A Thinking Reed

The Gospel according to Judas?

Written by

Lee M.

in

This story is a bit sketchy about the actual content of a recently published translation of the so-called Gospel of Judas. The document was discovered by looters in the ’70s, but was just released yesterday by the National Geographic Society after having been authenticated. Previously it seems that it was only known through St. Irenaeus’ discussion in Against Heresies.

It appears to engage in a bit of Judas revisionism, suggesting that he and Jesus were in cahoots (not unlike the way Judas is portrayed – by a horribly miscast Harvey Keitel – in The Last Temptation of Christ, actually). Otherwise it sounds like it hits the usual gnostic notes: the body is bad, free your spirit, etc.

Comments

13 responses to “The Gospel according to Judas?”

  1. Joshie

    From the bit I read, on the pplpc news thingy, it seems to be pretty docetic as well (as many of the gnostics were). This quote from it is given:

    “You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

    The other features, like secret knowledge imarted to a particular apostle, a dualistic anthropology, etc., as you pointed out, do seem like pretty standard Gnostic fare. But it’s curious to me why it took 30 years to release this when the rest of the Nag Hammadi stuff was released years ago.

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  2. Joshie

    upon further checking, assuming they got their facts right, this was not a part of the Nag Hammadi collection which was actually discovered in 1945 but only published in the 70’s. It’s still odd why it took so long though.

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  3. jack perry

    As near as I can tell, someone had to pay for a professional tranlsator, and that didn’t become feasible until these days when “alternate Christianities” acquired an aura of greater authenticity than the Christianity of Irenaeus. That latter phenomenon is what I find bizarre.

    I notice, incidentally, that Irenaeus does not seem to have misrepresented the work.

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  4. Eric Lee

    I can’t remember where I originally found this (may have been on here for all I remember, so ignore me if so), but this is somewhat related:

    Decoding the Da Vinci Code: The Challenge of Historic Christianity to Post-Modern Fantasy, by N. T. Wright. The reason I bring it up is because it seems like all these gnostic things are just way too Platonic to be anything actually resembling the real Jewishness of Jesus and those around him at the time.

    Peace,

    Eric

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  5. Lee

    Good article by Wright, thanks!

    It’s really amazing to me how this kind of neo-gnostic, “alternative” Christianity stuff has taken off. You see whole sections in bookstores dedicated to the stuff, and I assume that it isn’t because lots of people have suddenly become interested in the scholarly study of Christian origins.

    Incidentally, yesterday at the library I picked up Philip J. Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics. I haven’t started it, but it looks like he’s going to argue that North American Protestantism has a lot of gnostic elements (akin to Harold Bloom’s argument that gnosticism is kind of the default setting for American religion). Should be interesting – I may post on it at some point.

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  6. Eric Lee

    Lee,

    You’re welcome!

    Similarly, my friend Vaughn Thompson had a blog called Icthus (I think you commented on it from time to time?) where he blogged through the first 20 or so chapters of The Purpose-Driven Life and he came to the conclusion, more than once, that Rick Warren was peddling something all too entirely gnostic. Interesting that that book and The Da Vinci Code took off at about the same time? Perhaps, I dunno.

    Peace,

    Eric

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  7. Joshie

    Upon even FUTHER looking into the story that the delay was due to haggling with the antiquities dealer over a price, basically. Those guys have a sleeze level equal to or greater than record company executives.

    While I share Wright’s concern with emphasizing Jesus’ Jewishness, I think he has a tendency to play into this feeling on the part of many Christians that somehow it is possible, or even essential to somehow disentangle the polluted Hellenic elements of the New Testament (or gospel or Jesus, or whatever) from the pure, Hebrew elements of it.

    Like all the other cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean, Hellenization had a huge impact on Judean and Galilean culture. For example, much of what the rabbis in the Talmud do, which is seen as typically Jewish today, is debate in a style very similar to the Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Jesus himself probably spoke some Greek on a daily basis, Galilee was a fairly cosmopolitan place.

    At any rate, while I agree with Wright, I think we need to be careful not set up another dualism of Hebrew vs. Hellenic in the name of fighting gnostic dualisms.

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  8. Lee

    Joshie, good point. I think there’s been a kind of backlash against Hellenism in recent biblical studies and theology. In many ways this was salutary given the various attempts in the church’s history to set “higher,” more Hellenized (read: spiritual) Christianity against Judaism and the anti-Semitic conclusions which were all too frequently drawn. Clearly recovering the distinctly Jewish character of Jesus and Christianity has been an important project.

    But I agree that this can be taken too far – Christianity just is in many ways Judaism + Hellenism; it’s probably not possible (or desirable) to discover a “pure” Jewish Christianity “untainted” by Hellenism.

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  9. Eric Lee

    Yeah, I would probably agree with that as well. To the extent that Jesus’ Jewishness needs to be realized, we do in fact learn that in Acts 10:34 as well as Galations 3:28 that these distinctions really don’t matter all that much. God does not favour nationalities and our similarly arbitrary distinctions. Augustine found some good in Platonism to an extent, but didn’t completely embrace it, for obvious reasons, nor would we call him a Gnostic. Etc.

    Although, as much as I would agree with the comments made, I really don’t see Wright making a ‘dualism’ out of Jewish/Hellenist when I read the article. What’s important to note is that the Gospel narratives were in no way Platonic/Gnostic, nor are any of the rest of the books of the Bible (Hebrews does have some Platonic elements, notwithstanding). I think that’s important to emphasize. To actually make that a ‘dualism,’ Wright would actually have to affirm both in a kind of over-against manner, and I don’t seem him affirming Gnosticism at all to the point of making a dialectic out of the two.

    Contrast what’s being alleged with the modern nature/grace or faith/reason [false] dualisms where one is emphasized over-against the other but both embraced (or collapsed within another i.e. Spinoza collapsing the supernatural into the natural in a pantheistic move), and one discovers that what Wright is talking about is actually not a dualism at all.

    I would also say that some of the weird broad brushstrokes made at Derrida and Foucault by N. T. Wright in that article are cursory at best and sloppy at worst. I might agree with his conclusions as to the fact that we can’t really take the postmodernists all the way, but to the extent that they provide some useful tools, I also don’t think they can be dismissed with the same bunch of Gnostics. Postmodernists like he’s been describer there only started coming out with stuff in the 1960’s… the Gnostics have been around for (duh) much longer so they aren’t exactly the same boat and therefore aren’t exactly the same problem.

    Okay, it’s late. I’m rambling.

    Peace,

    Eric

    Reply
  10. Lee

    Also, just for clarity’s sake, I want to emphasize that Gnosticism and Platonism are by no means the same thing. Gnosticism certainly had some Platonic elements, but it also departed from it in important ways. Plotinus even complained about gnostics infiltrating his academy.

    And can we really say with 100% certainty that the Gospels are without Platonic influence? I don’t know what the state of the art in biblical studies is, but for a long time there was a theory that John may have been influenced in his conception of the Logos by Greeks, particularly the hellenized Jew Philo of Alexndria. I don’t think anything really hinges theologically on that though; it’s long been held, for instance, that the Genesis creation story drew on creation myths from surrounding cultures, so I don’t see why it would be any more problematic if it turned out that John got the idea of the Logos from neo-platonic philosophers and adapted it for his purposes.

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  11. Eric Lee

    Lee,

    Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, I know Gnosticism and Platonism aren’t the same thing, but my comments seemed to conflate them. It’s the synoptic Gospel accounts, of course, that Wright was talking about, and even then, John doesn’t have any Gnostic influence. Also, to further add some clarification to your own comments, ‘Greek’ does not always equal ‘Platonic,’ either.

    In Jesus these borders and distinctions are smashed, thank God.

    Peace,

    Eric

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  12. Eric Lee

    Er, for further clarification, Plato did not come up with the concept of ‘Logos’, so for something to be actually considered ‘Platonic,’ it would actually have to dip into his well of thought at least somewhat in particular, not just from a Greek conception of reason/word in general.

    Peace,

    Eric

    Reply
  13. Lee

    Eric, that’s true – the Logos as a philosophical/metaphysical concept goes back at least to Heraclitus, but the particular spin put on it by Philo was very Platonic and influenced certain of the Church Fathers (and arguably John, though I imagine there’s debate about this).

    For a good discussion of Philo’s doctrine of the Logos see here:

    http://www.iep.utm.edu/p/philo.htm#H11

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