Aside from Hitler no one in history has been more villified than Judas Iscariot, the twelfth apostle. Assuming you believe anything written in the Bible, the story goes that Judas was the trusted secretary of the Christ Man, who, to pay off his bookie, sold Jesus to the Roman authorities for a few pieces of silver. Later (according to Mel Gibson), he went crazy, was stalked by the devil, and hung himself.
Well, it might be all a lie. Wow, lies in the Bible! What a shock! Some smart people have uncovered a long-lost manuscript that tells of the betrayal and murder of the friendly Jesus from a different perspective: Judas’s. See, Judas wasn’t the devil incarnate, he was actually Jesus most trusted and loyal servant who knew secrets none of the other apostles knew. He was a rather groovy dude, who didn’t so much betray Jesus and send him to his doom as help him on his way to escaping the bonds of our mortal world and ascending to heaven.
Whether that’s true or not will probably never be known. What’s certain is that religious folk will be pretty quick to dismiss it… or at least they should be since the official God sanctioned story says otherwise. God is notoriously touchy about competition. But carbon dating shows that the 13 sheets of manuscript date from 220 and 340 AD, so true or not they’re pretty old. Of course carbon dating also says the Earth is millions of years old, while the Bible says 6,000. So if you believe in the Bible, you might want to ignore carbon dating altogether. But whatever they are, they’re old enough that the dust has settled and someone can make a movie out of it.
That someone is National Geographic, who according to our friend Richard over at FilmStalker, bought those blasphemous Judas docs from the scholarly folks who previously owned them. Their plan is to exploit the hell out of them, and release a book, a film, and probably a National Geographic cover story in which Judas hangs out with topless African women.
Richard suggests that they’re looking for something in the vein of The Da Vinci Code, and that seems like a good supposition. Religion has of course never been hotter, and if you mix in some serious controversy like this, you can take that to the bank. Nat Geographic sees dollar signs, and they’re selling off Judas’ life story for a big pile of silver.
