New Gnostic Gospel Found
I stumbled upon a New York Times story today that might be of interest to some of the more theologically inclined Eddys out there. (You know who you are.) Apparently someone has discovered a copy of a new Gnostic gospel, the Gospel of Judas. It apparently presents Judas and Jesus as co-conspirators in the crucifixtion: "The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator." Wasn't that one of plot strands in The Last Temptation of Christ? The Gospel has Jesus saying to Judas: "You will exceed all of them [the other disciples]. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." The Times explains the comment as follows: "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." The experts think it was written about in the second century AD. Click here to go to the Times story.
posted by Webmaster at 5:33 PM
7 Comments:
That was a theme in Last Temptation!
200-300 years is a long time though. What I'd want to hear about is what clues a new gospel could give to the Q gospel, the yet undiscovered common source for Mathew and Luke.
I've heard that this new text is rather untrustworthy as it contains phrases like, "Lead Based Paint," and "Oldsmobile."
I think it's just some t.v. writer looking for a new script for CSI.
If this were true, you'd have to wonder why Judas would hang himself, and if he did it within a few days who would know about this conspiracy between him and Jesus?I, too , would like to know more about the Q document which as I understand it is a collections of Jesus' sayings. I often wonder who followed him around with a notebook handy. Until such time as I am fully informed, I guess I will stick to the four gospels since they do seem to agree tho chronologically they seem to differ a bit.
By the way, as proof that I still do not have perfect vision, I spent some time trying to erase a quotation mark only to discover it was a smudge on the screen.
I think it's just some t.v. writer looking for a new script for CSI.
If this were true, you'd have to wonder why Judas would hang himself, and if he did it within a few days who would know about this conspiracy between him and Jesus?I, too , would like to know more about the Q document which as I understand it is a collections of Jesus' sayings. I often wonder who followed him around with a notebook handy. Until such time as I am fully informed, I guess I will stick to the four gospels since they do seem to agree tho chronologically they seem to differ a bit.
By the way, as proof that I still do not have perfect vision, I spent some time trying to erase a quotation mark only to discover it was a smudge on the screen.
Here is the National Geographic's website on this. It's well done. Rob, there's a series of video clips with Elaine Pagels, and in the last one she states the case for the existence of Q.
Also, National Geographic will run a show on the new gospel on Sunday night at 8 (opposite one of the last episodes of West Wing!) on the National Geographic Channel.
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Borg and others have written The Lost Gospel of Q which is their best interpretation of Jesus' sayings. I was hoping Pagels would say whether any of those sayings showed up in this new manuscript. A point in the forward of Borg's "Q" is that ONE legitimate purpose of all the gospels is to give authority (over Jesus' teaching) to the eleven disciples and their chosen successors. This gave the early Christian groups their mandate or claim of being the real deal because they could trace the line of leadership to their current leaders. I would think a new group of Christians wanting a similar mandate would have motivation to write a similar gospel to stake their claim, and that this 12th disciple would be a theretofor unused and clever way of claiming authenticity. "All of the good ones were taken," as the song goes. But as Mom points out, where is the line of succession if Judas killed himself--to whom did he give authority over these "secrets" that Jesus told him? As I read it, this Judas gospel ends with Jesus being turned in to the authorities--it says nothing of the trial, resurrection and ascension. So I bet this early Christian group's claim was that Judas did not kill himself. Interestingly, the Q Gospel hardly mentions the disciples. My current (joking)opinion is that the disciples were weenies for bailing out on him, and only the women stuck it out with Jesus. But having women followers is something I can understand, so my theology may be as tilted.
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