The Gospel of Judas has sort of fallen off the radar screen for most people, and it's a pity. Ehrman traces the history of the gospel in modern times - where it was found, what happened to it, how he came to be part of it - and then traces the history of Judas through the gospels, both canonical and apocryphal. He compares the standard traditions of Judas with the story in the Gospel of Judas, and analyzes the meaning of different traditions about Judas. He asks who was Judas? Why did he betray Jesus? His answers are anything but conclusive, but with the evidence available, how could it be anything else? Well written and lucid, as I have come to expect from this author. ( )

I'm giving this book four stars because of a few key points. First, Ehrman makes a good argument for the Jewish origin of gnosticism and shows lots of links between the gnostic Gospel of Judas and early Jewish writings. Second, he presents a plausible reconstruction of why and how Judas betrayed Jesus, and this explanation makes sense of a lot of the puzzling points of the sketchy and differing gospel narratives. On the other hand, Ehrman, as always, repeats himself a lot, but here even more than usual. Listening to the audiobook as I was, there were several times I was afraid I had accidentally skipped back to a previous section. I hadn't. It was just Ehrman approaching the same subject from a slightly different angle and repeating a lot of the same supporting evidence. If this book had been better organized, it could have been much shorter and, I think, still have the same impact. In the end, of course, this new gospel is no more a tale of what actually happened than much of what is in the canonical bible; rather, it is a story that sheds more light on the varieties of Christianity in the 2nd Century. Like gnostic re-conceptions of the meaning of Genesis, which turn the story on its head by making the creator god evil or incompetent and Adam and Eve's eating from the Tree of Knowledge a necessary step in discovering their divine spark and connection back to the one true god, the Gospel of Judas turns the story of Jesus' ministry on its head to show that Jesus preached gnosticism and that Judas was the only one who really understood--and sacrificed himself to free the divine Christ from his earthly body. If this theme sounds a bit familiar, perhaps you have read "Three Versions of Judas" in Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. With the discovering of the Gospel of Judas, the idea of Judas being a necessary element in the story of Jesus, and perhaps being a man who understood the role he had to play and the eternal infamy it would earn him, seems to go back to the almost the beginnings of Christianity. ( )

A mixture of religious overview of the text and a brief look at the scummy world of artefact trading in how it was found and sold. Ehrman goes does very brief versions of material better covered in his other books (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, Forged, Lost Christianities) as background to interpreting the new gnostic text about Judas. The text itself is not covered in full, but is analysed with excerpts. The figure of Judas is analysed through a gnostic lens, traditional christian lens as well as the historical lens.

This book is a jack-of-all-trades and has seemingly disappointed a lot of people, but as comparative religious studies it's excellent, covering a wide swath of context to better understand the significance of the find. ( )

When I picked up this book I was expecting a lot of "this is exactly what the Gospel says" and I didn't get that, which I was pleased about. What I found was a very entertaining and thought provoking look at what it is like to "discover" one of these lost works. The book begins with the author's introduction to the text, then dives deeper into parts of the text compared to writings that were included in the Bible. Quite a bit of what you read deals with Gnosticism compared to Christianity, as the Gospel of Judas Iscariot is a Gnostic work. An important item that is pointed out is that this is the book OF Judas, not ACCORDING TO Judas, which helps you put this historical writing (and all of the others) into an even better perspective. The author's writing style is both entertaining and educational and I felt this was an excellent introduction into the study of religious text and written history. I plan to seek out more works by this author on any subject available. ( )

not sure how to rate this book. i liked the style that he gave the information. it was a fairly easy read. it was very clinical which is what i was wanting but to be honest i didn't completely finish it. by the time i got half way through this lost information i was done. you must keep in mind that this wasn't written by judas and that it was written in the mid-3rd century but it was written by gnostics for gnostics and although most of it just doesn't ring too it does get to a point that i decided it became blasphemous enough i had no desire to continue on.