Overview

Who was Judas Iscariot and why did he betray Jesus? Despite the recent recovery of a Gnostic Gospel bearing his name, the centrality of Judas has gone largely ignored. Yet, because of gaps and incongruities in biblical accounts about him, artists throughout the ages have returned to the twelfth apostle, who inaugurates Jesus' death and resurrection. In this comprehensive, probing book, Susan Gubar explains how Judas came to stand for the Jewish people and how he personifies a composite Judeo-Christianity that illuminates ambivalent relationships between Christians and Jews as well as changing attitudes toward the body, blood, and money; greed and hypocrisy; suicide and repentance; homosexuality and divinity. Over twenty centuries, a figure of disgrace turns into a dignitary. Gubar shows how Jesus' most notorious disciple-known for a kiss-has provoked profound reflections on the problem of evil that still resonate today.

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9780393349665

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Reviews

""If Judas had not existed, God would have had to invent him. The divine script called for betrayal with a kiss, and someone had to be cast in that role. Judas, the intimate friend of the Son, became thus the indispensable collaborator of the Father and a figure of endlessly inviting ambivalence for the Western imagination. Susan Gubar has assembled a tour-de-force collection of Judas-art and Judas-literature and turned it into a Judas biography full of thought, heart, and fascination."" -- Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography ""A most readable account of the story of the New Testament’s arch-villain and his history over the past 2000 years, Susan Gubar’s Judas links Christian anti-Semitism with Christianity’s attempt to grapple with transcendent evil. The recent discovery of the ancient Gospel of Judas makes Gubar’s book a MUST READ."" -- Sander Gilma

A most readable account of the story of the New Testament's arch-villain and his history over the past 2000 years, Susan Gubar's Judas links Christian anti-Semitism with Christianity's attempt to grapple with transcendent evil. The recent discovery of the ancient Gospel of Judas makes Gubar's book a MUST READ. --Sander Gilma

Author Information

Susan Gubar is the coauthor of The Madwoman in the Attic, a foundational work of feminist criticism, and the coeditor of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. She has received the Natalie Davis Spingarn Writer's Award from the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana.

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