Thanks. No wonder I couldn’t find a good site. :smack:
This is interesting in that it might drive home the point that early Christians did not march in lockstep to what later became the NT. This is not news, but I wonder how many American Christians, at least, are aware of this.
It’s also interesting in examining the problem of Judas. If Christianity depends on the resurrection, where would they be if Judas had not turned Christ in? What if he had died in bed many years later? If the crucifixtion was essential, did Judas have free will?
How much was known about the Judas Gospel before this discovery? I assume scholars knew of its existence, but was any of its contents known? If not, this must be quite a find for Biblical Scholars!
Gnostics believe in “special knowledge” (hence “gnostic”), which relates to the spiritual world. They view that world to be God’s realm, and for the material world to be the realm of evil gods (or at least of an evil force). This latest Gospel, which speaks of Judas helping relieve Jesus of his material body fits perfectly into that tradition.
Not that mainstream Christians don’t delineate between the flesh and the spirit, they just don’t buy into the idea that the entire material world is under the dominion of “the dark side”, if you will.
There certainly seems, if you will, to be a “flavour” of Gnosticism in mainstream Christianity. All that stuff about “worldly” being bad, celebacy being good, etc.
Irenaeus alluded to some of its contents in his Adversus Haereses in 180 A.D. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Judas
It’s hard to believe, sometimes, that Christianity has its origins in Judaism. Most of the Talmudic law is all about maintaining good social relations among the Jewish community, while keeping it distinctly Jewish and not entirely assimilated by Gentile ways. Christianity is all about the individual soul getting into Heaven, and this world is almost irrelevant – a mere backdrop for a cosmic morality play. And while Judaism has a strict code of sexual morality, no rabbi would ever advise celibacy; every Jew has a moral and religious duty to get married and have children, and a husband has a particular duty to have regular sex with his wife, not to make babies but to keep her happy. So I’ve read and heard, IANAJ.
Like BrainGlutton said, its existence was known from Irenaeus (who mentioned it as a Cainite Gospel in Against Heresies but its content was not known until the Coptic Manuscripts were discovered in the 70’s. Even then, the manuscripts sat unrestored and untranslated until recently (I think about 2001) when the process of restoration, translation and now publication got underway.
As an aside, some people might be intersted to know that Bart Ehrman, the NT scholar who has popped up in some recent SDMB threads after an appearance on The Daily Show, was part of the translation team who worked on the Gospel of Judas.
OK, I don’t come to GD very often, and just tossed out a comment, which is never a good idea here. I don’t like the winning version of Christianity very much, either. However, I think it’s all too common to think that the losing side must have been much better than the winner, simply from the fact of losing. Everything Gnostic I’ve ever read has been repellent to me … the hatred of the physical world goes beyond anything I can comprehend.
As for the Essenes (on the assumption they really are the Qumran cult) …they had a whole lotta hate goin’ on, and it scares me.
And know, I don’t think either group should have been massacred. I’m just glad I don’t have to accept their beliefs.
Wait a minute. The Cainates were one amongst roughly half a billion sects (Naassenes, Ophites, Nicolaites,…) as far as I can tell. Why do you think they would be the authors of this specific gospel?
Besides, I’ve never read about them having any particular interest in Judas (not that it means they didn’t, just wondering) so have you any evidence they did in fact have some sort of reverence for him?
The information comes from Irenaeus’ Against Heresies (c. 180 CE) which briefly describes the beliefs of the Cainites and claims that they wrote a Gospel of Judas. The content of the newly translated manuscripts match the description of Cainite beliefs.
The probem of Judas was one the the first grip I had with christianism, back in sunday school. I always rooted for the guy (unjustly punished for having done what he had too, contrarily to this coward called Peter. Yes, I know that technically, he wasn’t punished for betraying the Christ, but still…).
Where do I sign the petition for the inclusion of the gospel according to Judas in the Canon???
Oh! And I also used to find really unjust the treatment received by Cain. Abel? Pfff… spoiled child.
I would have been a good little Cainite, wouldn’t I?
So if Judas were a saint, what would he be the patron saint of?
I wasn’t paying attention in the 70s, so don’t know much about it: When the Nag Hammadi scrolls finally hit the bookshelves, was the response as overblown as the current response to the Gospel of Judas? I mean, looking back on the works of Pagels, et al., my only real criticism is to point out how naive they sounded when they suggested that the revelation of the Apocryphal NT Gospels would somehow enable a profound reevaluation of Christian Theology. It didn’t. I mean, Thomas probably contains some of the hypothetical Q, and perhaps some of the most well-preserved language of the purported Sayings of Christ. Didn’t even make an impression, as far as I can tell, except among pluralist scholars and afficionados of esoterica.
Redheads?
The earliest arguments against Gnostic thought appear in Paul’s letters. Paul is also the earliest source in the New Testament who denigrates both “the world” and sex. Whether Paul was “contaminated” by Gnostic ideas (some of which he opposed) or whether Gnosticism simply included a general set of ideas floating through the Roman world in the first century to which Paul also subscribed is probably a discussion with no resolution.
A study of celibacy, per se, is not really heavily weighted to Christian authors with known Gnostic leanings, so even outside of Paul, the issue comes back to an unresolved issue of “current milieu” vs “borrowed from Gnosticism.”
I think there already is a saint called Judas. Who is patron saint of lost causes.
One of the things about gnostic beliefs that I liked was the idea that each person has equal access to god and spiritual truth through the spirit. That seemed to be a more accurate version of what Christ taught. IMHO anyway. It also negated any need for an official church organization and a priesthood that dictated doctrine to the members. I thought that was a big part of what disliked about the Gnostic’s. Is that correct?
The patron of lost causes is Judas Thaddeus a.k.a. Judas Labbaeus, a.k.a. St. “Jude” for English-speakers. One of three sets of same-name Apostles (James son of Alpheus, James son of Zebedee; Simon Peter, Simon the Zealot; Judas Iscariot, Judas Thaddeus).
And the spirit/matter dichotomy in mainstream Christianity seems to owe more to Platonism.
That would be Saint Jude, who was named to Sainthood because of his ability to take a sad song and make it better. 