A 'historical fiction' about Jesus' betrayer continues to climb the sales charts and to provoke diverse reactions.

In expository mode, New Testament scholar Deirdre Good has added a couple of interesting weblog posts here and here which unpack the procedure of the book The Gospel According to Judas: By Benjamin Iscariot, by Jeffrey Archer and Francis J Moloney (Macmillan, 2007).

She concludes: "In short, while this is unconvincing historical fiction, it is a fascinating reconstruction of how a branch of Roman Catholic scholarship sees Jesus' relationship to Judas. What would other Roman Catholic scholars like Raymond Brown (who had much to say on the subject of Jesus and women in John's gospel) have thought of this project? As for me, I'd prefer the gospel texts in all their richness and confrontive complexity when it comes to Judas. And I'd like to see some responsible historical fiction."