Judas, My Brother

by Frank Yerby

First published 1968

Amazon

3.9(258)

Nathan bar-Yehudah is born into privilege in first-century Judaea and grows into a life of travel, violence and worldly ambition. His striking resemblance to Yeshua of Nazareth repeatedly draws his path toward the Galilean teacher whose public ministry is beginning to unsettle religious and political expectations. Nathan’s own adventures include Rome and gladiatorial experience before the two lives converge more directly.
Yerby uses Nathan as a sceptical fictional observer of Jesus rather than writing a devotional retelling. The novel reconstructs Roman rule, Jewish religious life, social hierarchy and the tensions of Judaea around the ministry and crucifixion, while distinguishing historical setting from questions of faith. Jesus remains a central historical person in the narrative, but the invented thirteenth-disciple perspective lets Yerby examine how extraordinary events might have appeared to a contemporary unwilling to accept miraculous explanations.