The Gospel of Judas
Well, we're working hard on getting our youth worship service together. So hard, in fact, that I forgot to bring up the big relgion/archeology story of the week: the discovery and release of The Gospel of Judas. The book that was discovered dates to the 2nd century and is written in coptic, an Egyptian language. This is a very impressive find, but not as impressive as you've probably heard...
The MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember about The Gospel of Judas is that it is a gnostic work. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word for "knowledge", or, I think more precisely, "secret knowledge". They were a sect which seems to date back to the 2nd century C.E., though it might have started a bit earlier. They were condemned as heretical by the so-called "orthodox" church of the time.
They were called heretics for good reason. Not to say that they should have been burned or tortured or anything, but their beliefs were very different from what was to become the Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Baptist churches of today. They were an "alternate Christianity" in the same sense as the Mormon Church (the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints") is today. Here are a few of their central beliefs:
Now I grant that I have given a biased report, and a little poking around on the internet or the books of Elaine Pagels will take some of the edge off, but the facts are all there, I think. Anyway, what The Gospel of Judas says about Judas is nothing compared to what it says about God and Jesus, as it was intended. You can see why the early orthodox Christian Church wanted little to do with this book.
The "Gospel" of this book, then, is very different from the "Gospel" of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. While those books insist that Jesus worked as God the Father, Judas claims that Christ worked against him. For "the Four", salvation comes solely through the action of Jesus Christ, for the gnostics, salvation came from secret knowledge.
Now, there are a few other points which I ought to add:
Did Judas really write a book? As I understand it, the author of The Gospel of Judas did not claim to be Judas. It was written in third person, anonymously. The name comes from the distinctive way it treats Judas as the disciple closes to Jesus's heart, and, more importantly for the gnostics, his mind.
Why was the Judas book in coptic? There was a strong gnostic movement in Egypt. The book might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a translation from some other language, but given the date, it probably is very near to the original book.
Did anyone know about this book before they found it? Actually, we knew a whole lot about this book. A second century orthodox bishop named Irenaeus wrote about it, and seems to have gotten it mostly right, though he was far more biased in his description than I was. We've also found fragments in other places.
Was the orthodox/catholic view of Judas as vile traitor the reason for the Holocaust? Of course not. The fact that Judas's name starts with "Jew" didn't help things. Still, I can't imagine that if his name was "Carl", it would have been all that different. I mean, did the reverence for "Peter" cause an outpouring of love for "people"?
Still, there's something else that needs to be said. Even if the gnostics had somehow found the power that sat in Rome, it's pretty clear that the Jewish people wouldn't have done much better. Remember, that the gnostics believed that the Jews worshipped a deceiver, the cause of all the world's pain and sorrow.
Also, with their hatred of all things worldly, it seems clear that the gnostics would have been worse stewards of this planet than even we Christians have been.
Click on the title from this article (or click here) to go to a wikipedia article on the book. Another great place to look is National Geographic, though I'm a bit disappointed in their television special.
I'm actually quite excited that this book was found in such good shape (85% or so intact, I hear). The interest has generated what I think are two big positives:
Happy Easter!
The MOST IMPORTANT thing to remember about The Gospel of Judas is that it is a gnostic work. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word for "knowledge", or, I think more precisely, "secret knowledge". They were a sect which seems to date back to the 2nd century C.E., though it might have started a bit earlier. They were condemned as heretical by the so-called "orthodox" church of the time.
They were called heretics for good reason. Not to say that they should have been burned or tortured or anything, but their beliefs were very different from what was to become the Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Baptist churches of today. They were an "alternate Christianity" in the same sense as the Mormon Church (the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints") is today. Here are a few of their central beliefs:
- You're a god. Or something like that. Basically, people are, according to the gnostics, these divine beings shrouded in flesh. You don't feel like a god? Well, that's because you've been tricked. Really.
- The Creator of this world is not really a god, certainly not a being worthy of worship. That's because he is the one who tricked you, and others like you. In fact, he's the cause of all your problems.
- Now, the only thing keeping you from being as happy, powerful, beautiful, cool, popular, smart, and so forth is that trick. You can't fight what you don't know about. So the secret to being the best you can be is, well, a secret. Secret knowledge about the god you really are.
- Jesus was special, according to the gnostics, precisely because he knew, or maybe discovered, the secret, and told his disciples about it.
- So, once you have the secret knowledge about the secret, you'll be able to live forever, shine like the sun, hit the lottery, and win on American Idol. It's just that easy; except that the secret is really well kept, so it takes some effort to really understand.
Now I grant that I have given a biased report, and a little poking around on the internet or the books of Elaine Pagels will take some of the edge off, but the facts are all there, I think. Anyway, what The Gospel of Judas says about Judas is nothing compared to what it says about God and Jesus, as it was intended. You can see why the early orthodox Christian Church wanted little to do with this book.
The "Gospel" of this book, then, is very different from the "Gospel" of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. While those books insist that Jesus worked as God the Father, Judas claims that Christ worked against him. For "the Four", salvation comes solely through the action of Jesus Christ, for the gnostics, salvation came from secret knowledge.
Now, there are a few other points which I ought to add:
Did Judas really write a book? As I understand it, the author of The Gospel of Judas did not claim to be Judas. It was written in third person, anonymously. The name comes from the distinctive way it treats Judas as the disciple closes to Jesus's heart, and, more importantly for the gnostics, his mind.
Why was the Judas book in coptic? There was a strong gnostic movement in Egypt. The book might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a translation from some other language, but given the date, it probably is very near to the original book.
Did anyone know about this book before they found it? Actually, we knew a whole lot about this book. A second century orthodox bishop named Irenaeus wrote about it, and seems to have gotten it mostly right, though he was far more biased in his description than I was. We've also found fragments in other places.
Was the orthodox/catholic view of Judas as vile traitor the reason for the Holocaust? Of course not. The fact that Judas's name starts with "Jew" didn't help things. Still, I can't imagine that if his name was "Carl", it would have been all that different. I mean, did the reverence for "Peter" cause an outpouring of love for "people"?
Still, there's something else that needs to be said. Even if the gnostics had somehow found the power that sat in Rome, it's pretty clear that the Jewish people wouldn't have done much better. Remember, that the gnostics believed that the Jews worshipped a deceiver, the cause of all the world's pain and sorrow.
Also, with their hatred of all things worldly, it seems clear that the gnostics would have been worse stewards of this planet than even we Christians have been.
Click on the title from this article (or click here) to go to a wikipedia article on the book. Another great place to look is National Geographic, though I'm a bit disappointed in their television special.
I'm actually quite excited that this book was found in such good shape (85% or so intact, I hear). The interest has generated what I think are two big positives:
- An interest in Judas. I've always thought he's been given too much blame in the whole thing, and I think many people tend to put their own responsibility for Christ's death on Judas's shoulders (and the shoulders of the Jewish people). It was Christ who freed us from sin, not Judas.
- An interest in the gnostics. Lots of "good Christians" today espouse a ton of gnostic or semi-gnostic beliefs, from the idea of "saving knowledge" to the idea that what really matters about Christians is their souls, not their bodies.
Happy Easter!
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