Young and impressionable, Prema is deeply infatuated with Yudas, the enigmatic man who dredges corpses from the bottom of the nearby lake. Longing to be rescued from the tyranny of her father, a former policeman who zealously tortured Naxalite rebels during the Emergency, Prema dreams of escape and finds herself drawn to the Naxal political ideology. Convinced that Yudas was one of the inmates at her father’s prison camp, Prema believes that only he can save her. But Yudas is haunted by secrets of his own and, like his biblical namesake Judas Iscariot, bears the burden of crushing guilt.

For 1,600 years its message lay hidden. When the bound papyrus pages of this lost gospel finally reached scholars who could unlock its meaning, they were astounded. Here was a gospel that had not been seen since the early days of Christianity, and which few experts had even thought existed–a gospel told from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, history’s ultimate traitor. And far from being a villain, the Judas that emerges in its pages is a hero. In this radical reinterpretation, Jesus asks Judas to betray him. In contrast to the New Testament Gospels, Judas Iscariot is presented as a role model for all those who wish to be disciples of Jesus and is the one apostle who truly understands Jesus. Discovered by farmers in the 1970s in Middle Egypt, the codex containing the gospel was bought and sold by antiquities traders, secreted away, and carried across three continents, all the while suffering damage that reduced much of it to fragments. In 2001, it finally found its way into the hands of a team of experts who would painstakingly reassemble and restore it. The Gospel of Judas has been translated from its original Coptic to clear prose, and is accompanied by commentary that explains its fascinating history in the context of the early Church, offering a whole new way of understanding the message of Jesus Christ.

Judas: Images of the Lost Discipletraces the development of the stories about the most famous traitor in the history of Western Civilization. Its purpose is not to find the Judas of history, but rather to provide readers with a map that shows the similarities and connections between generations of Judas's story. Judas has been portrayed as an effete intellectual, a jealous lover, a greedy scoundrel, a misguided patriot, a doomed hero, a man destroyed by despair, or God's special, misunderstood messenger and agent. Judas means as many different things to us as does Jesus or God. The enigma of Judas's story in the Gospels left later literature and legend with a creative challenge they richly answered, and which is presented here: to write the real story of the worst villain of all time.

The Grddha Mullick family bursts with marvellous tales of hangmen and hangings in which they figure as eyewitnesses to the momentous events that have shaped the history of the subcontinent. When twenty-two-year-old Chetna Grddha Mullick is appointed the first woman executioner in India, assistant and successor to her father, her life explodes under the harsh lights of television cameras. When the day of the execution arrives, will she bring herself to take a life? Meera’s spectacular imagination turns the story of Chetna’s life into an epic and perverse coming-of-age tale. The lurid pleasures of voyeurism and the punishing ironies of violence are kept in agile balance as the drama hurtles to its inevitable climax.

This book contains the proceedings from the Codex Judas Congress, the first international conference held to discuss the newly-restored Tchacos Codex. Given that the Tchacos Codex is a newly-conserved ancient book of Christian manuscripts which had yet to be discussed collaboratively by a body of scholars, the research conducted and published within this book by the members of the Codex Judas Congress is nothing less than a landmark in Gnostic studies. Scholars address issues of identity and community, portraits of Judas, astrological lore, salvation and praxis, text and intertext, and manuscript matters. Although the contributions show a variety of interpretations of the Tchacos texts, several points of agreement emerge, including the assessment that the Codex belonged to early Christians in conflict with other Christians who belonged to the apostolic or conventional church. Contributors include: Grant Adamson, Johanna Brankaer, Fernando Bermejo Rubio, Serge Cazelais, April D. DeConick, Ismo Dunderberg, Niclas Förster, Wolf-Peter Funk, Simon Gathercole, Matteo Grosso, Lance Jenott, Karen King, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Alastair Logan, Antti Marjanen, Marvin Meyer, Elaine Pagels, Birger A. Pearson, Pierluigi Piovanelli, James M. Robinson, Gesine Schenke Robinson, Kevin Sullivan, Franklin Trammel, Johannes van Oort, Bas van Os, Louis Painchaud, Tage Petersen, John D. Turner, and Gregor Wurst.

By anchoring your understanding of productivity in God's plan, What's Best Next gives you a practical approach for increasing your effectiveness in everything you do. There are a lot of myths about productivity--what it means to get things done and how to accomplish work that really matters. In our current era of innovation and information overload, it may feel harder than ever to understand the meaning of work or to have a sense of vocation or calling. So how do you get more of the right things done without confusing mere activity for actual productivity? Matt Perman has spent his career helping people learn how to do work in a gospel-centered and effective way. What's Best Next explains his approach to unlocking productivity and fulfillment in work by showing how faith relates to work, even in our everyday grind. What's Best Next is packed with biblical and theological insight and practical counsel that you can put into practice today, such as: How to create a mission statement for your life that's actually practicable. How to delegate to people in a way that really empowers them. How to overcome time killers like procrastination, interruptions, and multitasking by turning them around and making them work for you. How to process workflow efficiently and get your email inbox to zero every day. How to have peace of mind without needing to have everything under control. How generosity is actually the key to unlocking productivity. This expanded edition includes: a new chapter on productivity in a fallen world a new appendix on being more productive with work that requires creative thinking. Productivity isn't just about getting more things done. It's about getting the right things done--the things that count, make a difference, and move the world forward. You can learn how to do work that matters and how to do it well.