To add to the Judasology of fiction there's also Eric Linklater's JUDAS
The story is spans seven days and is subdivided into seven chapters, each day/chapter detailing what goes on in the mind of Judas Iscariot from Palm Sunday to the following Saturday.
From the blurb of the First edition ( 1939):
"The conflict which took place in the mind of Judas Iscariot on Palm Sunday, and during the momentous days that followed it. Provides Mr. Linklater with a theme of unusual and gripping interest. Judas is represented as a wealthy young man , a member of those modernists of their time, the Sadducees. The emotional development which leads to his suicide is revealed as due to a conflict between his love for Jesus and his fear of the effects which Jesus' s teaching will have. For Judas, a pacifist believing in property and social stability, sees in the teaching an encouragement for the Jewish Nationalists which will lead to rebellion against Rome, to chaos and disaster for Palestine. Opposed at first, to the arresting of Jesus which his friends in authority demand, Judas suffers a complete change of heart after seeing Mary Magdalene washing Jesus's feet, and determines on the final betrayal. A sense of power and importance comforts him in his determination, but after the crucifixion he breaks down, and kills himself. Little " historical detail" and "local colour" obscure the interpretation of Judas's actions during those seven days. Mr. Linklater has concerned himself chiefly with character and action, with the complexity of good and bad in Judas's nature.. The motives of Judas Iscariot provide an enigma of which Mr. Linklater's solution makes a coherent, and extremely moving story."
In the fourth Form of secondary school we performed two scenes from Linklater's "Crisis in Heaven" ( in which Abraham Lincoln, Pushkin, Helen of Troy, Florence Nightingale, Aristophanes Frederick the Great, Voltaire, meet in heaven) - my one line in the performance : "Look to the lady" (as Florence Nightingale fainted).
I can imagine another kind of elysian drama, with Abacha, Achebe, Benjamin Adekunle, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Herbert Macaulay, Emeka Ojukwu, Bishop Ajayi Crowther, Chief Akintola and allies meeting in heaven and interacting up there)
More Linklater : In Nigeria, in 1981 (the oral tradition) I remember my Better Half telling my son the story of Linklater's The Wind on the Moon which he read a little later when he returned to Sweden to continue school.
Times have changed. Today my son has already been through the First part of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" with his son.
I wonder when they will go through Orwell's Animal Farm - which I read to my son when he was slightly older than my grandson who is now seven years old….
I am now at the most important crossroads of my own story – at this point the implications could be cataclysmic ….
On Saturday, 5 November 2016 21:56:04 UTC+1, funmiara wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVvPq2n2e54&list= PL01D3860577C75A38 The Gospel of Judas 1/9: Documentary: National GeographyThe Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel purported to document conversations between the apostle Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ. The document is not claimed to have been written by Judas himself, but rather by Gnostic followers of Jesus. It exists in an early fourth-century Coptic text, though it has been proposed, but not proven, that the text is a translation of an earlier Greek version. The Gospel of Judas is probably from no earlier than the second century, since it contains theology that is not represented before the second half of the second century, and since its introduction and epilogue assume the reader is familiar with the canonical Gospels. The oldest Coptic document has been carbon dated to AD 280, plus or minus 50 years.Instagram: Aramada_ObirinOn Twitter: @BookwormlitCulture, Art History, Film/Cinema, Photography, World Literature, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Child Welfare, Lifestyle & Community.
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