Academics aren’t the only ones rewriting history these days. The fiction category has so far been dominated by “Fatherland,” the 1992 best seller by Robert Harris about a Europe living with the consequences of a Nazi victory. Now there’s a powerful new entry: “The Gospel of Judas,” by Simon Mawer (330 pages. Little, Brown).
Mawer, a Rome-based British novelist, has taken on nothing less than the core beliefs of Christianity. His what-if premise is the discovery of a fifth Gospel, written by Judas. It portrays the death of Jesus as the product of a power struggle between ordinary mortals, and provides incontrovertible evidence that no bodily resurrection took place. Mawer’s eloquent novel, steeped in the atmospherics of today’s Rome, raises-and, to a large extent, answers-the inevitable questions about how the Vatican, Israel and others would react to such startling news. But, as he says, his real interest is in “how this would affect my characters as much as what dramatic effect it would have on the church or the world.”
A sound instinct, since counterfactual fiction works only if, as in this case, the characters are compelling and the story is riveting. At its center is Father Leo Newman, a Roman Catholic priest and expert in Koine (ancient Greek) who is dispatched to Israel to decipher the incendiary scroll that turns out to be the Judas Gospel. In Rome where he lives, Leo is already undergoing a crisis of faith and falling in love with a British diplomat’s wife. He feels he is on the brink of betrayal even before he comes to grips with the account of the man whose name has become synonymous with the concept. “It became a novel about betrayal on all sorts of levels,” Mawer says.
And about celibacy. “The solitary was ingrained in him, like a scar burned into the skin,” Mawer writes about Newman. “Celibacy means more than sexual abstinence: it means you become sufficient unto yourself, contained, self-absorbed.” It’s easy to infer–and Mawer confirms this is correct-that he believes the church should end its celibacy requirement for priests. But he also concedes that celibacy was “an astonishingly powerful” means of securing total commitment, particularly in an earlier era. In the novel, he leaves it to the British diplomat’s wife to explain its logic even today. “Love is the most selfish thing in the world,” she tells Newman. “That’s why the Church still demands celibacy.”
All of which suggests that this novel is hardly an anti-Christian provocation, although some believers will take offense. Mawer is anything but strident. Raised in the Church of England, he converted to Roman Catholicism as a young man, and now considers himself a lapsed Catholic. “One of the reasons for the sliding of my faith is that I don’t think that the Catholic Church, or most traditional Christian churches, stands up very well to a modern, historical inquiry,” he says. In particular, he argues that the existing Gospel shows that many people didn’t recognize the risen Jesus. “Whatever the Resurrection was, it wasn’t an actual bodily resurrection,” he says.
From there, it’s not much of a stretch to Mawer’s what-if premise. Is it legitimate for him to take that step? “How can we ’explain what happened and why’ if we only look at what happened and never consider the alternatives?” British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper has argued, rebutting those opposed to what-if history. He has a point. By exploring the hypothetical, the current crop of writers offer more than just alternative scenarios; in the most intriguing works, like “The Gospel of Judas,” they examine our deepest assumptions and beliefs. Leo does exactly that and, in the process, he’s-yes, this is no accident-resurrected. In a book based on the premise that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, resurrection is a recurring theme. A factual history would never have imbued these personal struggles with the same emotional resonance.
