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Putting the Gospel of Judas in perspective

Putting the Gospel of Judas in perspective

COMMENTARY

By Rikk Watts

THE NEWSWIRES have been buzzing this week with racy headlines announcing the newly published Gospel of Judas.

Various members of the academy have chimed in. Bart Ehrman declares it to be "one of the greatest historical discoveries of the twentieth century." Another noted scholar, Elaine Pagels, triumphantly declares that this discovery "explodes the myth of a monolithic religion, demonstrating how diverse and fascinating the early Christian movement was."

For those who have not heard, this gospel relates a purported secret conversation between Jesus and Judas during the last three days of the Passion Week. The juicy bit is actually just one line toward the very end, where Jesus instructs Judas to betray him so that his eternal spirit can be freed from his mortal body.

Coming hard on the heels of The Da Vinci Code, for some the Gospel of Judas raises new questions: Did Jesus collude with Judas? And it presses old ones: Was Judas really the bad guy, and are the canonical gospels reliable?

I want to say some things about the actual content of GJu (Gospel of Judas) to put the headlines in perspective, and then to reflect on what this document does and does not tell us.

First, the content. Even though we have about 3,000 words of text, as with most ancient documents the manuscript is fragmentary. There are places where the text simply drops out.

In general outline, after an introduction that tells us this is the secret account of the revelation Jesus gave to Judas three days before his death on Passover, it recounts a conversation Jesus had with the 12 disciples. But they are obtuse, working for "the other god," and blaspheme Jesus in their hearts.

Sensing Judas' special spiritual sensitivity, Jesus separates him from the others and offers an enigmatic hint of his future superiority over the other disciples. Jesus then disappears. On his return, the disciples tell him of a vision they had about the Temple, which he interprets and which again reflects poorly on them. At this point, about half way through, Jesus focuses on Judas and launches into an extended Gnostic speculation on the cosmos which continues almost to the end when he reveals his unique plan for Judas.

Who were the Gnostics? They were a diverse array of second century AD groups with an even more bewildering variety of doctrines which makes it very difficult to isolate any definitive body of teaching. Essentially these elitist groups believed the physical world and hence the body were evil, and only the purified spirit good. This created something of a problem given that Genesis says God called creation good.

In order to get around this and to separate the good spirit from evil matter, the Gnostics proposed the existence a complex hierarchy of emanations -- imagine the waves of a radio transmitter with the good spirit at the centre -- which as they get further from the good spirit become more distorted.

Far down the emanation chain came a lesser ignorant deity called the demiurge, whom they often associated with the God of the Old Testament and who created matter with the result that the human spirit became trapped in the prison of the body. They were elitist because they believed that only a few specially enlightened people would be saved by being freed from their bodies. Most people, including most Christians, would not gain this insight.

It is not hard to see why the early shepherds of the church were strongly opposed to them. Israel's God was not to be divorced from Jesus, nor Israel's scriptures from what God had done in him. Jesus' healing of bodies shows they are to be valued, as does Jesus' own bodily resurrection. Finally, the entire ancient world was built on a crushing elitism. But in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free. In denying that Christ's death was sufficient for all the Gnostics were simply reintroducing the old pagan hierarchical elitism.

In this particular document one finds then the characteristic fantastic references to the emanations, aeons, clouds, and various angels beginning with one, then to four, then twelve aeons, 24, 72, and finally 360, etc. There is also a strong animosity toward the disciples -- they blaspheme Jesus in their hearts -- whereas Judas reflects on exalted things. Only toward the very end does one get the line: "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." That is, you will release me from my body.

Judas then enters a luminous cloud and hears a voice (all this purportedly happening by the way during the Passion week). There's another gap in the text (about five lines) and then Judas is in the temple and accepts money in return for information on Jesus' whereabouts.

What's the point? Judas, far from being a traitor, was Jesus' closest confidant and ally. Jesus instructed Judas to betray him so that he could be released from his body. In other words, Judas alone of Jesus' followers is the truly enlightened one.

What can we say about all this? First, the reports are right in that GJu is indeed a truly ancient document. But based on established parallels, the developed nature of its cosmic speculations clearly indicates that GJu belongs to the second century.

Indeed, the hostility toward the twelve and the rehabilitation of Judas fits well with a particular sect of Gnosticism known as the Cainites who sought to turn Cain, the people of Sodom, Esau and Korah (who led the wilderness rebellion) into heroes. Irenaeus, a second century church father who steadfastly opposed the Gnostics, refers to it and this discovery corroborates his accuracy. So it is old, but, and this is crucial, it is certainly not as old as the first century canonical gospels.

It also further illustrates the diversity of "Christian" belief from this period. But this hardly justifies Ehrmann's and Pagel's sensationalist claims. Anyone who has read the church fathers already knows about this diversity, and the fathers have been around for 1800 years. What happened was that in the middle of last century scholars found ancient copies of the documents to which the fathers refer. So what is new is not "diversity" but the copies. In this sense there was and is no "myth of a monolithic religion" in the second century to be exploded. We have known about this for a long time.

So why the fuss? Ehrmann and Pagels, by reading this second century diversity back into the first, want to suggest that the idea of a common core of orthodox belief in the first cent is a fiction imposed later by a hierarchical church. In other words the unity of the NT is the result of a conspiracy (enter The Da Vinci Code). For others, the Gospel of Judas offers a more accurate account of what happened before Jesus' death.

But one can no more read back second century evidence into the first than one can read the twentieth century use of "gay" to mean sexual orientation back into nineteenth century reports of "gay" times at church picnics. Since the only concrete evidence for this kind of diversity is from the second century, the simplest and therefore most likely the best explanation is that as the church expanded geographically and attracted more people the greater the risk of various fringe groups forming outside of mainstream.

In other words, this is only evidence of growing diversity away from a core first century tradition, not of an initial first century diversity. As Rodney Stark argued, when the first century church father Ignatius took his long walk to Rome and martyrdom, the fact that he was well received at a host of small Christian communities along the way suggests they shared a common conception of their faith.

Ehrmann and Pagels are engaging in wishful thinking -- and they really ought to know better. There was no conspiracy and there is no myth to be exploded.

Finally, does GJu tell us anything about what really happened? Almost certainly not. The wild speculations of the group who created GJu do not inspire confidence. Would you buy a used car from these people?

If there was a secret conversation between Judas and Jesus, both of whom died very soon afterward, to whom was this story told and how was it passed on? Some might suggest by Judas' friends or family. But if Jesus did not even share this secret teaching with the twelve whom he had chosen to be with him for nearly three years, why would Judas just a few days or hours later share it with his even more unenlightened outsiders like his family or friends?

Further, if Judas truly was the uniquely enlightened figure GJu suggests and if he was acting directly on Jesus' instructions, why would he have committed suicide just a few hours later (assuming of course that he did, and did not end up marrying Mary Magdalene's cousin before heading to India where he and Jesus spent the rest of their days)?

But perhaps the biggest question is this. If all Jesus needed was to be freed from his mortal body, why use Judas? Why not just hand himself over or throw himself sans angels from the Temple (as in the Temptation)? Why the charade of a betrayal at all? Indeed, just how reasonable is it to suppose that after spending three years with Jesus the only one of his followers who really knew what was going on was Judas? Not very.

A friend of mine who works with Revenue Canada at a border crossing once told me: the truth is bottomless. No matter how many questions you ask, the answers will fit. Clearly this is not the case with GJu. Even just a few simple questions like these see the whole thing begin to unravel. Everything suggests that this is a later attempt by a fringe group to rewrite a well entrenched betrayal story to fit their own particular agenda.

So yes, GJu is a new and interesting discovery for students of an aberrant and marginal second century group. But I suspect that once the circus has left town, more sober minds will see it for what it is: a great deal of overblown fuss about a mildly interesting curiosity.

---Rikk Watts is associate professor of New Testament at Regent College in Vancouver, BC Canada

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