The Vatican quickly responded to erroneous reports suggesting it endorsed a new work of fiction co-authored by noted British novelist Jeffrey Archer, which masquerades as the "Gospel of Judas" and contains material at odds with Catholic doctrine.The book, "The Gospel According to Judas," by Benjamin Iscariot, is ostensibly the work of the Apostle Judas Iscariot's son Benjamin. In fact it was co-authored by Archer and a Roman Catholic priest, Francis J. Moloney.
The book was launched on March 20 at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, a Vatican institution, and the location of the launch was interpreted in media accounts as an indication the Holy See had given its stamp of approval to the work.
The day after the launch, Father Paul Mankowski, a Jesuit scholar at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, published a point by point on-line rebuttal to false claims and misleading descriptions in several articles about the event, including the assertion that the Pope had given the book his blessing.
"This is just an unfortunate circumstance," Father James Swetnam, also of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, told NewsMax. "The Pope is not behind every ecclesial institution's activity in Rome," and was not aware of the book launch at the Institute.
As to why the Institute agreed to host the book launch, Swetnam said the rector, Jesuit Father Stephen F. Pisano, was persuaded by Moloney, the former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, that the book would draw attention to the figure of Judas and biblical studies.
But Pisano told the press that the launch was not an endorsement of the book.
"This is not the place to look for historical veracity about the figure of Judas," Swetnam, who taught at the Biblical Institute for decades, explained to NewsMax. "I have no idea why Father Moloney would agree to collaborate on this book."
"The Gospel According to Judas" is written in the style of a Gospel by the fictional son of Judas Iscariot, whom the author says did not commit suicide but lived to old age in an ascetic community near the Dead Sea.
Archer's Judas did not betray Jesus out of jealousy or greed, but out of frustration with Jesus for refusing to lead a rebellion against the Romans.
"Most of it may be improbable, but none of it — in my judgment — is impossible," Moloney said of Archer's accounts.
Other controversial elements in the book include Archer's description of Jesus as the biological son of Joseph and Mary — Moloney notes that this is not consistent with Catholic teaching — and the claim that several of Jesus' miracles described in the canonical Gospels never actually took place.
It was unclear how much influence the actual third-fourth century manuscript called the Gospel of Judas had on the new book. That text, found in a cave in Egypt, was translated and introduced to the public in 2006 by the National Geographic Society.
Archer is the author of more than 20 books. The most successful, Kane and Abel, was made into a TV miniseries. He told journalists in Rome that he was inspired to write the new book to save the reputation of Judas.
Speaking of the other apostles who went on to be revered by the church and history, Archer said, "All of them showed their human failings, but every one of them ended up as a saint. And Judas, who showed his failings, ends up as the most vilified person in history. It was the extreme black and white that annoyed me."
For his part, Moloney agreed to Archer's collaboration proposal because the roughly 40 books Moloney has authored about the Bible have "made little impact on the increasing skepticism surrounding the Christian church."
Instead, "deeply flawed and uninformed works like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion have become best sellers."
But "The Gospel According to Judas" isn't likely to have much of an impact, according to Swetnam.
"This book is so boring and insipid that no one in his right mind would be converted by this," he told NewsMax.
And his advice for how the Vatican should respond? "I'm not in the habit of giving advice to the Vatican but I'm personally not going to pay any more attention to the book, either on scholarly grounds or literary grounds. I prefer to read good novels, or the real Gospels."
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