While I was away an announcement was made of the discovery of the "Gospel of Judas" in which it is claimed that Judas wasn't actually that bad. Instead Jesus told Judas to betray him, and Judas was not a traitor, but simply obedient. It was Judas who was entrusted with the real secrets of the kingdom.

I haven't got a copy of this and read it yet, but I am very sceptical about all of this. Let me briefly run through my reasons:

• It seems to be a gnostic gospel. There are in fact several other gnostic gospels (The Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Peter), and numerous other gnostic documents. The gnostics believed in a "secret knowledge" that was needed for salvation. God's grace was not sufficient - this hidden and secret knowledge was needed instead.
• It was written in the second century - the four gospels of the New Testament were all written very close to the events they describe (particularly the Gospel of Mark, which was written within about 15 years of Jesus' death).
• There is no evidence that it was written by Judas or anyone who actually knew what they were writing was correct.
• It is contradictory to the rest of the New Testament. The New Testament teaches salvation via grace alone - not by works. Knowing some secret knowledge contradicts this.
• It was known to the early church, and rejected by them as heretical.
• The gnostic ideas that it presents were unknown during the time of Jesus - they did not arise for another 100 years.
  

It seems much more plausible to me that this document was written by a gnostic group, who attributed words and actions to Judas (and Jesus) in an attempt to gain legitimacy. The four gospels of the New Testament are significantly more reliable - they were written much closer to the events that they describe, and there are significantly (well enormously) more copies of them available.

I do not think that this so-called "Gospel of Judas" will tell us much about Judas at all. It will tell us a lot more about the gnostic group that wrote it which is very interesting from a historical point of view (and so I will read it myself), but I doubt that there is much to be gained from it theologically.mu hackers club

Posted by Dave Bryant at 3:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0) mu hackers club