The image of Judas in the new and the newest fiction

The purpose of the article is to answer the question: why did the uncompromising condemnation of the traitor disciple become a thing of the past, and why did writers begin to understand and then justify the actions of Judas in their own manner in the second half of the 19th century? To solve the problems, caused by this goal, the authors refer to the ideas of philosophers of the new time, who significantly influenced the worldview of artists of the word, especially G. Hegel, A. Schopenhauer, S. Kierkegaard, and in more detail - F. Nietzsche. Special attention was paid to the writers, who lived at the end of the new time and at the beginning of the modern time and who created the most striking works on this biblical theme. The philosophy and poetics of the Swede - T. Gedberg and the Russian - L. Andreev are analyzed in detail. This is the first such a detailed appeal to the famous Swede in a detailed comparison of his story about Judas with Andreev’s story about this character from the New Testament in Russian literary studies. It is proved that both writers reacted to the “crisis of consciousness” that was revealed at that time and that Nietzsche had the strongest attention on both prose writers, while in Andreev’s case Judas appears as a type of the superman.