The long-lost Gospel According to Judas is found and authenticity is verified

[pegkerr]

"Today the Gospel of Judas got its first public outing at a news conference, and it is on display at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. It will eventually return to Egypt to be housed in Cairo's Coptic Museum. It is also available online, in Coptic and English, and is the cover story of the new National Geographic magazine.

But while the document is a real one, is what it claims also true? Did the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John get it wrong? Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?"

Read the entire story here.

Fascinating.

Comments

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

That is fascinating. Though I don't see what the problem is if Jesus did, in fact, ask Judas to betray him. That doesn't indicate a death wish in my mind, but, in fact, submission to God's plan for him.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

To the best of my knowledge, the notion that Judas was a misunderstood hero is nearly 2000 years old, so it is not entirely surprising to me that their adherents would have written down their story and a copy of it survived the millenia. Personally, I don't think that the Gnostics of AD 170 (when the Gospel was written) had any special knowledge that was unknown to Christians of their era, or to ours, and its denouncement through history is probably just.

Still, I wouldn't mind reading it. Even if it is wrong on the major points, I'm sure that Jesus must have had very illuminating relationships with all of His disciples that might shine through.

[redbird]

Also, blogged, with reference to George R. R. Martin.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Woah, this is interesting. I'd really like to read it. I've always been under the impression that Judas may have been mythological. I've heard this several places, don't ask me where.


Also, may I say that I'm pointedly NOT going to mention anything about how mayhap Judas made an Unbreakable Vow of some sort or any reference to Snape. Erm. Except just then. ;)

[mon-starling.livejournal.com]

Whoa. Sounds like the sort of thing Jorge Luis Borges used to write...

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

*looks for more news sources* They're rather vague on where they found it. Is this part of the Nag Hammadi motherlode?

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Heh. Between that and the fossil of the fish with sorta feet, some folks are having a Really Bad Day...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/science/06fossil.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Very interesting! Thanks for posting the link!

[serenya-loreden.livejournal.com]

Actually, I hope it IS true, and it doesn't diminish my faith. Judas HAD to betray Jesus. That is something that always bothered me -- the betrayal had to occur for events to play out as they needed to, and that smacked of predestiny and of Judas losing his free will. If instead he was asked, and agreed, while there is still predestiny, he knowingly made a choice to comply even as Jesus was knowingly complying with God's plans for him.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

...Judas HAD to betray Jesus ... the betrayal had to occur for events to play out as they needed to,

That's just what I was going to say.

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

But if Judas was acting under Jesus' command, then Jesus was hardly betrayed. And, I don't know, Jesus comes across as less than noble in scheming his fall from grace and selling a disciple into despair and suicide. And and, so much of what we understand about Christ and Christianity hinges on the unimpeachable knowledge of Peter and John. If, in fact, that is wrong and the closest disciple is the most hated and among the least known and whose writings were unknown to Christians for 1800 years, then that's just the sort of disaster that the Spirit wouldn't have waited this long to correct. (Yes, I know I am begging the question in saying that God being the way I know He is wouldn't have allowed us to follow such a divergent model, but my knowledge of God being the way He is comes from sources deeper than Scripture, y'know?)

The theory that has satisfied me lo these many years is that Judas recognized Jesus as the Messiah and, eager to get the Romans overthrown and the Age of Kings restarted, forced Jesus to fish or cut bait. And was brought low when he saw that Jesus wasn't going to fulfill the Messianic prophecy the way that he predicted. I like it because I think it speaks to us as boldly today that if we try to use God as the tool for our agendas instead of a partner in His, then we will find that we will be the tool instead of the partner in His instead.

[channe.livejournal.com]

What a lot of people forget is that there were hundreds of Gospels. Hundreds upon hundreds, to fit the hundreds and hundreds of Christian communities that began to spring up, each with their own needs, etc., etc. For example, Matthew's Gospel is meant to cater to a Jewish community; Luke's, I think, is not. They are Gentiles. The gospels are not literal history as we know it today; but, the four in the Bible are probably the closest to being such.

Some of these other Gospels are closer to the four. Others have Jesus doing things like killing puppies in the street at age eight.

[channe.livejournal.com]

That said -- and I know you probably know all this -- yep, it *is* fascinating!

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Or killing trees just because he was hungry and they didn't have any fruit for him...

Oh. Wait.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I rather liked the Jesus Christ Superstar interpretation - Jesus doesn't exactly ask him to do the deed, but Judas is clearly doing what he has to do to make the prophecy come true rather than doing it for the money.

The idea that Judas had done something evil never made any sense to me. Wasn't this the whole idea all along? Are we supposed to believe that Jesus was SURPRISED to be arrested and executed? If he was, how does that fit with the whole concept of "willing sacrifice?"

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Or The Last Temptation of Christ's version:

"Judas, I'm giving you the hard part, because I couldn't pull it off."

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

oh, such icon love.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

It's all one disciple's word against others' - I guess we'll never know the true story unless we come up with some way to peek back in time.

[kchew.livejournal.com]

Some Sufis, in the thirteenth century in the area around modern-day Iraq (if I remember exactly), held the belief that Iblis (or Satan), rather than being the greatest enemy of God was the greatest lover of God. Iblis, when told to bow down before Adam, unlike the rest of hte heavenly host, chose not to--not because of envy (the traditional reason), but because he felt the most important law was to not bow to anyone but God, despite God's direct order. So he disobeyed one command to conform to what he felt was a greater command.

Thus, God said "You are the only one that I trust to tempt mankind for me. Go out and do it."

It was not a popular idea, and the main proponent (I forget his name...sorry) was killed for it. The idea of a "via negativa," or that the one who does the dirty work is actually doing the work of God, is a very disturbing one for many people. Like the Iblis interpretation, I think that most people will reject it because it screws with their minds too much: they're not comfortable with flipping the one true interpretation of events onto its head.

But I think that this is such a cool idea, and I'm very excited to see an example of it pre-medieval Islam.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Wacky.

B

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I'm interested in what the Christian community makes of it-- personally, I'm fascinated by anything Gospelish because I've never understood what makes the big four okay for the Bible and, for many, unchallengeable Truth (I'm in college. You don't get moderate Christians here very often.) while others are not. I asked a very Christian friend to go to a lecture on the gospel of Thomas once, thinking she'd be interested, but she said it wasn't a real gospel and implied that it didn't count at all-- false Bible, more or less.

I also like what the Coptic guy said, that there are four or five people able to forge it, and two of them are in the article. I love intellectual awesomeness.

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

it is absolutely fascinating and horribly exciting. but i wish the article had probed a little deeper - i felt like it was trying to stir up controversy; it would have been nice to see it address the question of why the four gospels in the bible are the canonical ones; what other ancient christian texts are out there and not in the bible, the relative 'accuracy' of the texts that we do have (canonical and otherwise)... i think the article would give the average layperson the impression that because it is a 'gospel' it must be either just as canonical as the bible or thrown out entirely as a 'false' gospel and that's very misleading.

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

I think that the why of the four canonical gospels wasn't addressed because academics who deal in this area know that like the back of their hands and forget that others don't have the background in the field that they do; it's probably, to them, like expecting an interviewed chemist to rehash the development of the periodic table of elements in every interview.

They did allude to it, though; the early Christian fathers kept the material that served their agenda, basically, and suppressed writings that did not. Clearly this information didn't fit into their theology.

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

the academics do, absolutely. but that was an article directed at laypeople; i would say it's the journalists' responsibility to include that information.

as for the why: yes, that's definitely part of it. a lot more complicated than that, though!

[nwl.livejournal.com]

it would have been nice to see it address the question of why the four gospels in the bible are the canonical ones; what other ancient christian texts are out there and not in the bible, the relative 'accuracy' of the texts that we do have (canonical and otherwise)...

A side bar would have been nice, but for a quick overview of why those books are in the Christian Bible:
http://www.catholicapologetics.org/ap030700.htm

Scroll down a little to get to the dates. There were a number of accounts, as you can imagine.

that's very misleading.
Well, that's The POST when it comes to Catholicism. I have yet to read an article in The POST on Catholics that is accurate and not have a correction a few days later. Apparently there is some idiot there who thinks Catholics worship statues, as I have seen that corrected time after time.

[baldanders.livejournal.com]

Daniel Radosh yesterday linked to a guy who argues that our perception that Judas betrayed Jesus is due to mistranslation.