Sermon: What is the Gospel of Judas

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What is the Gospel of Judas?

By Charles Rush

April 30, 2006

[ Audio (mp3, 5.9Mb) ]

er since Dan Brown sold some 22 million copies of The DaVinci Code, a mystery novel that mixes fact and fiction in a plot spanning centuries, involving a conspiracy that involves the highest reaches of the Vatican, people have been questioning whether what they were taught in church as children is, in fact, the real McCoy.

Hence, when the National Geographic Society ran a program recently on 'The Gospel of Judas', a lot of people legitimately wondered if there was some new scriptures that called into question the story of the Bible that we just recently recounted during Holy Week.

Not only do you have a reputable organization like the National Geographic Society sponsoring the research, you also had some of the leading scholars on the subject- a couple of them my friends- looking earnestly into the camera, wondering out loud, 'does this cause us to re-think what we have taken as fact all along?' These earnest gazes I do not recall when we were in academic seminars together. They appear to have been learned at the behest of their publishers, who have a vested interest, along with these scholars, in stirring some controversy to move a few more books on the subject.

But, a bit of education on the Gospel of Judas will help us a bit to understand better the Bible that we use too. As you can tell, I cannot share the breathiness of some of my colleagues over this latest discovery but what is it that we are talking about here?

Apparently the gospel of Judas Iscariot was written on a papyrus that lay in a limestone box in a secluded Egyptian desert cave undisturbed for some 1700 years. The gospel that we have was written about 300 a.d. in Coptic, the local Egyptian language that uses many of the same letters as Greek.

This codex eventually found its way to the Black market in Cairo where it was purchased and traded several times for a pretty big sum of money ($3 million) before it was stored, possibly in someone's freezer, definitely in a bank vault in Long Island. Let me stop right here, for the edification of those that might want to enter the seemingly lucrative, exotic market of antiquities. Please do not, let me repeat, do not store your codices either in your freezer or in your bank vault. These degraded more in 16 years than they did in the previous 1700 left in a desert cave.

They surfaced as a few fragments of paper on sheets that would be about half the size of an ordinary envelope. At some point, a bankruptcy hearing forced the owners towards philanthropy and real scholars were brought in with the National Geographic Society to salvage what could. I only mention this because there is almost always a sordid history behind these so called 'hot finds'. They are usually around for years, and scholars know about them, but the general public doesn't because of money, lawyers, and copyright battles.[i]

We think that this fragment of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot is a translation of a text that was originally composed about 180 a.d. Just for your information, 180 a.d. is relatively early. For that matter, 300 a.d. is relatively early for an actual copy of a codes. We don't have that many copies of biblical books that go back that far, so the find is generally speaking, important.

But just so you have an idea about dates, let me put this in some perspective for a moment. We believe that Jesus died about 30-33 a.d.. That is not just because Christians say so, Jesus made a big enough splash that a couple of Roman historians write about him and his followers that they call 'Christians'.

The earliest books of the New Testament were written by St. Paul in the form of letters to the first Churches. Most of them were composed about 60 a.d. What books? Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Philippians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians, Galatians.

Next comes the gospels, the earliest being the Gospel of Mark. Scholars think it was written about 90 a.d.; Matthew and Luke were written about 100 a.d. These three gospels are called 'synoptic' because they tell almost the same stories because they use the same sources- (literally syn- opsis which means same view). Some of the material in them is identical because both Matthew and Luke used the gospel of Mark as one of their sources. When they did, they just copied the story straight, usually only changing some details of the audience that is addressed. I have a book in my office that I show to my confirmation class that lays the gospel of Mark next to Luke and Matthew and shows you exactly where they are identical and where changes were made and it isolates out the stories about Jesus that are unique to the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew.

Completely independent of these three Gospels was the Gospel of John. It was written about 120 a.d., and tells the story of Jesus life symbolically. We think it was composed by people that would later become Greek Orthodox in their tradition and in that Gospel, Jesus is depicted as something of a living icon. Almost none of the sayings of Jesus in the gospel of John can be found in the synoptic gospels because the writer is less interested in historical sayings of Jesus and much more interested in the theological explanation of what they mean. So in the gospel of John is given to longer, reflective expositions of why he came and what he is about, whereas in Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus speaks in parables and we are left to figure it out.

Finally, the rest of the New Testament was written between 120 and 180 a.d.. Here I am talking about Revelation, Hebrews, I and 2 Timothy, Titus, all the little books that are called the Catholic epistles- they illustrate what the early church was shaping up to become. By the way, dating these is not as hard or as arbitrary as you might think. We know quite a bit about the Roman empire and these books give hints of when they were composed based on customs that they refer to, words that they use, and social norms that they presume.

The point is that the composition of the New Testament spans quite a bit of time. The earliest books were written about 30 years after Jesus died, the latest about 160 years after Jesus died.

Now during this time, Christianity was not yet the official religion of the Roman empire, so we didn't have an established consensus on what Christians believed. There was a good deal of variety, indeed there was a great deal of variety. Most of this variety died a natural death over the next couple centuries and would entirely be lost on us today, except that we have discovered some of these codices and translated them because we are generally interested in the origins of Christianity.

One of these varieties was a movement called Gnosticism and it died a natural death after a couple centuries. Scholars know quite a bit about this and we already have several books worth of Gnostic writings, catalogued and translated into English. If you go to my library, I could pull down for you lots of them like 'The Gospel of Truth', 'The Secret Gospel of Adam', 'The Gospel of Thomas', The Gospel of Mary', etc..

Some scholars have made a career out of organizing this material and writing about it, most notably Professor Elaine Pagels, a friend of my family at Princeton University and also Professor Bart Ehrman, my friend and colleague from Graduate school who is Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Professor Pagels, in particular, has been keen on describing these as variants of Christianity in order to underscore the fact that what came to be orthodox Christianity in the Roman Catholic version was just one of many strains. I think she has been overly generous towards Gnosticism in order to buttress a legitimate criticism of what she sees as an Orthodoxy that is too institutional sacramentally, too heirachical, too male dominated, and too bent on establishing the rules of authority. You can make those criticisms of Catholicism without making Gnosticism a viable alternative.

I have a tendency to say that Gnosticism is really a different religion from Christianity that happened to also use the person of Jesus more as a cipher to expound the Gnostic esoteric view of the world. What do I mean?

Well, as Werner Wolf says of the great plays in sports for the week, 'let's go to the video tape'. Let's look at a couple passages from the Gospel of Judas Iscariot.

There is a scene in which the disciples are gathered to celebrate a meal together, very much like the Last Supper. But it is not Jesus that says the blessing over the bread like the story in the Bible, but the disciples are doing the praying over the bread.

Jesus sees them praying and laughs at them.

The disciples become upset. Let's pick up the narrative.

"The disciples said to [him], “Master, why are you laughing at [our] prayer of thanksgiving? We have done what is right.”

He answered and said to them, “I am not laughing at you. <You> are not doing this because of your own will but because it is through this that your god [will be] praised.”

They said, “Master, you are […] the son of our god.”

Jesus said to them, “How do you know me? Truly [I] say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.”

THE DISCIPLES BECOME ANGRY

When his disciples heard this, they started getting angry and infuriated and began blaspheming against him in their hearts.

When Jesus observed their lack of [understanding, he said] to them, “Why has this agitation led you to anger? Your god who is within you and […] [35] have provoked you to anger [within] your souls. [Let] any one of you who is [strong enough] among human beings bring out the perfect human and stand before my face.”

They all said, “We have the strength.”

But their spirits did not dare to stand before [him], except for Judas Iscariot. He was able to stand before him, but he could not look him in the eyes, and he turned his face away.

Judas [said] to him, “I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you.”

JESUS SPEAKS TO JUDAS PRIVATELY

Knowing that Judas was reflecting upon something that was exalted, Jesus said to him, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal. [36] For someone else will replace you, in order that the twelve [disciples] may again come to completion with their god.”

Judas said to him, “When will you tell me these things, and [when] will the great day of light dawn for the generation?”

But when he said this, Jesus left him.[ii]

I think you can get an immediate feel that this is quite a different depiction of the Christ. As Adam Gopnick noted in the New Yorker last month, this is the 'laughing Christ'. It is not a derisive laugh, nor a disparaging laugh. It is the laugh of someone that knows inside, esoteric knowledge that ordinary mortals are not privy to.

This motif is carried further in Jesus' singling out Judas for some special teaching that other people are not in on. Jesus says he will 'tell you the mysteries of the kingdom'. Indeed, this is the whole point of the Gnostic approach to spirituality. There is a Gnosis, which means knowledge, a secret teaching that will open up special insight.

And these 'gospels' are not gospels in the sense of the biblical gospels that attempt to reprise for the people the basics of what Jesus taught the masses. They are not generally interested in what Jesus taught the masses. They propose that Jesus actually had two levels of disciples, the general masses that get what we have in the bible, and a second inside group that gets the real deal, this hidden esoteric truth that the rest of us are not able to handle.

If you are looking for nuggets of truth in these pages, you won't actually find the mysterious teachings themselves, only the suggestion that they exist in fact, and that Jesus approved of them and taught them himself. The real spirituality is this esoteric quest and this is why I say that it really represents a different religion.

In point of fact, we have absolutely no evidence that Jesus ever taught any secret truth. To the contrary, that approach is not consistent with the picture that we have of him that comes to us through the Church or through Roman historians. They both depict him as a spiritual leader that had a special fondness for ordinary people, as someone that was much more out of the mold of 'what you see is what you get'.

Just in case you happened to watch the National Geographic special, you might have been drawn in by the scholars that said, 'the bible depicts Judas as a traitor, but what if he was special instead… What does this do to the tradition?' The answer is, not much. Partly because in every Gnostic gospel these people are singled out- Thomas is singled out, Mary is singled out, on and on. And, secondly, the figure of Judas is not worse than the rest of us in the biblical story. He is symbolic of all of us. He is neither especially good, nor especially evil.

The Gospel of Judas also contains one other characteristic description of the Gnostic teaching that is fundamentally different from Christianity and Judaism and that is cosmological speculation about the nature of the world in creation. I heard Karen Armstrong, the professor at Harvard who has done a book on the History of God, looking at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. She made the remark that all three traditions were studied in avoiding metaphysical speculation. By contrast with other religions of the day she is right.

Here is an example from the Gospel of Judas Iscariot that is typical of the broad cosmological speculation that most Roman religion engaged in routinely. This is Jesus talking in the gospel of Judas. I pick up in the middle of a lengthy cosmological discourse that Jesus gives….

“The twelve aeons of the twelve luminaries constitute their father, with six heavens for each aeon, so that there are seventy-two heavens for the seventy-two luminaries, and for each [50] [of them five] firmaments, [for a total of] three hundred sixty [firmaments …]. They were given authority and a [great] host of angels [without number], for glory and adoration, [and after that also] virgin spirits, for glory and [adoration] of all the aeons and the heavens and their firmaments.

THE COSMOS, CHAOS, AND THE UNDERWORLD

“The multitude of those immortals is called the cosmos---- that is, perdition----by the Father and the seventy-two luminaries who are with the Self-Generated and his seventy-two aeons. In him the first human appeared with his incorruptible powers. And the aeon that appeared with his generation, the aeon in whom are the cloud of knowledge and the angel, is called [51] El. […] aeon […] after that […] said, ‘Let twelve angels come into being [to] rule over chaos and the [underworld].' And look, from the cloud there appeared an [angel] whose face flashed with fire and whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means ‘rebel'; others call him Yaldabaoth. Another angel, Saklas, also came from the cloud. So Nebro created six angels----as well as Saklas----to be assistants, and these produced twelve angels in the heavens, with each one receiving a portion in the heavens.

THE RULERS AND ANGELS

“The twelve rulers spoke with the twelve angels: ‘Let each of you [52] […] and let them […] generation [----one line lost----] angels': The first is [S]eth, who is called Christ.

The [second] is Harmathoth, who is […].

The [third] is Galila.

The fourth is Yobel.

The fifth [is] Adonaios.

These are the five who ruled over the underworld, and first of all over chaos.

THE CREATION OF HUMANITY

“Then Saklas said to his angels, ‘Let us create a human being after the likeness and after the image.' They fashioned Adam and his wife Eve, who is called, in the cloud, Zoe. For by this name all the generations seek the man, and each of them calls the woman by these names. Now, Sakla did not [53] com[mand …] except […] the gene[rations …] this […]. And the [ruler] said to Adam, ‘You shall live long, with your children.'”

I think you can see how fundamentally different Jesus sounds in this discourse… We have no reason to believe that Jesus rambled on and on in this metaphysical drivel. And I thank God for that.

But there is a second level too that may have eluded you in the quick first reading here. In the Gnostic interpretation, the world was created not Good, as we are told in Genesis 1. It was actually created evil by Satan. The outer world, therefore, is not to be trusted spiritually. What is really spiritually real is what we have internally. So the spiritual quest for Gnosticism was to engage in a series of practices such as meditation that turned you inward.

Just FYI- this is one of the fundamental reasons that Gnosticism was rejected by Christianity. Christianity and Judaism both teach that the world is fundamentally good, that the created order is the product of God. Both Judaism and Christianity also teach that people are flawed or fallen, they do not teach that the world around us is unreal or not to be engaged seriously. Quite the opposite. Jesus continually pointed us towards the poor and the outcast as a special calling for compassion, social justice, and peace.

So, with the gospel of Judas, it is not the case that this was not known and could now cause a stir. The truth, more closely, is that we have known about it for years and rejected it. We understand that when the Roman empire was falling apart and anarchy was in ascendance all across society, the turn towards the internal was attractive to quite a few people that had come to believe that the social order was hopeless. Indeed, this is the principal reason that monasteries became so popular in Christianity. You could create a counter-alternative-society that was not only self-subsistent, the people there were filled with much more holistic spiritual values that the decadent world of the late Roman empire. But Christianity never despaired of the world so much that we could not affirm it's goodness.

And I close with this observation that hopefully you have already made. This Jesus just doesn't sound like Jesus. The Christology is just not consistent. You may be interested to know that this is also the measure that we used internally when we were deciding which books of the bible would make it into the canon. Is the view of Jesus consistent?

Just to give you one example of a problem, the Book of Revelation. There have been reservations about Revelation from the very beginning, largely because the view of Jesus in Revelation overly emphasizes Jesus as Judge, Enforcer, something of a Terminator. But this is quite a different view that the man that turned the other cheek, who died on a cross rather than perpetuate the violence of the state, who overcame evil by absorbing it. Revelation made it into the canon, but barely, probably bolstered by the fact that it lifted up martyrs and remembered a time when we were not only persecuted but died for our faith. I suspect that the wise Bishops and theologians that voted on it, decided that the Era of Persecution and Death for the faith would likely come back and that books that addressed that would be important.

But Martin Luther, 1500 years later, after a very careful study of the book, wrote to his friends that it was probably a mistake that it was ever included, because the Jesus depicted there is just not consistent with the Jesus of the Gospels. So the debate continues.

At this point, I think I will take a couple questions rather than conclude. But I would close with the general remark that, unfortunately, Dan Brown is almost 100% wrong. It is not the case that the Church has tried to suppress secrets from our naïve congregants. It is all known, just that scholars never imagined that the rest of you would be interested in it to the degree that they have become. Ah, mystery!

[i] For this and a great deal more information than you could possibly need to know, see www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas/. In all some 60 pages of various reports, tables, and tales are collected.

[ii] www.tertullian.org/rpearse/manuscripts/gospel_of_judas/. See page 24,25.