A new take on Judas Iscariot...?

[Che Guava]

In the spirit of another recent christian history thread...

WAS JUDAS A TRUE CHRISTIAN HERO?

ANNE MCILROY

SCIENCE REPORTER

A 1,700-year-old papyrus manuscript recasts Judas, the man who, according to the Bible, betrayed Jesus Christ, as a loyal friend who was just following orders.

According to the experts who have restored, translated and authenticated the manuscript, the so-called lost gospel of Judas says that Jesus asked his close friend Judas Iscariot to turn him over to the Romans because he wanted to escape the prison of his earthly body. The 26 pages -- 13 sheets of papyrus with writing on both front and back -- depict Judas as a Christian hero, not a villain.

The document's existence was revealed yesterday in Washington at a news conference held by the National Geographic Society, which was part of an international effort to save the only known surviving copy. It had been badly damaged in a strange journey from a limestone box in an Egyptian tomb to a safety deposit box in Hicksville, N.Y.

"The gospel of Judas turns Judas's act of betrayal into an act of obedience," said Craig Evans, professor of New Testament studies at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, N.S., who helped interpret the document.

"The sacrifice of Jesus's body of flesh in fact becomes saving. And so for that reason, Judas emerges as the champion and he ends up being envied and even cursed and resented by the other disciples."

But the new gospel may not rehabilitate Judas in the eyes of many modern Christians. Experts say its anonymous author was a Gnostic, an early Christian group that believed in more than one god and that the true God, the father of Jesus, is a higher being than the vengeful deity who created the universe.

Radiocarbon dating shows that the manuscript dates back to the third or fourth century. It is written in Coptic script, the language of Egyptian Christians, but is believed to be a translation of an original Greek text.

It was discovered by peasants in the Egyptian desert in the late 1970s buried in a tomb in a limestone box. They sold it to antiquity traders, and it changed hands a number of times. It spent 16 years mouldering in a safety deposit box in Hicksville.

Finally, a dealer in Zurich who had bought it for an undisclosed sum turned it over to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Switzerland.

It was in terrible shape, and crumbled at the slightest touch. Specialists restored it, assembling more than 1,000 pieces, and tested its authenticity. In addition to radiocarbon dating, scientists analyzed the ink with which it was written. Scholars studied its content, linguistic style and handwriting.

They say the most telling passage of the gospel begins with the words, "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover."

Jesus tells Judas he will "exceed" the other disciples. "For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."

Those instructions sound puzzling. To understand their meaning, you need to know a little about the beliefs of the Gnostics, said Bart Ehrman, an expert in early Christianity at the University of North Carolina and a member of the team that has studied the document.

They were early Christians who believed they were spirits that had been imprisoned in their bodies, he said. They would have believed that Jesus, like them, needed to escape the physical part of this existence and return to his heavenly home.

Scholars know the gospel of Judas is a Gnostic text because it lays out the myth of how the world was created by a fool, Dr. Ehrman said. Church leaders viewed Gnostic Christians as heretics, he said. They had difficulty winning converts and eventually died out, although there are modern Gnostic churches in California.

The authors of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that are contained in the New Testament saw Judas in a less heroic light. To them he was a traitor, the man who led an armed band of enemies to Jesus. Those enemies crucified Him.

Dr. Ehrman said the manuscript adds rich detail to our understanding of the diversity of early Christianity, but he doesn't believe that the gospel of Judas will change the beliefs of many Christians, who are preparing for Easter.

"This book was declared heresy, ruled out of bounds," he said. "Traditional Christians today will agree with that judgment."

link!

 

[Louis XXIV]

Its far too easy to connect books written in coptic with gnosticism and the Gospel of Judas clearly is a gnostic book. It makes it hard for me to believe it was written by Judas.

As a historical analysis of the early Christian church, stuff like this is very useful, though (although you probably need to know about the early christian church to even understand the context of this in the first place).

 

[Evie]

My stance (though I'd really like to hear Plotinus's take on this) is that for the most part, what I've heard from this gospel (on the actual History of Jesus) can relatively easily be reconciled AND help fill some holes in the four gospels (ie, Judas WAS asked by Jesus to betray him. He didn't bother filling the other eleven in on this so most early christians, taught by them, thought Judas had truly betrayed Jesus, hence the story that became mainstream christian).

This of course doesn't mean it is true. This means that the notion that Jesus was betrayed at his own request seems plausible to me (if we generally accept the non-miraculous parts of the gospel to be true).

(Actually, it's a bit above plausible in my opinion : it always puzzled me that Jesus picked someone like Judas for his twelve. Either he was a poor judge of character (which seems wildly inconsistent), or else he knew Judas would betray him, and thus, willed it so). The notion of Judas betraying Jesus for monies, leading troops to him, then throwing the monies at the priest and (IIRC) suiciding also sat pretty wrong with me)

 

[Plotinus]

No-one *really* knows what Judas was like or precisely what he did and why he did it. Personally I find it pretty improbable that Jesus wanted to be betrayed; assuming that Judas really did betray him, which is probably fairly likely, the most plausible explanation for that is that either Judas did not understand Jesus or Jesus misjudged Judas. Neither of these things seems very unlikely on the face of it.

This find is very interesting from the point of view of early(ish) Christian history, and certainly sheds light on what certain groups believed. But it is of precious little use to anyone interested in the historical Jesus and those around him - it's clearly far too late and legendary, and the teachings (such as the role of the Demiurge) certainly place it within a fairly developed form of Gnosticism, which did not exist before the second century. To be honest, I'm a bit surprised by the attention this find has got in the media, given that it's just another obviously pseudepigraphal and late text describing "revelations" supposedly delivered by Jesus to a disciple. There are many such texts already knocking around, and if they were all true then Jesus must have spent his entire ministry taking his disciples aside privately, one by one, and giving them each secret teachings to pass on to *their* disciples which would make them superior to all other Christians. As I say, all very interesting and important for the study of Christian history, but obviously completely useless when it comes to reconstructing the real Jesus.

 

[Evie]

Hmmm, you make very valid points (as usual). The notion that Jesus would have wanted to be betrayed itself rely on the notion that Jesus knew he had to die to push his ideas forward, which, while not ENTIRELY out of the picture (if he really believed in what he was preaching, it's not entirely impossible that he understood the value of martyrs - one would suppose that particular notion has been around for a long time), is not all that plausible in itself.

My "plausible" statement came from the perspective that Jesus believed strongly that he had to die to clean the sins of mankind. Which is what Christianity tell us, but hardly a likely historical proposal. I suppose I need to work on keeping the two separate a bit more.

 

[Plotinus]

Well, Albert Schweitzer thought that Jesus deliberately sought his own death, but not because he thought it would be salvific: he believed that the irruption of God's kingdom was at hand, and that his own death would be the final catalyst to bring it about. He therefore died a deluded failure, which is why his last words were a cry of abandonment. Schweitzer's Jesus was thus a sort of Nietzschean tragic hero.

So whether or not Schweitzer was right, the point is that it's possible that (a) Jesus did seek his own death, and (b) it wasn't for the reasons given by orthodox Christianity. Personally I don't see much reason to believe (a) in the first place, but it's not impossible.

 

[mitsho]

It probably is just another version of the story. Which one is true (if one really is factional/true), one cannot tell and is not important since the bible (better: the new testimony) is more metaphorical than historical.
this Judas-gospel just shows one of the many derivations of Christian faiths especially prominent in the first centuries before a central single theory (e.g. Catholicism, Orthodoxism or later Evangelicalism) could be created. It just shows that faith, belief and to a part history is subjective.

mitsho