The Gospel of Judas

The Gospel of Judas I’ve been receiving quite a lot of questions about the recently published manuscript of The Gospel of Judas. With all the media attention, I’m sure most of you either have heard or have read at least something about the discovery, and I thought it might be worth while to offer my comments here online, rather than by responding to emails or by chasing too many rabbits in the religion classes (which I admit, I am prone to do). For starters, let me say that The Gospel of Judas will be a work discussed almost exclusively in academic circles once the media buzz fizzles out. The gospel, in other words, has no significant bearing on traditional Christian belief about Jesus, Judas, or the story of the Passion. What it does offer are some interesting implications for our understanding of church history, specifically issues relating to the development of the New Testament and what has been called Gnosticism.1[1] What does the gospel actually say? In regards to the content of the gospel, it contains a series of supposed conversations between Jesus and his twelve disciples at the time of the final Passover meal – or Eucharist. Conversation turns particularly to Judas, and through motifs of secrecy and divinely revealed mysteries, Jesus discloses to Judas his role as imminent betrayer. Jesus assures Judas that although future generations will consider him cursed, he nonetheless will receive future glory for his actions rather than eternal damnation because his role is a necessary and mysterious part of God’s plan for redemption. If you’re interested, let me encourage you to look at the gospel text for yourself (if you haven’t already). As the media has mentioned, you can read it in an English translation on the National Geographic Society website (you will need to download it as a PDF file: select “Entire English Text [PDF]” located at the bottom left of the page): http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/document.html It is a short text, and although a bit challenging to understand, it only will take you about ten minutes to read. What kind of text am I reading? With respect to the nature of the text, and as you will see on the National Geographic website, it is a third to fourth century manuscript, and a copy of a text originally written in the Greek language. As I’ve discussed with students in the Bible and Western Culture classes, a manuscript refers simply to a document written or copied by hand (as opposed to postRenaissance printed documents using movable type). The text, furthermore, is a translation of an original copy into a language known as Coptic -- a late form of the Egyptian language 1[1] My discussion relies on a number of resources, most significantly that provided by the National Geographic Society: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/document.html; A few other helpful sources are listed in the following footnotes. which used the Greek alphabet for most of its script.2[2] Furthermore, it is written on a popular ancient type of writing material, called papyrus,3[3] a material manufactured only in ancient Egypt. This manuscript, as you’ve heard, was discovered in Egypt, and this is quite expected as Egypt was not only the home of a significant Christian community (that was apparently interested enough in the gospel to have it copied and translated), but also the climate of the Egyptian desert allows for the survival of papyrus because the material is sensitive to moisture.4[4] One last thing to mention here, as you’ll notice when reading the work, there are significant sections of the manuscript that are missing (thus the reason you’ll see several words and letters placed in brackets by the translators). This is due to damage to the manuscript caused by some natural erosion and transportation of the document through various hands, such as those who originally discovered it, marketers who bought it and sold it, and now scholars who studied it and translated it into English. When scholars find missing information in an ancient document, they use well-educated guesses, so to speak, to arrive at missing letters and words. How does all of this relate to the New Testament? If you read the work, I think you’ll be able to see just how different this gospel is from the four in the New Testament (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Take just a moment to skim through the New Testament gospels and get a sense of how each tells the story of what Jesus did and what he said – look at the narrative style each employs. You can access the gospels here: http://www.biblegateway.com/ I suggest typing in Matthew 1 in the Bible Gateway search box, and then selecting the forward arrow located at the top of the passage to continue skimming through chapter 2, and so on. To go on to Mark, Luke, and John, simply follow the same procedures respecting each gospel. Finally, take a look at the versions of the Eucharist and Judas’ betrayal of Jesus in each of the four gospels. You can read them rather quickly at the above website. Here are the references you’ll need to type in the search box: Matthew 26-27:6 Mark 14:1-51 Luke 22 John 18 What did you notice about the nature of the various gospels -- that is, the way Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John read as narrative in comparison to The Gospel of Judas? Also, how many stories and sayings of Jesus are recorded in the four New Testament versions as compared to The Gospel of Judas? 2[2] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_Language See the following University of Michigan website for a description of ancient writing materials; you can also view a web exhibition on ancient writing: http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/ 4[4] The Oxyrynchus Online project (Oxford University) is an excellent resource of information on Egyptian papyri; see http://www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy/VExhibition/exhib_welcome.html 3[3] What you probably noticed is that The Gospel of Judas differs substantially from those of the New Testament. It contains only a series of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, particularly Judas. Moreover, it reads with more difficulty and contains a lot of seemingly mysterious and deeply philosophical jargon, such as repeated references to secret mysteries, revelations, dream interpretations, aeons, humans and angelic beings, luminaries, and mysterious realms, etc. At the risk of oversimplification, I think it’s not too difficult for you to imagine how an early church bishop such as Irenaeus noticed these differences just as you have (Irenaeus was the one who originally made reference to this gospel, among many similar ones, in about 180 C. E.).5[5] Furthermore, he and other later church fathers recognized its other apparent features: the deeply philosophical and secretive jargon. These ideas stem from a type of spirituality they were familiar with called Gnosticism, an influential type of spirituality that promoted very different ideas about Jesus, the nature of God and humanity, among other theological and broader philosophical thought. Irenaeus and others in the church saw these ideas as stemming from questionable and unreliable sources, as the writings were not only in stark contrast to the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and the traditions current in the churches founded by the original apostles), and because they claimed to come from “secret” traditions – as you’ve noticed from the very opening comments of The Gospel of Judas. One might compare this struggle between the early church fathers and the ideas promoted in such Gnostic gospels to the teachings of Freemasonry, as it claims to have secret spiritual traditions. Freemasonry, though it has many adherents who consider themselves Christians, contrasts with Christian doctrine as found in the orthodox churches of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism. Final thoughts The discovery of the manuscript of The Gospel of Judas is very significant indeed, just as the media has pointed out. It is significant, first and foremost, simply because it is an ancient manuscript, and any discovery such as this gives us a look into the ancient world of which so little evidence survives, particularly literary evidence. Secondly, it is a text that is explicitly named by a late second century bishop (Irenaeus) when writing about heresies and gospel texts he thought should be excluded from Christian attention in the churches (and apparently he was one of many who felt this way, as the text was eventually excluded, among other similar works, from what became the New Testament). It represents a work, in other words, that was lost to the church for centuries but is found, and this in its own right is incredible. Based on the content of the manuscript, the work also reveals from the outset that it is the product of a particular religious philosophy, Gnosticism, that was influential among some early Christians – and this is valuable. The Gospel of Judas in sum, then, gives us further insight into the reasoning behind the early church’s decision to exclude it from its list of sacred books, as well as a fresh look into the nature of the unorthodox philosophy behind 5[5] You can read his comments here in the compilation created by Glenn Davis: http://www.ntcanon.org/Irenaeus.shtml it. In my opinion, this is all The Gospel of Judas provides, despite the hype in the media suggesting that it offers an important alternative to the traditional gospel accounts of Judas and his role in the betrayal of Jesus. ©Stuart D. Chepey for the Parish Episcopal School 2006