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The Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Judas is a newly released translation of an ancient but lost Christian gospel found at a location in Egypt near where the Nag Hammadi Library of ancient Christian texts were discovered. The document is written in Coptic on papyrus and has been radiocarbon dated to between A.D. 220 and A.D. 340. The academic community, to my knowledge, has accepted this manuscript as authentic.
In the gospels of the Bible, Judas is presented as the betrayer of Jesus to Jewish and Roman authorities who arrest and summarily execute him. The Gospel of Judas (as one may expect from the title) portrays a different Judas--one who is a trusted and high ranking disciple of Jesus. This is what has garnered most of the headlines in the press but, I think, a very important but under-reported fact is that this text is clearly from the so-called Gnostic school. The word "Gnostic" comes from the Greek "gnosis" which means direct experiential knowledge. The Gnostics were a movement within early Christianity subsequently branded as heretical mainly through the persecution of one man: Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon (AD 130-202). To avoid straying too far afield, let us generally define Gnosticism as a special brand of mysticism which is the belief that God dwells within each human being and the way to know or experience God is to know thy inner self. The Gnostic mystics possessed a special cosmology detailing devine emanations from god all the way down to the forming of the material world. This cosmology differs markedly from the simplistic formulation found in Genesis. Another pillar of Gnostic thought is that the knowledge of god within is unknown to the vast majority of men, it is a secret knowledge only available to initiates "with eyes to see".
Scene 1. Here is a snippet from what the translators have labeled "Scene 1":
They [the disciples] 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 people that are among you will know me."
[The disciples get angry upon hearing this. Jesus responded,] "Why has this agitation led you to anger? Your god who is within you has provoked you to anger with your souls. Let any one of you who is strong enough among human beings bring out the perfect human and stand before my face. (Emphasis added.)
Only one disciple was able to stand before Jesus (meaning he was able to access perfection within himself)--Judas. Jesus then tells Judas to "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom."
In this passage, Jesus references the mystical god within (not only all of the disciples, but all human beings). My take on what Jesus is saying by the words "no generation of people that are among you will know me" is that those who are initiated into the gnostic mysteries stand allegorically as a separate generation from all humans who do not know the god within. Jesus is identifying all of his disciples except Judas as non-initiates. Non-initiates may not "know" initiates in the sense of gnosis as, to do so, requires knowledge of the inner god which non-initiates lack. Put another way, when one knows god, one knows all other human beings as god dwells in all human beings. Conversely, when one lacks gnostic knowledge of god, one is ignorant of the true nature of not only oneself but, also, all other human beings and, thus, cannot "know" initiates (as well as the rest of humanity for that matter).
Scene 2. The disciples have had a dream of 12 priests in a great house with an altar before which a crowd was bringing items for sacrifice. Jesus interprets their dream thusly:
Jesus said to them, "Those you have seen receiving the offerings at the alter [i.e., the priests]--that is who you are. That is the god you serve, and you are those twelve men that you have seen. The cattle you have seen brought for sacrifice are the many people you lead astray ... . [After several generations,] another man will stand there (i.e., in front of the altar) from the fornicators, and another will stand there from the slayers of children ... . * * * For to the human generations it has been said, "Look, God has received your sacrifice from the hands of a priest"--that is, a minister of error." (Emphasis added.)
Wow, harsh! Jesus tells the disciples that they will lead astray the crowd and that, generations later, another--a fornicator and slayer of children--will stand in their place before the alter as a "minister of error". Could this be a direct reference by the gnostics to their arch-enemy Bishop Irenaeus? Sure sounds like it to me.
Scene 3. Judas tells Jesus he has seen a vision of the other disciples stoning him. "Jesus answered and said, 'You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations--and you will come to rule over them." Hah! The last shall be first and first shall be last. Judas is to rule over the other disciples in heaven. Next in Scene 3 is a long discussion of Gnostic cosmology which I shall skip over except for the following quote:
But God caused knowledge to be given to Adam and those with him, so that the kings of chaos and the underworld might not lord it over them.
The "king of chaos" is a reference to the gnostic Demiurge (Ialdabaoth), the evil one who created the physical world, roughly equivalent to the orthodox Christian devil. Thus, in gnostic cosmology, the devil created our world. As an aside, who do you think was god's messenger to deliver knowledge to Adam? I'd say it was the snake. Outside of the Bible, in all ancient religions and myths, the snake represents wisdom or knowledge.
End of Scene 3. After the long discussion between Jesus and Judas of cosmology and the other disciples, Jesus states: "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." (Emphasis added.) To a mystic, the god within a man, the soul, is the real person. The outer flesh is just a vehicle in which the real man (the divine soul) rides, some would say is trapped, during our time on this earth. In the words of St. Francis, "it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." The mystic rejoices death as it means freedom from this earthly prison when one's soul returns to the spiritual realm, one's true home.
Aside from the mystical implications, this quote indicates that Judas turned in Jesus to the authorities at Jesus's request. Per the text, Judas was forewarned of his fate (i.e., that he would be shunned by the other disciples) and, thus, was also sacrificing himself in turning in his friend and teacher, Jesus.
In conclusion, the Gospel of Judas presents quite a different Judas to us than the gospels of the Bible and, for the open minded, I highly recommend it as presentation of alternative glimpse at the life of Jesus and his infamous disciple Judas.
5-8-2006
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