April 18, 2006

Gospel of Judas I

The Gospel of Judas was launched last week, and reactions across the blogosphere have been pretty uniform. Most informed commenters have ranted about the stupidity of the news coverage, the commercial opportunism of the timing, and the shadiness of the antiquities trade. Regarding the document's contents, the consensus among diverse writers is that there's nothing really new here — it's just a typical second-century Gnostic gospel.

That's certainly true, but I think that's an excellent reason for reading the Gospel of Judas Because it's not really different from other Gnostic texts, and because the National Geographic Society has provided the translation for free (download it here.) , it makes a perfect introduction to the subject. Really, Judas has it all:

  • Longwinded cosmological speculation forms the core of Judas, as well as most of the rest of the Nag Hammadi library.
  • Judas is in about the same fragmentary state as other literature from archaeological finds.
  • A semi-cryptic polemic against the institutional church forms the first third of Judas, illustrating the tension between the orthodox and the Gnostics.
  • Then there's the whole notion of Gnosis itself: the hidden teachings about the True God are revealed to Judas separately from the public teachings about the Old Testament God presented to the Apostles

Best of all, it's only seven pages long. The only way in which the Gospel of Judas is unrepresentative is that it's a bit more readable than most of the Gnostic finds, which is not a difference to be regretted.

Posted by Ben Brumfield at April 18, 2006 05:42 PM
Comments

Fascinating. As a non-Christian whose most significant education in Christianity came from Jesus Christ Superstar, I'm entirely surprised that it's such a big heretical deal to cut Judas a bit of slack.

Poor Judas. Of course God made him betray Jesus! Judas is perhaps more pitiable than Jesus, because at least Jesus had a clue why he was being crucified, whereas Judas had to betray his friend without understanding why.

At least that's the Gospel According to Webber and Rice, as I understood it at age 12 or so. Were they Gnostics? Was there a fuss about this particular heresy when JCS came out or was it lost in the general furor about a rock gospel populated by sexy hippies? More importantly, how does conventional Christianity get around the idea that Judas's sin was part of God's plan? If Judas had refused, would there have been no crucifixion and hence no salvation for mankind? I don't get it.

Posted by: Prentiss Riddle at April 24, 2006 06:23 PM

I'm afraid the notion that the hubub is over "reforming Judas" is an example of the stupid coverage people are talking about.

The theodicy question has been around for a while, and neither Judas nor Gnosticism have much bearing on it. The main subject of the "does God cause people to sin" query has historically been Adam, rather than Judas. There is, in fact, a very old part of the Easter vigil that states this sort of thing explicitly: O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

(Actually it's one of my favorite parts, though I was changing a diaper during it this year and missed out.)

While the Judas/theodicy delimma is old, it's actually far more of an issue in mainstream Christianity than in Gnosticism. Because the Gnostic parallel to Original Sin is our material existence itself, Judas is committing no sin at all by freeing the spirit-Jesus from his material body. Rather than his betrayal being an evil deed nevertheless required to bring about universal redemption, it's actually a positive act required only by his desire to do good to a spirit being.

Posted by: Ben Brumfield at April 25, 2006 07:04 AM