Judas - Traitor or Hero: A Lesson about Evil (Engl.)

Author: Konrad Dietzfelbinger,  

Translator: Herbert Horn 

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform  

Paperback 2015   

Pages: 42,     Dimension: 15,2 x 0,3 x 22,9 cm   

ISBN: 978-1508587880  

About the book:
The discussion about the figure of Judas has flared up anew since recently a Gospel of Judas was found. Repeatedly attempts have been made in the most varied ways to understand the nature and deed of Judas Iscariot. The interpretations range from Judas as traitor who had succumbed to evil to Judas as hero and initiate who even surpassed Jesus in readiness to sacrifice. His character and his deed raise the question of the nature and the meaning of evil in the world. The here somewhat expanded text of the lecture given in 2006 at the Frankfurt Book Fair is a contribution to answering this question and to a better understanding of Jesus' student Judas. For the Judas principle is active in all times in every pupil on the spiritual path and can only be overcome when we clearly see through it. To enable readers to form their own opinions, the passages in the canonical gospels pertaining to Judas are printed before the lecture. These along with the Gospel of Judas recently brought into public discussion being the texts with which the lecture deals.

Konrad Dietzfelbinger, born in 1940, with degrees in sociology and Germanic studies, worked from 1980 to 1990 as reader and manager at a publishing firm and has since been independently active as translator, publisher, and author in Munich. His chief interests are Christian and Jewish spirituality and mysticism. Several of his books have been translated into English, Spanish, French, Czech, Polish, and Dutch. He was raised in an especially religious environment and already noticed as a child that under the Christian faith as he encountered it there, there had to be hidden a much deeper, spiritual Christianity. One of his main concerns has been to make this original Christianity visible again. Besides other works, he published the Nag Hammadi texts with introductions and commentaries in four volumes (1988-1995) and authored the books Kafkas Geheimnis (Kafka's Secret), Schopenhauers Vermächtnis (Schopenhauer's Legacy), Mysterienschulen des Abendlandes vom alten Ägypten bis zu den Rosenkreuzern der Neuzeit (Mystery Schools of the Occident from Ancient Egypt to the Rosicrucians of Modern Times), Der spirituelle Weg des Christentums (The Spiritual Path of Christianity), Die Geburt des wahren Selbst im Menschen (The Birth of the True Self in the Human Being), Jesus - der vollkommene spirituelle Mensch: Mysterienweisheit im Johannesevangelium (Jesus - the Perfect Spiritual Human Being: Mystery Wisdom in John's Gospel), Werdet vollkommen: Die Bestimmung des Menschen im Evangelium nach Matthäus (Be Perfect: The Destiny of the Human Being in the Gospel According to Matthew), Erlösung durch Erkenntnis - Die Gnosis (Redemption through Realization - The Gnosis), Fall und Auferstehung des Christentums (Fall and Resurrection of Christianity), and Der Gott im Menschen: Eine Jesus-Biographie (God in the Human Being: A Biography of Jesus).