The Gospel of Judas

There's been a good amount of buzz regarding the recent translation into English of the only known copy of the Gospel of Judas. This event was heralded as providing new insight into Christianity, particularly early Christianity. Since I'm a Christian, I tend to be cautious about new insights into Christianity, believing as I do that the insights that have been around for the last 2,000 years are quite adequate. Still, if someone insists upon talking at me about these new insights, it's only common courtesy that I inform myself about what they're talking about, so I found a copy of the translation online, downloaded it, and read it.

I now offer my view of it: It's typical of Gnosticism, which makes it fundamentally contrary to Christian belief. I'm in good company here, since in about 180 AD Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, discussed this very document, referring to it as a fictional account. The premise of the Gnostic gospels I have some familiarity with is that Jesus took the person for whom the gospel is named aside and imparted to him or her information that wasn't offered to the other Apostles. The Gnostic gospel then supposedly reveals this secret information which is supposed to be only for the inner circle.

Horsefeathers.

First of all, Christianity is an open book, open to all. The Church was at its very lowest during those times in history when it attempted to limit popular access to the basic tenets of Christianity, for instance in insisting that Scripture only be available in Latin when only priests could read Latin. Christianity is no mystery religion. Anything you could want to know about the official beliefs of the Church is available to you, go to your nearest bookstore and buy a Bible. Even the traditional interpretations of Scripture are freely available, for the Roman Catholic Church in the Catechism, for the Anglican Church in the Book of Common Prayer, and in similar texts for other denominations.

Secondly, and perhaps more tellingly, there's the issue of the overall availabilty of this "new" gospel. Some scholars are insisting that Gnosticism was as widely practiced in the early Church as Orthodox Christianity. If that were true there should be many more copies of the Gospel of Judas in existence. If it were that widely circulated and followed it wouldn't be all but lost. Perhaps you believe that the Church prevented the desemination of this document? If Gnosticism was an important branch of Christianity it would have flourished anyway, Christianity itself was illegal for the first four centuries of its existence but the documents which make up the New Testament survived. Even the Roman Catholic Church at the height of its power, during the Inquisition, couldn't stamp out the Protestant Reformation but ultimately had to recognize Protestantism as another form of Christianity. Even today Christianity survives, even thrives, in places like China and the Middle East where Christian practice is a punishable offense, sometimes even a capital offense.

Thirdly, the basic doctrine behind Gnosticism is fundamentally opposed to Christian doctrine. Gnosticism teaches that humans are spiritual beings trapped in physical bodies, that the physical world is evil at worst and irrelevant at best. Therefore Jesus could not have been fully human and fully Divine and the Ressurection (THE central event in Christianity) could never have occurred.

Gnosticism wasn't just another branch of Christianity that was stamped out by the early Church, it's a belief that was found to be opposed to the most basic doctrines of Christianity and was therefore rejected. Christ doesn't offer anything to some followers and not to others. He doesn't take some followers aside to whisper mysteries in their ears that the rest of the world isn't privvy to. What He offers He offers to everyone.

The four Canonical Gospels (those found in the Bible) are in agreement regarding the central concepts of Christian doctrine. Yes, there are differences in detail and emphasis, as you would expect on reading four accounts of the same events written by four different people and also written with four different communities of Christians as the intended audience (for instance, Matthew appears to have been written with Christians who were formerly Jews in mind, while Luke appears to have been written for Pagan converts). The important doctrines, that Jesus lived at a certain time in history, that He taught and performed miracles, that He was crucified, that He died, and that He rose from the dead are all found in all four Gospels.

Just because a document is refered to as a "gospel" and it deals with events in the life of Jesus doesn't mean it gives insight into Christianity. Someone could write a fictional account (the very term used by Irenaeus whom I mention above) of the life of Abraham Lincoln, that doesn't offer insight into America during the Civil War.

If you want to know about the life of Jesus read the four canonical Gospels. Treat the doctrines found in the other gospels as beliefs that were tried by the early church and were found wanting.