The so-called "Gospel of Judas"

[Ekaterina]

2005-03-30
Gospel of Judas back in spotlight after 20 centuries
Swiss foundation seeks to shed light on controversial Christian text named after apostle said to have betrayed Jesus.

By Patrick Baert - GENEVA

About 2,000 years after the Gospel according to Judas sowed discord among early Christians, a Swiss foundation says it is translating for the first time the controversial text named after the apostle said to have betrayed Jesus Christ.

The 62-page papyrus manuscript of the text was uncovered in Egypt during the 1950s or 1960s, but its owners did not fully comprehend its significance until recently, according to the Maecenas Foundation in Basel.

The manuscript written in the ancient dialect of Egypt's Coptic Christian community will be translated into English, French and German in about a year, the foundation specialising in antique culture said on Tuesday.

"We have just received the results of carbon dating: the text is older than we thought and dates back to a period between the beginning of the third and fourth centuries," foundation director Mario Jean Roberty said.

The existence of a Gospel of Judas, which was originally written in Greek, was outlined by a bishop, Saint Irenee, when he denounced the text as heretical during the second century.

"It's the only clear source that allows us to know that such a Gospel did exist," Roberty explained.

The foundation declined to say what account Judas is said to give in his alleged gospel.

According to Christian tradition, Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus Christ by helping the Romans to find him before he was crucified.

"We do not want to reveal the exceptional side of what we have," Roberty said.

The author of the text is unknown.

"No one can clearly state that Judas wrote it himself," Roberty said, while pointing out that the other gospels were probably not written by their supposed authors either.

The four recognised gospels of the New Testament describe the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and are said to record his teachings from the eyes of four of his disciples, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The Roman Catholic Church limited the recognised gospels to the four in 325, under the guidance of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine.

Thirty other texts - some of which have been uncovered - were sidelined because "they were difficult to reconcile with what Constantine wanted as a political doctrine," according to Roberty.

The foundation's director said the Judas Iscariot text called into question some of the political principles of Christian doctrine.

It could also to some extent rehabilitate Judas, whose name has often come to symbolise the accusation of deicide - God-killing - levelled by some Christian teachings against the Jewish people, he added.

After the manuscript is restored, the text is due to be translated and analysed by a team of specialists in Coptic history led by a former professor at the University of Geneva, Rudolf Kasser.

Jean-Daniel Kaestli, an expert on gospels who has seen the manuscript, said the discovery was "very interesting", although the papyrus was in a bad state.

He added that it was not going to lead to a revolutionary change in the vision of the Bible, although it could shed some new light on parts of Christianity's holy text.

The Maecenas Foundation, which aims to protect archaeological relics found in poor countries, hopes to organise exhibitions around the manuscript and to produce a documentary on the process of unravelling the text.

The full launch is due in Easter 2006.

[Ekaterina]

Gospel According to Judas Will Not Shake Christian Faith — Russian Church Leaders
MosNews

The Gospel according to Judas will not shake Christian faith and will have only historical value, the Moscow Patriarchy’s official representative Mikhail Dudko is quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.

“The find of a text attributed to a famous early Christian or Jesus Christ’s disciple probably will not change the composition of the Holy Writ,” he said.

He stressed that early Christian manuscripts are found constantly and the Gospel according to Judas will not be of canonical interest.

“Nevertheless, we will be able to learn more historical facts from it,” Dudko concluded.

The 62-page papyrus manuscript of the Gospel according to Judas was uncovered in Egypt during the 1950s or 1960s, but its owners did not fully understand its significance until recently. The text, written in Egypt’s ancient Coptic dialect, will be translated into English, French and German before Easter 2006.

According to Christian tradition, the apostle Judas Iscariot betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver by helping the Romans find him before he was crucified.

The existence of the Gospel, which was originally written in Greek, was outlined by a bishop, Saint Irenee, when he denounced the text as heretical during the second century.

[Kollyvas]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0% ... %2C00.html

Judas the Misunderstood
From Richard Owen, in Rome
Vatican moves to clear reviled disciple’s name

JUDAS ISCARIOT, the disciple who betrayed Jesus with a kiss, is to be given a makeover by Vatican scholars.
The proposed “rehabilitation” of the man who was paid 30 pieces of silver to identify Jesus to Roman soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane, comes on the ground that he was not deliberately evil, but was just “fulfilling his part in God’s plan”.

Christians have traditionally blamed Judas for aiding and abetting the Crucifixion, and his name is synonymous with treachery. According to St Luke, Judas was “possessed by Satan”.

Now, a campaign led by Monsignor Walter Brandmuller, head of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Science, is aimed at persuading believers to look kindly at a man reviled for 2,000 years.

Mgr Brandmuller told fellow scholars it was time for a “re-reading” of the Judas story. He is supported by Vittorio Messori, a prominent Catholic writer close to both Pope Benedict XVI and the late John Paul II.

Signor Messori said that the rehabilitation of Judas would “resolve the problem of an apparent lack of mercy by Jesus toward one of his closest collaborators”.

He told La Stampa that there was a Christian tradition that held that Judas was forgiven by Jesus and ordered to purify himself with “spiritual exercises” in the desert.

In scholarly circles, it has long been unfashionable to demonise Judas and Catholics in Britain are likely to welcome Judas’s rehabilitation.

Father Allen Morris, Christian Life and Worship secretary for the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, said: “If Christ died for all — is it possible that Judas too was redeemed through the Master he betrayed?” The “rehabilitation” of Judas could help the Pope’s drive to improve Christian-Jewish relations, which he has made a priority of his pontificate.

Some Bible experts say Judas was “a victim of a theological libel which helped to create anti Semitism” by forming an image of him as a “sinister villain” prepared to betray for money.

In many medieval plays and paintings Judas is portrayed with a hooked nose and exaggerated Semitic features. In Dante’s Inferno, Judas is relegated to the lowest pits of Hell, where he is devoured by a three-headed demon.

The move to clear Judas’s name coincides with plans to publish the alleged Gospel of Judas for the first time in English, German and French. Though not written by Judas, it is said to reflect the belief among early Christians — now gaining ground in the Vatican — that in betraying Christ Judas was fulfilling a divine mission, which led to the arrest and Crucifixion of Jesus and hence to man’s salvation.

Mgr Brandmuller said that he expected “no new historical evidence” from the supposed gospel, which had been excluded from the canon of accepted Scripture.

But it could “serve to reconstruct the events and context of Christ’s teachings as they were seen by the early Christians”. This included that Jesus had always preached “forgiveness for one’s enemies”.

Some Vatican scholars have expressed concern over the reconsideration of Judas. Monsignor Giovanni D’Ercole, a Vatican theologian, said it was “dangerous to re-evaulate Judas and muddy the Gospel accounts by reference to apocryphal writings. This can only create confusion in believers.” The Gospels tell how Judas later returned the 30 pieces of silver — his “blood money” — and h anged himself, or according to the Acts of the Apostles, “fell headlong and burst open so that all his entrails burst out”.

Some accounts suggest he acted out of disappointment that Jesus was not a revolutionary who intended to overthrow Roman occupation and establish “God’s Kingdom on Earth”.
In the Gospel accounts, Jesus reveals to the disciples at the Last Supper that one of them will betray him, but does not say which. He adds “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”

But he also — according to St Matthew — acknowledged that Judas had a divine function to fulfil, saying to him during the arrest, “Friend, do what you are here to do” and adding that “the prophecies of the Scriptures must be fulfilled”.

The “Gospel of Judas”, a 62-page worn and tattered papyrus, was found in Egypt half a century ago and later sold by antiquities dealers to the Maecenas Foundation in Basle, Switzerland.

MOCK OF AGES

In Dante’s Inferno, Judas is relegated to the lowest pits of Hell, where he is eaten, head first, by a three-headed demon with flapping bat-like wings

In Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 silent film The King of Kings, Judas’s attraction for Mary Magdalene and the resulting jealousy contributes to his betrayal of Jesus

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s musical Jesus Christ Superstar depicts Judas as a disillusioned, angry character. In the 1973 film version he is presented as more of a victim than villain

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ shows Judas hounded by demon-like street children who send him to his death amid a sea of insects and maggots

[Justin Kissel]

I guess the next step will be to rehabilitate Satan. After all, if he hadn't played his God-forseen and God-allowed part in the fall, Jesus couldn't have come to save us from our sins. And who'd want to live in a world without a risen Lord? Yay Satan!

[CorpusChristi]

no that Mohamed of islam was really a good person and moving him to be made a saint

[Fr. Panagiotes]

This Pascha, the media keeping up with its annual policy, has found something else with which it can attack the faith of Christians. The National Geographic Society is headlining its May edition with a sensationalized report on what it claims challenges one of the most firmly rooted beliefs in Christian tradition. For the next few weeks, newspapers, magazines, television and radio will be proclaiming this newly discovered Gnostic text called The Gospel of Judas.

This manuscript of The Gospel of Judas is a fourth or fifth cnetuary copy of an earlier document produced by a Gnostic sect called the Cainites. Gnosticism is a collective name applying to various pantheistic sects, which flourished from before the coming of our Saviour. These pagan sects borrowed the phraseology of Christianity but otherwise had little in common with the Faith. Their pantheistic thought was based on the belief that this world was the creation of an evil creator-god and that the parent-gods, through a series of descending steps came into contact with humans in order to lead them to the return to the parent-god. This process was facilitated by various saviours who would set free the divine spark captured in the evil human body.

St. Irenæus of Lyons was one of the many Holy Fathers that combated the teachings of the multitude of Gnostic sects that existed at his time. In his great work Against Heresies, he describes a Gnostic sect called the Cainites. They were related to another sect called the Ophites. The Ophites, a name based on the Greek word for snake, worshiped the snake in the Garden of Eden because it showed Adam and Eve how to escape from the evil creator-god. The Cainites worshiped Cain, wo killed his brother Abel and in this way freed him from the captivity of the creator-god (Against Heresies 1, 31:1).

This manuscript, which is being portrayed as a great find, portrays Judas as obeying a divine ordinance in betraying our Saviour. The text begins by announcing that it is the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover. It continues by having our Lord say that it is necessary for someone to free him finally from his human body and he preferred that this liberation be done by His closest friend, Judas.

This manuscript has a vague background but it seems that it was found in the 1970’s. In 1983 the then owner was asking for three million dollars. Eventually it was acquired by The National Geographic Society and today they are trying to make a profit on their investment by sensationalizing this pagan document which was known as early as the second century.

In Christ,
+Fr. Panagiotes

[Miriam]

http://www.newyorker.com/printables/cri ... crbo_books

One of the better articles that I have read about the Gospel of Judas.

Mira