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of the sources of Jesus' philosophy, but mostly concentrates on showing how the combination of Jesus' unique personal talents, the education full of texts from the Scriptures and the childhood and youth lived in the double shadow of the Roman temporal power and the spiritual might of Israel's God could result in Jesus becoming the preacher he became.

He also shows how such a preacher could - almost inevitably - be carried by the powerful need of the crowds: the need for the miracles, the need for the Jewish Messiah, for the Son of God to appear - to start believing himself to be the one.

But of course, it's Judas's story. It's told from a dignified, wise and quietly resigned perspective of a confirmed rationalist, an agnostic who has embraced what was best in the Greek culture and got rid of the most of the superstitious "emanations". When Judas speaks of God, it's often "God, if there is God".

Interestingly, and I think meaningfully, the facts never - apart of course from the fact that Judas was not the Betrayer and did not commit suicide - directly contradict the canonical Gospels. Although Judas claims to never have seen any miracles as such and provides rather well conceived interpretations for the Biblical ones, he never denies any events outright. They are all there, the impressing of the priests as a child in the Temple, the wedding, the raising of Lazarus, the calming of the insane, the embrace of Mary Magdalene: all with Judas's own sceptical interpretations, but all there. Even the empty tomb is a fact, though of course explained conveniently by very non-spiritual means.

This gives space to the possibility that these rationalist explanations are but one side of the tale. Although Judas is very convinced that he's telling the Truth, we know that it's just his version; and from the believer's point of view, his story can be seen as a cry of quiet despair from somebody unable to believe and whose "betrayal" consisted of the inability to believe. One cannot help but think, that although now reasonably happy and settled in his serene, rationalist agnosticism, Judas could have been and would have been tempted by the exaltations of faith if the grace to believe had been given to him.

The questions asked in the novel are important for any Christian: the nature and sources of belief, the variation between the gentle and the fiery teachings of Christ, the fundamental issue of evil in the world; and the one about the silence of God in the face of unimaginable suffering

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