The Gospel Of Judas Read Online Free PDF

computer and hang there in the luminous rectangle of light like pieces of old, tattered rag; like bunting from a celebration held long, long ago. They gave an illusion of reality. You could see the shadows they cast on the white background; you could see the individual fibres flaking off from the edges. A row of dun-coloured flags signalling from the past, a strange and cryptic semaphore:
    … winnowing fork is in his hand and … [he will gather the wheat into] … his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire …
    Fragments of the Gospel of Matthew, from a site that could probably be dated to the time of the Jewish War and the burning of the Temple. He was reading the oldest gospel texts known; he was doing what, as a child, he had dreamt of doing, when, fatherless and alone, he had passed hours in solitary thought in the chapel of the seminary: he was reaching out his hand to touch the Jesus of history.
    The
Times
came out with the story first: NEW FINDS NEAR THE DEAD SEA CONFIRM HISTORICITY OF NEW TESTAMENT. The tabloids put it more succinctly: PAPYRUS PROVES GOSPELS. It was a mild sensation, ringing faint echoes round the world in the inner pages of newspapers, meriting mention towards the end of news broadcasts. Leo Newman foundhimself crammed into a darkened cell in the BBC studios in Rome to talk to a disembodied voice in London who asked questions like, ‘How does this make the Jesus story more meaningful for the twenty-first century?’ A group of American Bible scholars set about trying to prove, using an elaborate computer analysis, that the fragments were not Christian at all but came instead from a long-lost part of the book of the prophet Hosea. The Pope himself made a private visit to the Institute to view the images and confer a shaky blessing on the head of Father Leo Newman. ‘A lion in the battle for truth,’ he said. ‘A voice of truth for the millennium.’
    Lord, save me from the sin of self-regard
, Leo had prayed, while the shock waves reverberated round the globe and trembled in the background, like a distant storm.
    He watched as she walked round the manuscript room, a bright splash of colour amongst the grey and brown, a sharp stroke of the profane amongst the studiously devout. ‘Isn’t there the corrupt smell of ambition in all this?’ Her tone was faintly mocking, touched with that astringent irony that so intrigued him. ‘Isn’t there pride and ambition? Shouldn’t faith be enough?’
    ‘Perhaps faith is never enough.’
    ‘What’s that meant to mean? Don’t you have enough faith? You’re a priest.’
    ‘It’s not lack of faith, although perhaps there is always that. It’s the intrusion of other things, human things.’
    She waited a moment for him to continue, standing over by the window and watching him with what was left of her expression once the smile had gone, a look of concern and faint bewilderment. Then abruptly she changed her tone. ‘I must go,’ she said, making a show of looking at herwatch. ‘I’m afraid I must leave you to your texts.’ And she began to gather up her things – her handbag and scarf. Her umbrella? That had been surrendered at the entrance to the manuscript rooms. ‘Thank you so much for showing me round, Leo. It has been fascinating.’ Briskness again, a sharp change of tone, a confusing sensation that one person had just been replaced by another.
    He turned the computer off. ‘I’m afraid they won’t search your handbag when you leave,’ he said. ‘But they ought to. They don’t really know how to deal with women – they can’t imagine a woman coming here and stealing anything.’
    ‘But you can?’
    ‘I can imagine almost anything. That has always been my abiding sin.’
    ‘Is it a sin?’
    ‘I don’t know. Maybe it is, yes, because you always end up believing the worst of people.’ He showed her to the main door. The porter glanced at them through the window of his cell and then went back to reading the