The Gospel of Judas. Here we go again.

Yesterday, the National Geographic Society released a completed translation of a document called the "Gospel of Judas." In this work, Jesus tells Judas that, through giving up his master to the authorities, he will "exceed" the other apostles.

Dear God, here it comes.

Right on cue, the story was all over the news last night, packaged in a "A New Look at Judas" format. Suddenly we have ABC's Primetime (among many others) telling us that maybe Judas wasn't so bad after all. Well, if a major American network thinks so, it must be true.

The problem is that only the discovery of the Codex Tchacos, as the original manuscript is called, is news. We've known about the existence of the Gospel of Judas for 1,800 years, and even had a fair idea about what it contained. A "Gospel of Judas" was mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202 AD) in his famous work Adversus Haereses (i,31,1):

Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.

Of course, it's always nice to have an original document rather than simply a reference to one, but let's not assume that the Gnostic worldview represented in this new translation comes as a surprise.

The media are always remarkably eager to jump on any story that tends to break down the canonical picture of Jesus, but it would be nice if they didn't claim that such discoveries must change history. We're talking here about a document that was composed--at a minimum--about 150 years after Jesus's death; and indeed, this copy of the Gospel of Judas was probably committed to papyrus 200 years after that. The provenance of the canonical gospels is considerably better.

Let me put this in context. In 1945, a massive cache of Gnostic documents was discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Codex VI of this contains an excerpt from Plato's Republic (588a-589b) which differs significantly from what we consider the "correct" text. Indeed, the Coptic version from Nag Hammadi is so different that it was not even recognized as forming part of the Republic until decades after its discovery. This raises the possibility that our text is wrong, but it is far more likely that the Coptic scribe altered the text to suit his own needs, or was working from a faulty copy himself. It is NOT, in any way, an argument for chucking the text we have in the garbage.

Let me say right here that I'm not unsympathetic to the Gnostic interpretation of Jesus. I also believe that the Gnostic scriptures--considered critically--can offer us tremendous insights into ancient Christianity. But you can't simply select a shocking selection and present it as historical fact merely because it exists in an ancient document. You know, the Gnostic scriptures also tell us really useful stuff, such as that the mother of demons possesses the interesting name of Aesthesis-Ouch-Epi-Ptoe (really), but you don't see this getting any press coverage. Yet this "fact" has the same claim to truth as the reinterpretation of Judas.

Go on out, read up on the Gnostics and their works, go back and compare them to the traditions of mainstream Christianity, and draw your own conclusions. Just please take a critical approach. I know that's too much to ask of the mainstream media...

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