Posted on 04/26/2006 11:53:48 AM PDT by Caleb1411
Given that the old Greek word behind the English term "gospel" means "good news," you have to wonder whether the much-touted and recently published Gospel of Judas really qualifies as either.
Assuming you didn't give up the media for Lent -- which, come think of it ... oh, never mind -- you could hardly have avoided this month's announcement about the latest addition to the religious history files.
To make a long story short: The Gospel of Judas is part of an ancient manuscript that apparently was unearthed in the late 1970s in Egypt. After a lengthy trip through the sometimes shadowy realm of the antiquities trade, it came to rest about five years ago at the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Basel, Switzerland.
Since then, the badly damaged pages have been in the process of restoration, translation and publication -- this last in the form of a little volume titled "The Gospel of Judas," courtesy of the National Geographic Society.
In this revised-and-not-so-standard version of the story, Judas is not the archetypal villain who betrays his master to enemies under the influence of greed and dark powers. Instead, Judas does Jesus a favor by handing him over.
"Step away from the others," Jesus tells Judas, "and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom."
Which brings us to the question: Is the Gospel of Judas "good" and "news?" Well, yes -- and arguably no.
In one sense, this document is huge news: It apparently is the same text, vanished until now, that the second-century Christian author Irenaeus mentioned in his criticism of a sect of gnostics, the New Agers of his day.
"And Judas the betrayer was thoroughly acquainted with these things, they say," Irenaeus wrote in a passage quoted in the National Geographic book; "and he alone was acquainted with the truth as no others were, and so accomplished the mystery of the betrayal. ... And they bring forth a fabricated work to this effect, which they entitle the Gospel of Judas."
In Herbert Krosney's "The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot," Swiss translator Rodolphe Kasser says: "The importance of this text is that it is not only a new manuscript, but an entirely new kind of document. ... We previously had only what the church forefathers were saying about the gnostics, but rarely the texts the gnostics wrote themselves. Now we can understand the nuances of what the forefathers said by using the gnostic texts."
In terms of its presentation of its namesake as hero rather than goat, the Gospel of Judas is indeed something new and interesting. But in its presentation of an arcane gnostic cosmology -- "The twelve aeons of the twelve luminaries constitute their father, with six heavens for each aeon, so that there are seventy-two heavens for the seventy-two luminaries" -- it seems to be old hat for scholars. In an essay in "The Gospel of Judas," co-editor Marvin Meyer indicates the content is typical of what's known in the trade as "Sethian" gnosticism.
You could be forgiven, then, for thinking (like a weary cop listening to an all-too-familiar tale): "Yah, yah -- we've heard it before."
So if the Gospel of Judas is not entirely news, is it "good?" True, it provides a touchstone for what certain people believed 150 or 200 years after Christ's death, but does it record the "real" story -- one that was unjustly erased by heavy-handed religious figures -- of Judas, Jesus and the early faith?
Maybe not.
In the book "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew," North Carolina scholar Bart D. Ehrman -- who provided commentary for both Krosney's book and "The Gospel of Judas" -- notes the diversity of theological talking heads in ancient times: "In the second and third centuries there were, of course, Christians who believed in one God. But there were others who insisted that there were two. Some said there were thirty. Others claimed there were 365."
But one can argue on a couple of grounds that the Biblical accounts have the edge here. Ehrman himself says in "The Lost Gospel:" "The first (canonical) Gospel to be written was that of Mark, from about 65 or 70 CE (35-40 years after the death of Jesus)." Matthew, he says, came "somewhat later (80-85 CE)."
And if the apostle Paul was writing his epistles in the years 49-62 (as per a time line in Krosney's book), that would tend to place the writing of Acts (which ends with Paul still alive) and the Gospel of Luke (traditionally ascribed to the same author) in the same historical ballpark.
In contrast, Meyer says that the Gospel of Judas probably was "composed around the middle of the second century, most likely on the basis of earlier ideas and sources." In other words, the historical gap between events and writing is about two or three times that of some of the Biblical material.
In addition to the matter of eras is that of ideas. "Jesus was a Jew living in Palestine," Ehrman notes in "The Gospel of Judas," "and like all Palestinian Jews, he accepted the authority of the Jewish Scriptures .... Jesus presented himself as an authoritative interpreter of these Scriptures and was known to his followers as a great rabbi (teacher)."
If so, given a theology that repudiates the God of the Torah as an inferior deity who created a hellhole of a world -- the view of gnosticism -- and a theology that affirms and builds on the Jewish Scriptures, which is more likely to record what the historical Jesus actually taught?
"But there are also many other things which Jesus did," said the author of the Gospel of John (Revised Standard Version); "were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."
Something tells me that the Gospel of Judas wasn't exactly what the biblical writer had in mind.
Saul and David, of course, ruled Israel when it was surrounded on all sides by numerous enemies (the Philistine confederacy, the Edomites, the Moabites, the Amalekites) and under constant threat of annihilation. Clearly the military leader whose self-defense tactics inflicted the maximum number of casualties on enemies who were bent on genocide will be quite popular among the people threatened by those enemies.
However, you snatch the quote out of its all-important context - the "Saul has slain his thousands, David his tens of thousands" refrain caused great strife in Israel and almost led to its destruction by souring the relationship between the king of embattled Israel and his best general.
The Scriptures are not presenting it as a wonderful thing to say.
And the cutting off of the penis's of thousands of troops killed in battle as proof of their deaths. Bushels of peckers for God. LOL!
It was not penises, but foreskins. And these foreskins were not offered to God.
If one reads the actual account, one will see that it was Saul - who is portrayed as a sinner and a disobeyer of God's laws - who requested the trophies in the form of foreskins. That was for his own personal amusement and had nothing to do with God's will as portrayed in the Scriptures.
Kill your enemies for God. He likes it, he really likes it! (If you don't believe it, just read the Old Testament!)
Neither the defensive warfare fought by Israel against genocidal enemies nor the peculiar trophies requested in one specific instance by one specific who had fallen from the favor of Israel's God send that message at all.
You are inventing a slander.
Hell if I know. I would have to ask the ancient Israelite Kings about that. Evidently THEY believed it!
Of course they did not, and you have not adduced a scintilla of evidence to suggest that they did.
He didn't call it a political ideology of peace. At least he knows it's a religion, unlike some posters here
It is the only significant "religion" in the world which is based entirely on achieving a specific geopolitical goal.
In Islam, consequently, the entire line between religion and worldly politics is necessarily and irretrievably blurred.
Spin, spin, spin. LOL!
It's kind of like reading your posts. Just believe your own spin, that's all that matters.
Facts are facts.
You flat-out lied when you claimed that severed "penises" were offered to the Almighty in the Old Testament.
The fact that you don't even contest the fats I've laid out for you demonstrates the weakness of your position.
Basically, you admit you have nothing of substance to say.
Each one of your "points" is ridiculous on its face and easily refuted by going to the source documents.
Your method consists of throwing out preposterous, undocumented assertions in the hopes that no one will realize you're just making stuff up.
Oh, and another clue as to how formalized the Church was as early as the year 49 AD is the synod or council held at Jerusalem.
Oh but I do contest it. But you admit that after killing their enemies they mutilated their bodies. And no, they didn't offer them to God, I am saying that what they did was justified in their own minds because it was ok with God to kill. You are only demonstrating the weakness of your intelligence.
Thank you for telling me that all you see on TV need not be accurate. Disregard all the History Channel shows on WWII, the Civil War, and any number of other subjects. Even if they quote sources, it doesn't matter because it's on TV. And especially we can disregard ANYTHING religious leaders say on TV. And remember - YOU said it! HA HA!
And how, exactly, did those "others" "take" the holy land in the first place? Giving out candy?
Yes. There were strange deceitful men in those days. They went around saying, "You want some candy little goyim?"
The targets of the crusades did not use the term goyim.
Oh yeah, I forgot. What they really said was hey goyim, would you like a little amishdude?
Pride.
"You are part of a special and select group. You are better then they because you are a trapped divinity. We will teach you the secrets known only to a select few..."
Bah! It's the oldest con in the world and hasn't changed one whit since it was invented. Yet still people fall for it.
Their enemies were killed in battle in a just war for survival.
And Jews, of course, do not consider circumcision to be "mutilation."
And no, they didn't offer them to God, I am saying that what they did was justified in their own minds because it was ok with God to kill.
First of all, you did say that they offered them to God. So you lied.
Second, the use of deadly force in self-defense is justified. If you are prepared to argue that it is immoral to fight a defense war against enemies that are invading your land, raping your female relatives, killing your elderly in cold blood and enslaving your children then make your argument.
But it is ridiculous to question God's perfectly rational moral decree in this matter as if it were contrary to right reason.
You are only demonstrating the weakness of your intelligence.
Says the man with the correspondence course degree from the History Channel School Of Sensationalistic Misrepresentations.
I did not lie. So there!
As usual your timeline is off and you are not clear on the history.
In 49 AD the Gospels of Matthew and Mark may have been in circulation, but most of the New Testament was yet to be written in 49 AD.
And, of course, documents were not rejected - the documents themselves failed to find a broad acceptance in the Church throughout the Mediterranean world.
The current New Testament is the collection of all the documents that were unanimously used by all the local churches for instruction and worship - the list was not imposed from above.
The documents whose rejection you mourn were simply not believable to the vast majority of Christians of the 2nd century - they were rarely read and not valued by the average Christian in the congregation.
What was in those "rejected" documents?
We know very well what was in the "rejected" (actually unpopular, unconvincing) documents since many of them still exist. They contained rehashed Gnostic claptrap, forgeries designed as special pleading for specific individuals or were deliberate scissor jobs.
What were they hiding?
It's hard to "hide" something you openly laugh at for its ridiculousness. The early Fathers of the Church do not hide the existence of such documents - they openly refer to them, quote from them and use them as comic material. The only people hiding anything were the Gnostics who claimed to have secret knowledge that could not be written down. Secrecy and deception were a Gnostic tatctic - not a Christian one.
What were they afraid of?
If you can barely conceal gutbusting laughter when you think about something, you're probably not afraid of it.
Thank you for telling me that all you see on TV need not be accurate. Disregard all the History Channel shows on WWII, the Civil War, and any number of other subjects. Even if they quote sources, it doesn't matter because it's on TV. And especially we can disregard ANYTHING religious leaders say on TV. And remember - YOU said it! HA HA!
Check the basic rules of logic: I said that not everything on TV is reliable - I did not say that nothing on TV is ever reliable.
Do you understand the difference, or do I need to explain it even more elementarily?
And just to inform you: the History Channel is not only infamous for making assertions without sourcing them, it is also famous for misusing sources when it actually does claim to have sourcing. The History Channel particularly favors a technique you yourself enjoy: taking a snippet of text completely out of context and twisting it into saying something entirely the opposite of the intended message.
Additionally, any scholar of the Civil War and WWII can point out hundreds of mistakes, inaccuracies and misrepresentations in just about every History Channel production on those topics.
The purpose of the History Channel is to entertain an audience with a lowest common denominator education. You understand what television is for, right? It exists to entertain people while trying to sell them the advertisers' products.
Actual history is more complicated that your soundbites and naive conspiracy rhetoric.
Basically what I'm saying is to try reading an entire scholarly book sometime. I'm sure you'll find it extremely challenging, but you might also find it rewarding if you keep at it.
Of course you did, and you were caught dead to rights.
You claimed that the Israelites cut off people's penises and offered them to the deity.
In reality, it was one individual not the Israelites, it was foreskins not penises and it was a gift requested by a corrupt human king not an offering to God.
You deliberately told a falsehood and you got caught. Sorry - do a better job deceiving people next time.
The Gospel of Judas is the Weekly World News of religious literature.
Did NOT!
Oh man, I have tears of laughter over this. It wasn't penis's, it was foreskins. So what's next, "They aren't dead, they're pining for the fjords." BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Are you completely unfamiliar with ritual circumcision in Judaism? You've really never heard of it?
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