Combination thriller, wisdom quest, and futuristic love story, David Howard’s The Last Gospel is a richly textured and meticulously researched novel that infuses ancient religion with new meaning for a new millennium.
The Last Gospel takes the reader on a riveting journey that shifts on parallel plot lines from the 1st to the 21st century, juxtaposing the heroes, sages and villains of ancient Palestine with those of tomorrow’s hi-tech California.
In the year 2020 Pope Juan Diego, under the Vatican’s glasnost policy, releases a set of ancient scrolls the Catholic Church has held in secret for a thousand years. The documents contain first person accounts of the life of Jesus, told by those who knew him best.
Providing new and credible testimony, the "Isaac Scrolls" challenge core Judeo-Christian beliefs: Jesus had an Indian lover, a vengeful brother, a mother who was both sensuous and wise. Judas was framed by Peter. Mary Magdalene had an affair with Thomas, and Jesus leaves a final message for humanity in the hands of a teenager.
Just as Christians prepare to re-examine their most cherished beliefs, one of the key researchers on the project, Rafaela Baruch da Costa, a Sephardic-American Jew, pregnant by her expatriated African-American lover, begins to uncover prophecies encoded in the Scrolls. As her love life, career and family life careen out of control, and as she is menaced by Fundamentalist terrorists, Rafaela is inexorably led to the conviction that she must act resolutely to avert Middle Eastern catastrophe.
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