The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot

Page 2

Chapter 2

Prepare the way of the Lord

1. Judas was a disciple of John the Baptist, and when the prophet first appeared in the wilderness, many considered that the prediction of the Prophet Malachi was fulfilled: Know that I am going to send you Elijah the Prophet before the day of the Lord comes, that great and terrible day.

Mal 4:5

2. John the Baptist lived just as Elijah had lived: a man dressed in a cloak of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist and eating wild locusts and honey.

see

2 Kings 1:8

3. Judas believed that with the return of Elijah, the day of the Lord was surely at hand. John the Baptist was the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight a highway for our God.

Isa 40:3

4. Many considered that John himself was fulfilling Israel’s prophetic hopes, and must therefore be the Messiah. But he told Judas that he was not that man: After me will come a man who is far greater than I am.

John 1:30

5. John regarded himself as so inferior to the one who was still to come that he often said that he was not worthy to stoop down and untie his sandal; a task fit only for a slave.

see

Mark 1:7;

Matt 3:11;

Luke 3:16

6. Jesus was the son of Joseph and his wife Mary. He came from Nazareth to be baptized by John, who was his cousin.

see

Luke 1:36

7. Many stories of Jesus’ birth and upbringing have been recounted, but Judas always believed that Jesus was the first born of the lawful wedlock between his father, Joseph, and his mother, Mary. Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and of Judah and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?

Mark 6:3.