April D. DeConick

April DeConick is the Chair of the Department of Religion and the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Rice University. She is the co-founder of Gnosis: Journal of Gnostic Studies (published by Brill). Her book, The Gnostic New Age, featured in her Rorotoko interview, won an award from the Figure Foundation for the best book published by a university press in philosophy and religion. She is most noted for her writing on the Gospel of Judas when she challenged the sensationalism generated by the National Geographic Society that wrongly claimed that Judas is a gnostic hero and that his heroics would rewrite our understanding of early Christianity. Instead, her work, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says, shows that Judas remains demonic in the Gospel of Judas, just as he is in the New Testament gospels. She also appeared in CNN’s documentary on the Gospel of Judas that premiered on television in 2015.