Martin Scorsese‘s The Last Temptation of Christ is a film that stood gleaming and transcendent the day it opened in 1988 and has done nothing but gain ground over the last 18 years, but now it’s looking all the wiser. The relationship between Willem Dafoe‘s Jesus and Harvey Keitel‘s Judas Iscariot is pretty much as described in the recently uncovered, just-revealed Gospel of Judas, which says Judas was a close and respected Jesus homie and ally who was acting on orders from the Nazarene to carry out his Garden of Gethsamane betrayal and thereby help him fulfull his earthly mission. “Look, you have been told everything,” J.C. reportedly told J.I. “You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” I wonder how Mel Gibson , the hardcore Passion freaks and particularly the fundamentalist-wacko Christian demonstrators who did everything they could to discredit Scorsee’s film when it first opened feel about the ancient Judas papyrus. Whatever the truth of it, it warms my heart to think of them as feeling uncomfortable and confused, and perhaps even resentful. Stew in it, chumps.