The Judas Testament (novel) The Judas Testament (novel) The Judas Testament is a 1994 novel by Daniel Easterman. The plot revolved around the discovery of an epistle in Moscow by a scholar of the Aramaic language, who becomes the unwitting pawn in a murderous struggle by various crypto-political forces to possess the scroll. The scroll is not the Gospel of Judas but an autobiography of the historical Jesus in his own hand. It is a "Judas Testament" in that its contents betrays the conventional image of Jesus as Christ and instead reveals him to have been a Judean religious figure known as the Teacher
The Bible in film New Testament has few action scenes and little romance. During the 1950s, most of the films recounting Jesus' life were financed by church groups and played in churches. These were often film versions of the traditional Passion Play. At this time there were some successful films that involved Jesus, but they put him at a distance from the central characters and were based on novels rather than the Bible. These included the sequel to 1953's "The Robe", "Demetrius and the Gladiators", and the 1959 film "Ben-Hur". In 1966, Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" in southern