'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

by **nomo** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 2:07 pm

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/science/06cnd-judas.html">www.nytimes.com/2006/04/0...judas.html</a> 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD and LAURIE GOODSTEIN <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/judastxt.pdf">Excerpts from the gospel(PDF)</a> <a href="http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/document.html">Explore the document</a> An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of what is known as the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years. The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today. In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will "exceed" the other disciples by doing so. Though some theologians have hypothesized this, scholars who have studied the new-found text said, this is the first time an ancient document defends the idea. The discovery in the desert of Egypt of the leather-bound papyrus manuscript, and now its translation, was announced by the National Geographic Society at a news conference in Washington. The 26-page Judas text is said to be a copy in Coptic, made around A. D. 300, of the original Gospel of Judas, written in Greek the century before. Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of the geographic society, said the manuscript, or codex, is considered by scholars and scientists to be the most significant ancient, nonbiblical text to be found in the past 60 years. "The codex has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature," Mr. Garcia said, citing extensive tests of radiocarbon dating, ink analysis and multispectral imaging and studies of the script and linguistic style. The ink, for example, was consistent with ink of that era, and there was no evidence of multiple rewriting. "This is absolutely typical of ancient Coptic manuscripts," said Stephen Emmel, professor of Coptic studies at the University of Munster in Germany. "I am completely convinced." The most revealing passages in the Judas manuscript begins, "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover." The account goes on to relate that Jesus refers to the other disciples, telling Judas "you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." By that, scholars familiar with Gnostic thinking said, Jesus meant that by helping him get rid of his physical flesh, Judas will act to liberate the true spiritual self or divine being within Jesus. Unlike the accounts in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the anonymous author of the Gospel of Judas believed that Judas Iscariot alone among the 12 disciples understood the meaning of Jesus' teachings and acceded to his will. In the diversity of early Christian thought, a group known as Gnostics believed in a secret knowledge of how people could escape the prisons of their material bodies and return to the spiritual realm from which they came. Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton who specializes in studies of the Gnostics, said in a statement, "These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse — and fascinating — the early Christian movement really was." The Gospel of Judas is only one of many texts discovered in the last 65 years, including the gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and Philip, believed to be written by Gnostics. The Gnostics' beliefs were often viewed by bishops and early church leaders as unorthodox, and they were frequently denounced as heretics. The discoveries of Gnostic texts have shaken up Biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs and practices among early followers of Jesus. As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out. For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers. The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator. Scholars say that they have long been on the lookout for the Gospel of Judas because of a reference to what was probably an early version of it in a text called Against Heresies, written by Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, about the year 180. Irenaeus was a hunter of heretics, and no friend of the Gnostics. He wrote, "They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas." Karen L. King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, and an expert in Gnosticism who has not yet read the manuscript released today, said that the Gospel of Judas may well reflect the kinds of debates that arose in the second and third century among Christians. "You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus's death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," said Ms. King, the author of several books on the Gospel of Mary. "So what does that make Judas? Is he the betrayer, or the facilitator of salvation, the guy who makes the crucifixion possible?" At least one scholar said the new manuscript does not contain anything dramatic that would change or undermine traditional understanding of the Bible. James M. Robinson, a retired professor of Coptic studies at Claremont Graduate University, was the general editor of the English edition of the Nag Hammadi library, a collection of Gnostic documents discovered in Egypt in 1945. "Correctly understood, there's nothing undermining about the Gospel of Judas," Mr. Robinson said in a telephone interview. He said that the New Testament gospels of John and Mark both contain passages that suggest that Jesus not only picked Judas to betray him, but actually encouraged Judas to hand him over to those he knew would crucify him. Mr. Robinson's book, "The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and his Lost Gospel" (Harper San Francisco, April 2006), predicts the contents of the Gospel of Judas based on his knowledge of Gnostic and Coptic texts, even though he was not part of the team of researchers working on the document. The Egyptian copy of the gospel was written on 13 sheets of papyrus, both front and back, and found in a multitude of brittle fragments. Rudolphe Kasser, a Swiss scholar of Coptic studies, directed the team that reconstructed and translated the script. The effort, organized by the National Geographic, was supported by Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, in Basel, Switzerland, and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, an American nonprofit organization for the application of technology in historical and scientific projects. The entire 66-page codex also contains a text titled James (also known as First Apocalypse of James), a letter by Peter and a text of what scholars are provisionally calling Book of Allogenes. Discovered in the 1970's in a cavern near El Minya, Egypt, the document circulated for years among antiquities dealers in Egypt, then Europe and finally in the United States. It moldered in a safe-deposit box at a bank in Hicksville, N. Y., for 16 years before being bought in 2000 by a Zurich dealer, Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos. The manuscript was given the name Codex Tchacos. When attempts to resell the codex failed, Ms. Nussberger-Tchacos turned it over to the Maecenas Foundation for conservation and translation. Mr. Robinson said that an Egyptian antiquities dealer offered to sell him the document in 1983 for $3 million, but that he could not raise the money. He criticized the scholars now associated with the project, some of whom are his former students, because he said they violated an agreement made years ago by Coptic scholars that new discoveries should be made accessible to all qualified scholars. The manuscript will ultimately be returned to Egypt, where it was discovered, and housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Ted Waitt, the founder and former chief executive of Gateway, said that his foundation, the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, gave the National Geographic Society a grant of more than $1 million to restore and preserve the manuscript and make it available to the public. "I didn't know a whole lot until I got into this about the early days of Christianity. It was just extremely fascinating to me," Mr. Waitt said in a telephone interview. He said he had no motivation other than being fascinated by the finding. He said that after the document was carbon dated and the ink tested, procedures his foundation paid for, he had no question about its authenticity. "You can potentially question the translation and the interpretation, he said, but you can't fake something like this. It would be impossible."

by **Dreams End** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 3:49 pm

wow. Interesting. I believe there is a sufi saying, "Without Judas, there would be no resurrection." (edited silly mistake) But I wonder why anyone but fundamentalists would have concern. The accepted understanding in scholarly circles is that writers of various gospels have points of view and the writing of the gospel in question is done to reflect this. It's not lying, really, but these guys weren't writing history. So, we have Jesus traced back, for example, to the lineage of David (in two conflicting lists, I'd add). This was done simply to show the importance of Jesus in the emerging theology of the particular Christian community from which the Gospel writers emerged. Tracing back to important or even divine ancestors was a common practice. Heck, in Rome, the Senate could VOTE you into divinity, and did so with Augustus. Since, as the story is told, Joseph wasn't even Jesus' father, all such lines of descent are irrelevant anyway. So to have a gospel that talks about Judas as being a "hero" in the story with the point being that our earthly bodies are more of a spiritual hindrance than wondrous creation, simply reflects the gnostic belief system and tells us nothing of the actual events. Gnostics rather disliked the material world and taught a system of personal enlightenment. Somewhere along the way, the entire social gospel of Jesus, or at least as it is reported to us, has gotten lost. The Jesus who says that the poor are blessed and that those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the prisoner might as well be mistreating Christ himself. There's an interesting passage in this document where the disciples (whom Jesus seems to think very little of in this version) tell Jesus of a vision they had of a temple in which men were sacrificing women and children in his name. Jesus basically says, "so what, it 's not whose name they do it in but what they are doing that matters. " However, I was interested in the mention of child sacrifice, which shows that if nothing else, the idea of it was known in the early Christian community as an evil practice. Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=dreamsend@rigorousintuition>Dreams End</A> at: 4/6/06 3:14 pm

by **charleswatkins** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:18 pm

Let me get this straight. Judas was actually a good guy because he helped Jesus get killed so that he could escape the flesh? That makes the Romans, Pilate, the Sanhedran, and all those Barabas fans into heroes, too, doesn't it? And Mary, well she should have just crushed him in the manger so as to send him on his way ASAP. "Since Jesus died for our sins, we must strive to commit them so that his martyrdom will not be meaningless."

by **isachar** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:22 pm

The Gnostic traditions and gospels have always stood in addition to and apart from the sanitized, edited and selective version of the gospels and apocryphal documents known as the New Testament. The stoopids, who require and can only absorb a simple story, have a hard time dealing with the complexity of the events of that time. They were no less complex than those surrounding, say, 911, phony elections, phony war, etc..., of our time. The official catholic/christic canon contains only small shadow of a memory of these events. Start by throwing out all of Paul. Then add the immediate post-crucifixion politics over who the leadership of the judeo/christics would be, and the substance of their beliefs. Add the bitter debate/division over whether non-Jews (or non-religious Jews for that matter) who did not follow Mosaic law/traditions could be adherents/members. The role of women (Mary, perhaps) in the immediate post-crucifixion church. That's just for starters. Then, fast forward 300 years to Constantine, the Council of Nicea and the politics of that time. One comes up with a very complex, dynamic and very interesting story. Not even considering whether Da JC was married to or had a child with Mary M and all that DaVinci Code stuff. IMO, no nice Jewish boy of JC's age at that time wouldn't be married (unless maybe they travelled on the other side of the street). Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=isachar>isachar</A> at: 4/6/06 2:23 pm

by **mother** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:24 pm

Utter resurfacing, recycled bs from the usual suspects

by **FourthBase** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:25 pm

So...Jesus was basically as nutty as David Koresh?

by **friend catcher** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 4:33 pm

Well Dylan as is often the case got there first In a many dark hour I've been thinkin' about this That Jesus Christ Was betrayed by a kiss But I can't think for you You'll have to decide Whether Judas Iscariot Had God on his side. But this smells like bullshit. I'm sure I heard one like this before, in the pre-internet days.Will try to remember

by **StarmanSkye** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 6:40 pm

Thanks for posting Nomo; VERY interesting -- I don't know why this should be so bizarre, unbelieveable or immediately dismissed as BS by folks who lend credence to the teaching and tradition of Christ; How could Jesus not KNOW Judas would betray him? It was the fulfillment of his ministry, crucial to the ultimate meaning of his ministry ie. Life After Death, the Spirit which is Infinite. "then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," said Ms. King, the author of several books on the Gospel of Mary. "So what does that make Judas? Is he the betrayer, or the facilitator of salvation, the guy who makes the crucifixion possible?" That Judas was selected by Christ is entirely consistent with my understanding -- More than anything else I'm rather amazed that now there's evidently proof which has been in existence for some 30 years that confirms what should have been self-evident through modest diligence. Once I learned to think for myself, I've been amazed at the simplistic and reactionary conclusion of some that Judas's betrayal was a dishonorable act of greed and so to be despised. This contradicts reason -- after all, Judas along with the other Apostles saw first hand hundreds of miracle-healings and spontaneous public speeches full of great wisdom and compassion. They could hardly fail to be touched by Christ's example of service to others, and see how he was loved and honored. It would just be too incredible to suppose that any Apostle hadn't developed a deep and genuine, undying love for Christ, and that they would sell him out for something as vulgar and coarse as money (about a year's wages IIRC). Even someone with only a rudimentary grasp of Christ's ministry must be aware that whatever the 'truth' of his betrayal and regardless of Judas's motivation, God above all enjoins the faithful to forgive ALL THOSE who do wrong. The role Judas was required to perform to fulfull Christ's ministry would have been one of the most difficult tasks that any Apostle would have faced, as Judas could hardly fail to appreciate the condemning judgement by the masses who were incapable of well-reasoned understanding -- and who would invariably find him wanting. Perhaps too even the Apostles found it impossible to 'forgive' Judas, which may have contributed to his second-thoughts and deep depression, leading to the taking of his own life. But WHY, Mother, do you find this report BS? How does it undermine or contradict Christ's ministry? Doesn't the Catholic Church frown on their members reading and studying the Bible? In my early teachings leading to First Confirmation, I don't recall we were EVER even encouraged to read the New Testament. I thought the idea was that the Priests reserved to themselves the duty of telling the people what the Bible meant. Do you doubt that the only thing that has made the Bible 'official' in the form as we know of it today is the process by which Church authorities selected which extant writings would be included? Just curious, because I don't find anything blasphemous in a Gospel of Judas -- nor can I grasp on what basis someone simply decides what is true without anything to support it but the conviction of belief by training Starman

by **Corvidaerex** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:05 pm

There is a bit of a smokescreen here. Shouldn't be surprising, if articles like this one published a month ago can be believed: "Some sections of the Church fear it will challenge many of Christianity's most deeply held beliefs. It has already been labeled "dangerous" by one Vatican scholar." <a href="http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,18439345%255E912,00.html">www.theadvertiser.news.co...12,00.html</a> Here's the problem with today's "release" of the Gospel of Judas: As recently as March 13, National Geographic said the whole lost gospel would be revealed, and that it was going to be troubling for some people: "Some sources have indicated that as well as conversations between Christ and Judas, the gospel also contains another 'surprise' which will be revealed when the full contents of the manuscript are unveiled in Washington on April 6." Guess what? They released nothing more than a few passages from only four of the 26 pages. The entire codix contains 66 pages of manuscript (two-sided papyrus), of which 95% was restored and translated, according to National Geographic. Yet only two pages from the remaining 40 will be displayed. Something they're calling the Book of Allogenes is in there too, supposedly a new text. No word on what it shares in common with the positively insane Allogenes text found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. <a href="http://www.webcom.com/gnosis/naghamm/allogene.html">www.webcom.com/gnosis/nag...ogene.html</a> But even though only tiny bits of the Judas gospel have been revealed, and even though the smokescreen of "Judas redeemed?" has done an excellent job of confusing people enough that no newspaper or broadcaster was compelled to mention the vast majority of the Judas gospel has *not* been revealed, there is something pretty staggering in what was released today. It's the last passage shown on the National Geographic site, page 56 of the codix. "Look, you have been told everything," Jesus says to Judas after whispering whatever crazy secrets to his Judas, his special conspirator. "Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star. Judas lifted his eyes and saw the luminous cloud, and he entered it .... " what ... the ... hell? <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/alien.gif ALT="0]"> (I posted a slightly more coherent version of this story at Sploid.com today. <a href="http://www.sploid.com/news/2006/04/post_8.php">www.sploid.com/news/2006/04/post_8.php</a> )

by **rothbardian** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 5:41 am

Mother-- I know you had asked me to expand on the Karl Marx thing a while back. The hard drive on one of my computers (that had all my notes) literally broke, and I have had little time these days to reconstruct them but..I'd really like to do that sometime. Thanks for asking. As to this Gospel of Judas-- the first thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is that there is only one copy. That is beyond 'suspicious'. In fact, we just roared past 'suspicious' and headed straight for 'laughable'. Every book of the New Testament has hundreds and thousands of copies and fragments of copies that are traceable from around the time the printing press was invented...all the way back to around 150-175 AD. Huge chains of copies spanning over a thousand years, for each book. And this Gospel of Judas has one copy? And it's been stashed in...Hicksville (NY)? What is that...about a half hour drive from David Rockefeller's office?

by **Dreams End** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 10:25 am

I'm not sure why this is such a "threat". There are many such "lost gospels", such as the gospel of Thomas. They simply weren't accepted then and aren't accepted now as part of the canon...so not sure why this one would be such a threat. I think they do shed light on early Christian "denominations", perhaps, but the idea of gospels which have a different viewpoint is not new at all. Now, if one emerged talking about Jesus having children who moved to France and established a bloodline of kings, then I think I'd start wondering about larger plots.

by **lilorphant** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 11:42 am

Unconditional love. Jesus knew what was going down, he knew Judas would turn him in, knew all that would come to pass. So this is the thing, in the regular New Testament, Jesus does nothing to "save" Judas, he goes willingly to the cross, but as he knew Judas would kill himself, why wouldn't he try to save his brother, friend from eternal damnation? Sounds a bit meanspirited. Turn to the practice of not allowing people to be burried on hallowed ground, for centuries, even today one cannot be burried in Catholic cemetaries if they have killed themselves. This tortures many families, and was used as an ultimate punishment, when perhaps a little consolation and compassion might have gone far to alleviate a families suffering. The Cathars and other non- Christians practiced self-immolation, which perhaps could have identified underground heretics post-death, but I do not know if suicide, or self sacrifice would have been viewed favorably by early gnostics. Is the interpetation of eternal damnation for suicides perhaps a punishment against heresy or a way to discourage gnostics or heretics who believed "shedding this mortal coil" would purify the soul and provide a way to heaven? I recall reading that the soul as spirit in some ancient practices, (maybe hindu?) the burning of the body would actually provide a transportation system sort of via the smoke to heaven/universe/nirvana. Perhaps Judas didn't commit suicide by hanging, perhaps he was actually sacrificing himself.

by **CyberChrist** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 12:22 pm

It's kind of sad that modern Christianity is nothing like what the original followers intended it to be. It seemed like it was more like Zen Buddhism or Sufi than this sorry excuse for a religion now, basically enabling people to blame anyone but themselves for their troubles and absolving them of crimes like bombing other civilizations into dust. -- CyberChrist http://www.hackerjournal.org My brain is hung like a horse.

by **CyberChrist** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 12:46 pm

Also a few things: <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Guess what? They released nothing more than a few passages from only four of the 26 pages. The entire codix contains 66 pages of manuscript (two-sided papyrus), of which 95% was restored and translated, according to National Geographic. Yet only two pages from the remaining 40 will be displayed.<hr></blockquote> if you follow the links, you can see that there are pictures of the papyrus and while 95% has been translated, some pages have maybe 30-40% of the original paper intact. So, a lot is missing. The pages also are not exactly 8.5x11. They do not correlate to 66 pages of standard English text. It would probably be something like 10-12 pages if all pages were intact. We got 7 or so pages, apparently, which is pretty good. <blockquote>Quote:<hr>Every book of the New Testament has hundreds and thousands of copies and fragments of copies that are traceable from around the time the printing press was invented...all the way back to around 150-175 AD. Huge chains of copies spanning over a thousand years, for each book. And this Gospel of Judas has one copy? And it's been stashed in...Hicksville (NY)? What is that...about a half hour drive from David Rockefeller's office? <hr></blockquote> This really ignores the times in which the Gospels were written. The early Gnostics were persecuted and their books and writings burned and banned by the Roman empire. These copies were found in Nag Hammadi, which is to say that they were hidden from the Romans. So, one copy of this is frankly not surprising. And please spare me the Rockafeller mumblings.. Hicksville is also an hour's drive from Yankee Stadium, but I don't exactly see anyone insinuating Steinbrenner just due to proximity. The reason why you see many copies of the New Testament books is because eventually in 320 AD, the Romans adopted Christianity as their official religion and began to circulate the heavily-edited and approved official gospels. Gospels such as this one and other Gnostic works such the Gospel of Thomas and the Copper scroll were not approved parts of the official Canon, so they were not mass produced, if they were aware of them at all. Nor would they have been as the printing press did not come until the 1450s when Gutenberg invented the moveable type printing press. Before that, everything was either copied by hand or hand-copied. -- CyberChrist http://www.hackerjournal.org My brain is hung like a horse.

by **lilorphant** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 2:05 pm

<a href="http://www.catholic.net/rcc/Periodicals/Faith/MARAPR99/augustine.html">www.catholic.net/rcc/Peri...stine.html</a> The Manicheans preserved elements of Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism, but what I read into the mythology of the Manicheans, according to this representation, really seems to me an allegory of the laws of thermodynamics. A son/sun god, which emanates light into plants, to be devoured by man, who will return to the source of light/heaven makes perfect sense. I think the source of son/sun gods in mythologies represent a pretty good interpretation of the the sun being the source of all light/energy/good, and matter being the opposite. To me, there is no conflict, only degrees of literalism. There are two known things in the universe, energy and matter. One could reasonably expect an oral tradition to explain this could be elaborate, symbolic, or told with characters through songs, poems, epics, written stories, to be passed down through generations. If one is evil, and the other good, than which is which, or are they equal opposites, it becomes easy to see how matter and energy can become light and darkness, good and evil, the heavenly world and the underworld.

'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

gospel of Judas

Re: gospel of Judas

Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

Re: 'Gospel of Judas' Surfaces After 1,700 Years

Re: This story is MUCH weirder than it looks

The Gospel of Judas "surfaces"

Re: The Gospel of Judas "surfaces"

Breathtaking-

Re: Breathtaking-

Re: Breathtaking-

Gnostic sect Manicheans v Augustine

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