The Majesty of Judas (The Book of Lily)

Extended Synopsis

 

The book takes as its point of departure the Muslim belief (Quran 4:157) that Jesus was never crucified, that somebody else was made to resemble him in order to save Jesus from the cross.

​

This particular retelling imagines that:

 

• Jesus and Judas were twin brothers, with different strengths and weaknesses but having great love and loyalty towards one another.

 

• Mary Magdalene was a Woman of Power, who nurtured and protected the twins as she fomented a Slave Revolt against Rome.

 

• The plans of Mary Magdalene ended up in tatters, and Judas was called upon to save his brother from the Romans and also to save the world.

 

• Judas had the courage and the loyalty to allow himself to be taken by the Romans, to be scourged and brutalised and crucified.

 

• Judas should be called Conqueror instead of Betrayer, and his true names include The Risen Sun, the Light of the World, the Unsung Hero and the Lion of Judah.

 

So this becomes the story of Brave Judas Iscariot, the most slandered son of the world, the self-hanged God so viciously accused for the latter part of history.

 

Characters

 

These variations on scripture allow familiar characters to be re-examined and redeemed.

 

• Jesus is made warmer and more sympathetic. He is acknowledged as The Word, but his words are profoundly concerned with love—love on a genuine human level, going between individual people to meet their simple needs. This makes him more relatable and admirable than the scriptural Jesus, although he suffers from similar flaws that help drive the tragedy of the narrative.

 

• Mary Magdalene is not the prostitute she is wrongly presumed to be. Neither is she the woman with seven demons who must rely upon Jesus to cure her. Instead she is a Woman of Power, the greatest of the Sisterhood of Lupa, with savagery and strength beyond anything her sisters can comprehend. She lusts for the literal end of the world and for union with her beloved Jesus, but her grasping at these things slates the entire world for ruin.

 

• Judas Iscariot is the undisputed hero of the story, redeemed from the slander cast against him for the last two thousand years. He is no longer the Swindler, the Kiss of Death, the Strange Fruit of a Wretched Tree. Instead he is revealed as a Conquering King and the Lion of Judah, whose suffering is our best symbol of the depth and constancy of love.

 

• Lily is the only character who needs introduction. The Sealed Prophet and the Lily of Testimony, also called Ruth and eventually Shoshana. She is a person previously unknown to scripture who becomes increasingly central to the work, especially as protector and supporter of Judas as he goes out to make his sacrifice.

 

Themes

 

The Majesty of Judas re-imagines and re-tells the central narrative of Western scripture, focusing on the loving but eventually tragic dynamic between Judas, his twin brother Jesus, and Mary Magdalene.

 

The twist in the story agrees with Muslim scholars who say that Jesus was never crucified, that someone else was made to look like him so that Jesus would be saved from the cross. Many Muslims also believe that it was Judas Iscariot who went to die in Jesus’ place.

 

The work is simultaneously reverent, radical, sensual, and tragic. Each one of the main characters is squarely heroic and yet also fundamentally flawed, as this One Splendid Chance at a New World is squandered amidst tears and the wreckage of broken vows.

​

From a thematic point of view, the work is squarely in the territory of New Scripture, and is perhaps the clearest example of Hypnogogic (Hyp) Prose that currently exists.

​

The book is also a great example of the genre described (or predicted?) by David Foster Wallace as New Sincerity: combining a full literary aesthetic with a completely full emotional effect. The aim is to erase the schism between literary fiction and YA fiction, and then to elevate what should always have just been called literature to the emotional and verbal power of scripture—which of course is really just a synonym for the word writing.

​

I remain convinced that the religious narratives of the world are faulty narratives, leading as they inevitably do towards hatred and bloodshed. That we need to do better if the world is to be redeemed in any meaningful sense. And that this is an extremely urgent project, which ironically would redeem literature just as surely as it would save the world.

 

The only thing any religion has—the only thing a religion is—is a story. And to redeem or replace any current false religion you must produce a better story than they currently have. Even if that is just an alternative Gospel re-telling. That makes it a simple project, albeit a very demanding one.

 

Although this seminal work is freestanding, it can also be read as a prequel to From the Chronicles of Lupa. Mary Magdalene appears as a character in Lupa, shrunk to being some kind of wraith after living in her grief for 2000 years. Lily also makes a suggested appearance as Lilith of the Last Day, and perhaps also as an unnamed benefactor who appears to Jesse in his extremity—with her hair like sheaves of wheat, baptising Jesse in her love which is called the Waters of Mercy and is also the Light of the World.