This book is a non-canonical early work of Christian literature, that some, probably most Christians may like to call "Gnostic" or its close cousin term "heretical"; but I'd rather lump under the generous benefit-of-the-doubt term "fanfic" - if for naught else then to free up myself to do a post on it without getting a new arsehole ripped for me by Protestant gate-keepers of Orthodoxy in the comments, not that these generally exist, as nobody reads this blog. Dear reader - if I'm talking to you, yes, this is your fault; the fact that Christians haven't been crowding the feedbacks on my slowly entropizing rabbit-hole trip down the weirder darker forgotten corners of Christian thinking, and therefore peer-pressuring me back into conformity, has literally been the enabling factor driving me to read ever more 'riskier' shit from aforementioned weirder & darker corners. Only joking, but not really.
Anyway, I think as a text this is a really interesting piece of literature - it has a strange section with apocalyptic symbolism and stuff, and some nice background conversations between Jesus and Judas vaguely similar to what we see in the perhaps comparable fanfic of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ - though there are levels of poetic poignancy to this text particularly that do provoke some interesting thoughts on the dynamics amongst the disciples in the gospel story, and I personally didn't find it particularly at all hard to read while imagining whoever wrote it to be a properly well-intentioned and orthodox-doctrine-holding Christian of the early Church, but maybe you'll disagree. The only way you'll never know is if you refuse to read it because it's not in the Bible - which is the given excuse I've heard most evangelicals from my upbringing background give in reference to any "fanfic" text or similar like this; which is pretty weird when you think about it, given that they wouldn't bat an eyelid at a text like this, even though it in my opinion takes far greater artistic liberties with Christian doctrinal elements than, say, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, if one was to presume that that was also fanfic and not as is claimed by many scholars to be a relatively cogent compilation of likely actual Jesus-sayings.
Anyway, I think as a text this is a really interesting piece of literature - it has a strange section with apocalyptic symbolism and stuff, and some nice background conversations between Jesus and Judas vaguely similar to what we see in the perhaps comparable fanfic of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ - though there are levels of poetic poignancy to this text particularly that do provoke some interesting thoughts on the dynamics amongst the disciples in the gospel story, and I personally didn't find it particularly at all hard to read while imagining whoever wrote it to be a properly well-intentioned and orthodox-doctrine-holding Christian of the early Church, but maybe you'll disagree. The only way you'll never know is if you refuse to read it because it's not in the Bible - which is the given excuse I've heard most evangelicals from my upbringing background give in reference to any "fanfic" text or similar like this; which is pretty weird when you think about it, given that they wouldn't bat an eyelid at a text like this, even though it in my opinion takes far greater artistic liberties with Christian doctrinal elements than, say, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, if one was to presume that that was also fanfic and not as is claimed by many scholars to be a relatively cogent compilation of likely actual Jesus-sayings.
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