not an answer, and the reader can decide where the truth lies.

Father Leo Newman is asked to prove or disprove the validity of an ancient scroll written in the first century AD, purporting to be a true account of the life of Jesus told by Judas Iscariot. If true it will destroy Christian beliefs.But Father Newman is not only an expert on the deciphering of the writings on ancient scrolls, he is a Roman Catholic priest who has fallen in love with Madeleine, a married woman with a troubled personality.I was drawn into the book in the first few pages and it captured my imagination. It is beautifully written. I could feel the torment of the relationship and also Leo's shock and concerns about the revelations in the papyrus.The ending was totally unexpected. The story is not tied up in a convenient bow. It contains all the anguish that is within the story.I know I could read this again and gain even more from the story. In three words - a magnificent read!

Despite its title, this pretty accomplished novel is not connected - not at all, in no way and not by any stretch of the imagination - with the recent outpouring of thrillers mining the fertile lode of catholic history, medieval legend and modern-day religious relativism. Those reviewers who expected something like the Da Vinci Code perhaps should have read the blurbs more carefully. They do Simon Mawer and his work a great disservice with their disappointed 1s and 2s.Sure, the Gospel of the title is a papyrus that needs to be deciphered. But that's it. No coded message, no mystery, no buried treasure. The treasure in this book is its treatment of its main theme : the theme of deception and betrayal. Almost every character is a Judas in some way - by extension we are all traitors and betrayed. And when betraying ourselves, we are both at the same time. The book is pervaded with the smells and sounds of betrayal : the clipping of a woman's heels on the pavement, the odours of the room where vows are broken. The shifts from one story to another jolt us into realising that the same traitorous acts recur generation after generation and echo beyond our own lifetimes, shaping others.Even though this isn't Da Vinci Code mark 14, I would recommend it. It's an interesting, thought-provoking and well-written book.

The unexpected weaving together of several stories into a minor masterpiece by a seasoned sensitive writer.Also enjoyed The Glass Room very much

Although the themes of the book are priestly celibacy, faith and doubt, and biblical history, it is by no means a religious book. Rather it is a first class novel which happens to have a priest as the main character.

Good Thanks

It took only one book - The Fall - to awaken my interest in Simon Mawer's fiction and now that I have read the Gospel of Judas - the third - my admiration of his quiet, insightful prose and inventive storytelling is confirmed.

A gripping tale.

I have read several books by Mawer, and find him a thoughtful, deep, well crafted writer (most especially evident in the wonderful The Glass Room)But in this book, the Gospel of Judas, where betrayal and loss of faith (whether religious or day to day faith, trust, belief in each other) is woven into the several generational stories in the book, I kept hitting up against a discomfort in the language used to describe female anatomy.As the central character is a priest, losing his faith, losing his celibacy, unwillingly riven by desire, the constant harping on about the `mammaries' the `dugs' the `slopping breasts', the sagging buttocks of the female characters, I initially thought were part of Leo's character, and that perhaps this illustrated something of the mechanism whereby desire might be kept at bay by the celibate. This began to break down when writing moved into third person descriptive, and I found myself deeply offended at what seemed to be a language of anti-female disgust.Mawer is such a careful, precise user of language that his insistence on using strictly anatomical, rather than vernacular, language to describe the delineations of desire felt initially curious `patella' for kneecap, `axilla' for armpit and then, in the end, offended, where each of the male characters involved in sex with a woman, with desire, lust and love for a woman, in either the first person or the third person narration, refers to the ugliness of the female form - saggings, floppings and sloppings.I have to say that the offensiveness I found in this made it very difficult for me to engage with the `real' drive of the book, the arguments around faith and betrayal, due to what felt like a revelation about the writer's psyche - as repellent as a book which displays unconscious racism in its use of language, which appears to stem from the writer, rather than being the view of a character who may be being explored and laid bare.The last third of the book, where the potential implications of evidence which challenges 2000 years of Christianity, is interesting, but somehow there is an arid quality to the writing of this book - I realise of course part of the problem is the arid, cerebral, inhibited nature of the central character, but somehow, there is a lack of warmth, passion and viscera in Mawer's writing (apart from the language of distaste at fleshy female bodies) which failed to really engage me in the various crises of faith and betrayal inhabited by all the central characters in the 4 timeline storiesI found this earlier book such a disappointment, from the later writer of The Glass Room, where ideas and thought moved so seamlessly between the manifest and the imagined The Glass Room

As expected

I had thoroughly enjoyed reading The Girl Who Fell from the Sky and wanted to try more from this author. It was a reasonably good holiday read but I would say nothing more than that. The plot regarding the Gospel felt no more convincing than other more Davinci Code type books and I got a little bored with the war-time parts of the story even though they should have been important to the formation of Father Leo with regard to his mother and his chaldhood. The more recent past of the affair was well put but the constant Mary/Madelaine/etc. references annoyed me eventually. This is much more than a Brown-esque genre book and I certainly learnt a little from it but I call it a reasonable read whilst thinking The Girl Who Fell From The Sky to be an excellent book. The Girl Who Fell From The Sky

This is rather a literary novel, about attitudes to faith,sex and death, masquerading as a 'history & mystery' novel about this (presumably fictitious) gospel. Actually, it doesn't masquerade: the literary part of the book is well advanced when the gospel turns up. As it was for the gospel that I bought the book I found this a little frustrating at first. However, it is beautifully written, Stuff happens (in two separate timelines) is considered and evaluated. Deaths (violent) occur: faiths are tested. So I warmed to the book as it went on and in the end I couldn't put it down. When the gospel material turned up I was spellbound by the knowledge of ancient, religious writings that scholars genuinely appear to have (which we mere mortals are never privy to) and how this enabled them to evaluate the supposed gospel just through a few intelligible words (much of the document having, of course, perished or become illegible over many centuries). My only other caveat is that Mr Mawer changed viewpoint a lot and didn't give clues as to whose head we were in and when we were sufficiently often for this reader. It's a style. And a bugbear of mine. But what is so unlikeable about signposting what is to come for Your Reader? Nevertheless, a fine book.

The author seems to have been more concerned with his writing style than with actually telling a story. And what story there is to this book is really not terribly interesting. If I hadn't been stuck on a long train journey with nothing else to read, I would probably not have bothered, but would have put it down in favour of something interesting. I did finish it, but it really wasn't worth the effort.As another reviewer has commented, this book is not what the title leads you to expect. Sure, there is a sub-plot relating to the discovery and translation of an ancient scroll, but that's not actually very significant in the context of this book.The story is actually three interleaved stories. One obviously takes place in WWII Italy (the date of 1943 is mentioned at one point), but it's very difficult to work out exactly when the other two take place beyond the obvious fact that in the second (chronologically), the central character has to be 30+ years old (putting it in the 1970s or later) and older still (though by how much is not clear) in the third. Do the dates matter? Well, arguably not, but I would certainly have found it more comprehensible to have this sort of thing set out more clearly.Would I bother to read it again? Would I recommend it? Absolutely not either. It's no accident that I left my copy in a Glasgow hotel rather than bother to carry it home on the train.Overall, a huge disappointment.

In a lot of ways, this is a very interesting work, a description of a Catholic priest stuck in an unworldly, scholarly life, losing his faith and coming into contact with a married woman who he comes to love.Unfortunately, the book is packaged as, sold as, a Dan Brown type thriller.These elements of the novel are rather underplayed. The Dead Sea scoll "Gospel of Judas" is only described in a couple of the chapters and the reader is left asking whether these parts would have been more exciting than some of the Nazi era backstory that fills about a third of the book.Having said that, this is infinitely superior to the brain dead "Da Vinci Code".The Biblical theorising is convincing at first glance, although some of the theories do seem to boil down to the fact that two Biblical characters (e.g. Joseph, Mary's husband, and Joseph of Arimethea.)Rome itself is well evoked. The ending is rather flat, the only religion we are left with is the gaudy, cheap commercialised form. All rather sad.

The book is used. Stained and dirty. The pages are creased.