Thursday, June 11, 2009

Review of The Thirteenth Apostle

Grant Adamson has published his review of The Thirteenth Apostle in the current issue of BYU Studies 48, no. 1 (2009) pp. 186-188. My thanks to Bruce Martin for sending it to me.

1 comment:

Stephan Huller said...

I don't know if you are aware of this but the title "the thirteenth apostle" actually belongs to St Mark. It forms part of the title of the Patriarch of Alexandria. He is said to be the "thirteenth apostle, judge of the world.". I can't believe the Alexandrians would have appropriated a title of Judas if it was established as such when the Patriarchy was bestowing epithets for its head. As such the association with Judas must be secondary and European (indeed anything "European" in Christianity is undoubtedly late and uninformed). Look carefully at Irenaeus Book II of Against the Heresies and the identification of the Marcosian Judas, he is necessarily viewed as the "twelfth" and it fits within a mythical structure of the fall of the twelfth Aeon. Europeans never understood Christianity and that misunderstanding has cost is dearly