Taking Apart the Gospel of Judas
2006 has been a busy year for Christians defending their faith.
Dan Brown's bet-selling novel _The Da Vinci Code_ is slated to hit
movie theaters next month. Tom Cruise has launched Scientology into
a new media spotlight and the National Geographic Society just
published a translation of the rare manuscript "The Gospel of
Judas".
Now, much confusion has arisen over the impact this manuscript has
on Christianity. National Geographic promotes the translation,
saying it is "a lost gospel that could challenge what is believed
about the story of Judas and his betrayal of Jesus."1
In fact, this is nonsense. We have known for some time that a
document called the Gospel of Judas existed from the writings of the
early church fathers, particularly Irenaeus. What's amazing to me is
how some otherwise intelligent people lose all sense of bearing when
they are confronted with an ancient text that has the word "gospel"
on it. Just because a document has the word "gospel" at the top,
doesn't mean it even comes close to being on par with the canonical
gospels
Still, the discovery of an actual copy of the text is
significant. But does this prove that there were gospels
intentionally left out of the Bible? Was this gospel hidden as the
result of some kind of conspiracy to keep power in the hands of a
few? Hardly. Let's examine just what this document is and then we'll
look at why it really tells us nothing about the formation of early
Christianity.
Another Gnostic Gospel
The Gospel of Judas translation that was recently published comes
from a third century manuscript, written in Coptic, an ancient
Egyptian language. It contains many strange teachings such as:
- Creation was corrupted by lesser gods who made the material
world
- Jesus wished to be set free from His material body so He
could access the holy realm
- The Gospel holds a type of secret knowledge that only one
person (Judas) has
- The rest of the disciples are clueless to the true mission
of Jesus
The manuscript is a copy of an earlier Greek text - most likely
written about AD 150. We know this because, as I mentioned, Ireneus
rejected the Gospel of Judas in AD 180 - over 100 years before our
Coptic manuscript existed. But we also can see the gospel reflects
the beliefs of an early cult of Christianity known as the Gnostics.
It's chock full of Gnostic teaching and thought, and since
Gnosticism did not exist until the second century, there's no way it
could have been written prior to about AD 125. So, that gives us a
pretty good window to determine when this text was originally
written.
Judas Gospel is Too New to be Bible
Now, I don't want to go into a technical discussion of Gnosticism
to show why the Gospel of Judas doesn't hold a candle when compared
to the four canonical gospels. We don't need to go that far to show
why it should be rejected. We know that the manuscript we have is
authentic - which means that it really did come from the third
or fourth century. However, that doesn't mean that its contents are
true. There's a big difference there. And why am I so sure
that the contents of the Judas gospel are false? Well, it's simple.
The gospel is too new to be written by the Judas of the Bible. You
see, most scholars agree that Jesus' death happened somewhere around
AD 33. The gospel is around 100 to 120 years later. Just how old
would Judas have to be to write this account? 150? It doesn't make
sense. Judas died well before this text originated.
The Associated Press interviewed James M. Robinson from Claremont
Graduate University and who they said is "America's leading expert
on such ancient religious texts from Egypt."2
There, Robinson agrees with this assessment. Robinson states, "There
are a lot of second-, third- and fourth-century gospels attributed
to various apostles. We don't really assume they give us any first
century information."3 He concludes that nothing new can be
learned about Judas of the Bible from the text.
Secondly, since Judas didn't really have anything to do with this
"gospel", we also know that the documents facts are in serious
question. Remember, Judas dies during Jesus' crucifixion, so he
couldn't have told anyone this special revelation. Therefore, these
conversations must be fictional. You see, real gospels have what is
known as an apostolic tradition. In other words, the four gospels
can be traced back to the apostles themselves. (For more on this,
see my article "Who
Chose What to Include in the Bible?") Christians such as
Irenaeus understood this and rejected it as a forgery.
Looking at a Modern Example
I think for a good starting point when discussing this text with
others, let's look to a more modern example – the recent forged
memos that surfaced during the past presidential election. During
the 2004 elections, 60 Minutes reported on the discovery of an Air
National Guard memo that suggested favorable treatment for the
president. If these documents were accepted as real they could do
much damage to his campaign. However, when the memos were
scrutinized it became apparent that they were forgeries. Type styles
used in the memos were too recent for the documents to have
originated in the 1960's when they were purportedly written.
I think that no matter which candidate you supported, most news
agencies showed maturity in their rejection of the documents as
unsubstantiated. Even if one holds that special treatment was
afforded Mr. Bush during his National Guard service, these specific
memos do nothing to give us new or better information about those
charges – simply because they are false testimony. Similarly, a
forged gospel of Judas doesn't help us to really understand Jesus,
Judas or first century Christianity.
Ultimately, the biggest piece missing from the Gospel of Judas is
the gospel message itself. Remember that the word "gospel" mean s
good news. It was called such because early Christians saw their
redemption from sin as the good news to share with others. But
redemption is the one thing the so-called Gospel of Judas doesn't
have. Without that, there's no freedom from sin and no reason to
follow Jesus who becomes just another dead man claiming to speak
from God.
What are your thoughts? Have you been questioned about the Gospel
of Judas? Let me know at
newsletters@comereason.org. Until next time, God bless.
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