What is the
Gospel of Judas?
Gospel of Judas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The
Gospel of Judas is a
Gnostic gospel. The document is not claimed to have been written by apostle Judas Iscariot himself, but rather by Gnostic followers of Jesus Christ. It exists in an early fourth century Coptic text, though it has been proposed, but not proven, that the text is a translation of an earlier Greek version. The
Gospel of Judas is probably from no earlier than the second century, since it contains theology that is not represented before the second half of the second century, and since
its introduction and epilogue assume the reader is familiar with the canonical Gospels.
The original Coptic document has been carbon dated to plus or minus 50 years of 280 AD.
According to the canonical Gospels of the New Testament, (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Judas betrayed Jesus to Jerusalem's Temple authorities, which handed Jesus over to the prefect Pontius Pilate, representative of the occupying Roman Empire, for crucifixion. The
Gospel of Judas, on the other hand, portrays Judas in a very different perspective than do the Gospels of the New Testament, according to a preliminary translation made in early 2006 by the National Geographic Society: the
Gospel of Judas appears to interpret Judas's act not as betrayal, but rather as an act of obedience to the instructions of Jesus. This assumption is taken on the basis that Jesus required a second agent to set in motion a course of events which he had preplanned in advance. In that sense Judas acted as a catalyst. The action of Judas, then, was a pivotal point which interconnected a series of simultaneous pre-orchestrated events. This portrayal seems to conform to a notion, current in some forms of Gnosticism, that the human form is a spiritual prison, and that Judas thus served Christ by helping to release Christ's spirit from its physical constraints. Christ played to certain rules which he had to stay in tune with at a personal level. The action of Judas allowed him to do that which he could not do directly. The
Gospel of Judas does not claim that the other disciples knew gnostic teachings. On the contrary, it asserts that the disciples had not learned the true Gospel, which Jesus taught only to Judas Iscariot.
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What is gnosticism?
Gnosticism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Gnosticism (from Greek gnōsis, knowledge) refers to a diverse, syncretistic religious movement consisting of various belief systems generally united in the teaching that humans are divine souls trapped in a material world created by an imperfect spirit, the demiurge, who is frequently identified with the Abrahamic God. The demiurge may be depicted as an embodiment of evil, or in other instances as merely imperfect and as benevolent as its inadequacy permits. This demiurge exists alongside another remote and unknowable supreme being that embodies good. In order to free oneself from the inferior material world, one needs gnosis, or esoteric spiritual knowledge available only to a learned elite. Jesus of Nazareth is identified by some (though not all) Gnostic sects as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnosis to the Earth.
Gnosticism was popular in the Mediterranean and middle eastern regions in the first centuries Before Christ, but it was suppressed as a dualistic heresy in areas controlled by the Roman Empire when Christianity became its state religion in the fourth century. Conversion to Islam greatly reduced the remaining number of Gnostics throughout the middle ages, though a few isolated communities continue to exist to the present. Gnostic ideas became influential in the philosophies of various esoteric mystical movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries in Europe and North America, including some that explicitly identify themselves as revivals or even continuations of earlier gnostic groups.
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What is a 'Gnostic gospel'?
Gnostic Gospels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The gnostic gospels were named after the Greek word
gnosis which means "knowledge" and is often used in Greek philosophy in a manner more consistent with the English "enlightenment". Gnostic philosophy and religious movements began in pre-Christian times. During this time, ideas from Greek Gnosticism intermingled with Early Christianity. The name "Christian gnostics" came to represent a segment of the Early Christian community who believed that salvation lay not in merely worshipping Christ, but in psychic or pneumatic souls learning to free themselves from the material world via the revelation. According to this tradition, the answers to spiritual questions are to be found within not without. Furthermore, the gnostic path does not require the intermediation of a church for salvation. Some scholars, such as Edward Conze and
Elaine Pagels [professor of religion at Princeton University and a specialist in the Gnostic gospels] have suggested that gnosticism blends teachings like those attributed to Jesus Christ with teachings found in Eastern traditions.
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Notice this op-ed article ("Gospel Truth" by
April D. DeConick) in the New York Times of December 1, 2007:
Gospel Truth - New York Times
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Amid much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the
Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.
It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.
Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” — in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”
Likewise, Judas is not set apart “for” the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated “from” it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because “it is possible for him to go there.” He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can’t go there, and Jesus doesn’t want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves.
Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence. In fact, the original states that Judas will “not ascend to the holy generation.” To its credit, National Geographic has acknowledged this mistake, albeit far too late to change the public misconception.
So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as
Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh [aka Jehovah (in English)], whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.
Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.
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Here is a link to the National Geographic web site about its presentation of the
Gospel of Judas:
The Lost Gospel of Judas--Photos, Time Line, Maps--National Geographic
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