The Gospel of Judas

Well, one of my professers from Regent has written a commentary about the Gospel of Judas and has explained things much better than I ever could have. I hope that it answers some questions about this interesting discovery.

The Gospel of Judas: A Plea for Some Sanity

The following is a guest commentary by Dr. Rikk E. Watts, Associate Professor of New Testament Studies at Regent College.

The newswires have been buzzing this week with racy headlines announcing the newly published Gospel of Judas. Various members of the academy have chimed in. Bart Ehrmann declares it to be “one of the greatest historical discoveries of the twentieth century.” Another noted scholar Elaine Pagels triumphantly declares that it “explodes the myth of a monolithic religion, demonstrating how diverse and fascinating the early Xn movement was.” For those who have not heard, this gospel relates a purported secret conversation between Jesus and Judas during the last three days of the Passion Week. The juicy bit is actually just one line toward the very end where Jesus instructs Judas to betray him so that his eternal spirit can be freed from his mortal body.

Coming hard on the heels of The DaVinci Code, for some the Gospel of Judas raises new questions—did Jesus collude with Judas?—and presses old ones—was Judas really the bad guy, are the canonical gospels reliable, and is Christian orthodoxy merely a later suppression of an early, free-thinking carnival of ideas?

To put the headlines in perspective, I’d like to say some things about the actual content of GJu (Gospel of Judas) and then to reflect on what this document does and does not tell us.

First, the content. Even though we have about 3000 words of text, as with most ancient documents the manuscript is fragmentary. There are places where the text simply drops out. In general outline, GJu begins by telling us that it is a secret account of the revelation Jesus gave to Judas three days before his (Jesus’) death on Passover. It next recounts a conversation Jesus had with the twelve, but they are obtuse, work for “the other god,” and blaspheme Jesus in their hearts. Sensing Judas’ special spiritual sensitivity, Jesus separates him from the others and offers an enigmatic hint of his future superiority over the other disciples. Jesus then disappears (apparently to another realm). On his return, the disciples tell him of a vision they had about the Temple, which he interprets and which again reflects poorly on them. At this point, about half way through the document, Jesus focuses on Judas and launches into an extended Gnostic speculation on the cosmos which continues almost to the end when he reveals his unique plan for Judas.

The Gnostics were a diverse array of second century AD groups with an even more bewildering variety of doctrines which makes it very difficult to isolate any definitive body of teaching. Essentially these elitist groups believed the physical world and hence the body were inherently evil, and only the purified spirit good. This created something of a problem given that Genesis says God called creation good. In order to get around this and to separate the transcendent God (or, better perhaps, Good Spirit) from evil matter, the Gnostics proposed the existence a complex hierarchy of emanations—imagine the waves of a radio transmitter with the transcendent Good Spirit at the centre—which became more and more distorted the further they were from their origin. Far down the emanation chain came a lesser ignorant deity called the Demiurge, whom they often associated with the God of the Old Testament, who created matter and so caused the pure human spirit to become trapped in the prison of the material body. They were elitist because they believed that only a few specially enlightened people would eventually be saved. Most people, including most Christians, were too dull to gain the necessary insight. Finally, their Jesus was sardonic and escapist. More concerned with abandoning this world than transforming it, he is detached, clever, and self-absorbed. He is hardly to be confused with the canonical gospels’ Jesus who envisaged heaven on earth and a new humanity predicated on an inclusive love of not only one’s neighbor but one’s enemies.

It is not hard to see why the early shepherds (bishops) of the church strongly opposed the Gnostics. Israel’s God was not to be divorced from Jesus, nor Israel’s scriptures from what God had done in him. Creation is good and Jesus’ healing of bodies shows that they too are to be valued, as does Jesus’ own bodily resurrection. Finally, the entire ancient world was built on a crushing elitism. Early Christian belief undermined this since in Christ there was no longer Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free. In what was a scandalous claim at the time, they held that everyone had equal status before him. In denying that Christ’s death was sufficient for all the Gnostics were simply reintroducing the old pagan hierarchical elitism even if on their own terms.

In this particular document one finds then the characteristic fantastic references to emanations, aeons, clouds, and various beings fanning out from the one to four, then twelve, 24, 72, and finally 360, along with references to variously named angels, etc. There is also a strong animosity toward the disciples—they blaspheme Jesus in their hearts and they serve the other god—whereas, in true elitist form, Judas alone reflects on exalted things. And one meets the same superior, slightly mocking, and disengaged Jesus. Only toward the very end does one get the one line that has created this no small stir: “But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.” That is, you will release me from my body. Judas then enters a luminous cloud (his own transfiguration experience?) and hears a voice (all this purportedly happening by the way during the last three days of the Passion week). There’s another gap in the text (about five lines) and then Judas is in the temple and accepts money in return for information on Jesus’ whereabouts.

The point is not hard to see. Judas, far from being a traitor, was Jesus’ closest confidant and ally, and as such had the special task of betraying him so that he could be released from his body. In other words, Judas (and those who like him are “in the know”) alone of Jesus’ followers is the truly enlightened one (and all those thousands of ordinary Christians who follow the other disciples are not).

What can we say about all this? First, the reports are right in that GJu is indeed a truly ancient document. But based on well-established parallels, the developed nature of its cosmic speculations clearly indicates that GJu belongs to the second century. Indeed, the hostility toward the twelve and the rehabilitation of Judas helps us be even more precise. This fits well with a particular sect of Gnosticism known as the Cainites who sought to turn Cain, the people of Sodom, Esau, and Korah (who led the wilderness rebellion) into heroes. Irenaeus, a second century church father who steadfastly opposed the Gnostics, apparently refers to GJu and so this discovery also corroborates his accuracy. So it is old, but, and this is crucial, it is certainly not as old as the first century canonical gospels.

It also further illustrates the diversity of “Christian” belief from this period. But this hardly justifies Ehrmann’s and Pagel’s sensationalist claims. Anyone who has read the church fathers already knows about this diversity and the fathers have been around for 1800 years. What happened was that in the middle of last century scholars found ancient copies of the documents to which the fathers refer: primary evidence that these groups existed. So what is new is certainly not “diversity.” What’s new is this particular copy of a Gnostic document. But we’ve already found numbers of them before so most of what GJu says, apart from the comments about Judas, is largely ho hum. In this sense there was and is “no myth of a monolithic religion” in the second century to be exploded. We have known about it for a long time.

So why the fuss? First, Ehrmann and Pagels, by reading this second century diversity back into the first, want to suggest that the idea of a common core of orthodox belief in the first cent is a fiction imposed later by a hierarchical church. In other words the unity of the NT is the result of a conspiracy (enter the equally Gnostic-like speculations of The DaVinci Code, which apparently 17% of Canadians take to be largely true). Second, for others, GJu offers a more accurate account of what happened before Jesus’ death and so rehabilitates Judas.

But one can no more read back second century evidence into the first than one can read the twentieth century use of “gay” to mean sexual orientation back into nineteenth century reports of “gay” times at church picnics. Since the only concrete evidence for this kind of diversity is from the second century, the simplest and therefore most likely best explanation is that as the church expanded geographically and attracted more people the greater the potential of various fringe groups forming outside the mainstream. In other words, GJu is only evidence of growing diversity away from a core first century tradition, not of an initial first century diversity. As perhaps the premier North American sociologist of religion Rodney Stark has pointed out, when the first century church father Ignatius took his long walk to Rome and martyrdom, the fact that he was well received at a host of small Xn communities along the way suggests they shared a common conception of their faith. Ehrmann and Pagels are engaging in wishful thinking—and as scholars they really ought to know better (and frankly we all end up getting tarred with the same sensationalist brush). There was no conspiracy and there is no myth to be exploded.

Finally, does GJu tell us anything about what really happened? Almost certainly not. The wild disembodied speculations of the group who created GJu do not inspire confidence. Would you buy a used car from these people? If there was a highly secret conversation between the uniquely enlightened Judas and Jesus, both of whom died very soon afterward, to whom was this story told and how was it passed on? Some might suggest that Judas passed it on to his friends and family in his last hours. But if Jesus did not share this secret teaching with the twelve whom he had chosen to be with him for nearly three years, why would Judas just a few days or hours later share it with even more unenlightened outsiders like his family or friends? Further, if Judas truly was the uniquely enlightened figure GJu suggests and if he was acting directly on Jesus’ instructions, why would he commit suicide just a few hours later (assuming of course that he did and did not end up marrying Mary Magdalene’s cousin before heading to India where he and Jesus spent the rest of their days constructing hidden clues for Dan Brown to discover)? But perhaps the biggest question is this. If all Jesus needed was to be freed from his mortal body, why use Judas? Why not just hand himself over or throw himself sans angels from the Temple (as in the Temptation)? Why the charade of a betrayal at all? Indeed, just how reasonable is it to suppose that after spending three years with Jesus the only one of his followers who really knew what was going on was Judas? Not very.

A friend of mine who works with Revenue Canada at a border crossing once told me that the fundamental assumption in his job is that “the truth is bottomless.” No matter how many questions you ask, the answers will fit. Clearly this is not the case with GJu. Even a few simple questions like these see the whole thing begin to unravel. Everything suggests that this is a later, somewhat clumsy, attempt by an fringe group to rewrite a well-entrenched betrayal tradition to fit their own particular elitist agenda.

So yes GJu is a new and interesting discovery for students of an aberrant and marginal second century group. But I suspect that once the circus has left town, more sober minds will see the present media brouhaha for what it is: a great deal of overblown fuss about a mildly interesting curiosity. Perhaps the more interesting question, at least for me as a member of the academy, is why do scholars who really ought to know better behave in this way? Would you buy a used car from them?

Rikk Watts, BSc (hons), MA (summa), MDiv (summa), PhD (Cambridge University). For more information on Rikk and Regent College click here.