{"id":39920,"date":"2020-04-09T05:06:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T09:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=39920"},"modified":"2020-04-06T14:22:53","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T18:22:53","slug":"the-judas-passion-and-graphic-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/04\/the-judas-passion-and-graphic-novel.html","title":{"rendered":"The Judas Passion and Graphic Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Teaching a course on the Bible and music leads me to encounter so much material that I can scarcely manage to blog about everything that is interesting \u2013 much less include it all in the class! The same is true of religion and science fiction, and many other subjects. But it seems especially true in the case of the Bible and music, because as I\u2019ve said before, at every point of intersection there tend to be multiple settings of the text to music.<\/p>\n

To be sure, the story of Judas is a relatively rare one. And yet one setting, Jesus Christ Superstar<\/a>, is more famous than many other musical tellings of the story of Jesus that don\u2019t put Judas center stage. But Jim Davila drew attention to another one<\/a>,\u00a0The Judas Passion<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Judas Passion,\u201d by Scottish composer Sally Beamish and librettist David Harsent, is a contemporary passion that revisits the life of Judas Iscariot, exploring the age-old story through themes of forgiveness and redemption. Loosely based on Gnostic texts, it was commissioned by Philharmonia Baroque and Britain\u2019s Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There was also apparently a\u00a0Saint Judas Passion<\/em> released in 1973, a contemporary opera by Steve Engle.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"Jeff Loveness has a new comic exploring the story of Judas<\/a>, called\u00a0Judas<\/em><\/a>, which you can buy on Amazon and get directly for Kindle (including the Kindle app on your phone or other device)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wrote a short story about the death of Judas that I hope to publish at some point. There is a sense in which many of the graphic novels and musical renditions of New Testament characters\u2019 stories deserve to be considered under the umbrella of \u201chistorical fiction\u201d and yet they typically do not get discussed together.<\/p>\n

Related to that, Ben Witherington gave an interview that appeared in\u00a0Credo<\/em> magazine about why a New Testament scholar might write historical fiction, as he has<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brian Davidson has explored the nuances of the interaction between Jesus and Judas<\/a> in the Gethsemane narrative.<\/p>\n

Sojourners<\/em> looks at using comic books to tell Bible stories<\/a><\/p>\n

Matt Page blogged about the movie\u00a0Histoire de Judas<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Gospel of Judas: Sorrow is Not the Master of Life<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n