The Judas Testament

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.

Contrary to what the title of the book might suggest, 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 of Righteousness. Easterman's ideas in this respect are taken directly from contemptorary scholarship in the quest for the historical Jesus and the debate about whether or not there is a relationship between Jesus and the Judean sect known as the Essenes.