Questions about JUDAS ISCARIOT tantalized scholars, clergy, and laypersons. Why did he betray JESUS, then no more than an obscure itinerant rabbi? Why did Jesus select him to be one of his closest and most trusted associates in the first place? Jesus claimed a special relationship with God. Should he not have anticipated his betrayal? Is it possible, then, that the two were co-conspirators in Jesus martyrdom? Unlike the many recent "Gospels of Judas" which appeared after the release of the National Geographic special, this book tells a plausible and compelling story-a story of a boy turned man but whose loyalty will be compromised by zealotry on the one hand and vanity on the other. The child Judas, the illegitimate offspring of a Jewish woman and a Roman soldier, struggles to understand his mother's god, a god who allows terrible things to happen to him and his family. Despairing, he abandons any hope of ever finding that god and becomes a survivor in the brutal streets that characterized the Roman Empire in the first century. Later, as a young man determined to avenge the wrongs committed against his mother and sister, he returns to the land of his birth hoping to join the rebels led by Barabbas, only to be betrayed by them as well. Beaten and broken he is brought to the community of Zealots at Qumran and eventually to the one forming around Rabbi Jesus. During this journey he discovers God and is baptized into messianic anticipation. His enthusiasm for revolution lead him to out-guess God. He proceeds down a path that will result in a difficult, and for him and others, fateful choice. In the end, faced with the consequences of that decision, friendless and without his master, he retreats to the outskirts of Jerusalem there to bring an end to his journey, perhaps to start another. Audience: Readers of religious fiction, historical fiction-believers and non-believers alike. Iscariot will appeal to all segments of society. It is primarily an unraveling of a mystery, not an espousal of a particular theological or religious point of view. οΏ½