Gospel of Judas

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http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/GospelofJudas.pdf

Read it and judge yourselves.

Be warned though - it's incredibly confusing, seeing the large chunks of it that are missing.

 

Cheers Aik,

Intrigueing reading.

 

@Aldeth:
Your link is very interesting, but it is explaining only one of several positions as to writing and authorship. The interpretation that the John of the Gospel of John was a follower of Paul is not commonly accepted, though it is accepted as a valid theory. Between the writing styles of the Gospel of John and 1, 2, & 3 John, there are significant similarities, suggesting that the apostle John was a more likely author. The dating he gives is the most recent possible and, again, is a possibility, but not likely. The most compelling evidence for this is the writing style itself. John 1 very carefully chooses wording that will have significant meaning to traditional Jews as well as traditional greeks, which means his writing is intended for traditional jews (who survived until circa 70 AD when the Romans sacked Jerusalem), but was also meant for greeks who had not heard this word before. This means that it was written in a time when the christian church had not yet become popular among the greeks. By 90 AD, most of the church was greek and it was commonly known, if not commonly accepted.
He also makes a lot of other assumptions, such as that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were based on Mark's. There is little evidence that this is the case, and there are other possible explanations, such as that all three drew from a fourth, earlier work, that are just as valid.
He makes a number of claims that are either illogical, or based on a selected collection of passages, ignoring the others.
Examples:

'Did Jesus seem agitated or calm while praying in the garden of Gethsemane?' Here he seems to completely ignore the fact that the supposedly 'calm' Christ of Like's Gospel was sweating blood.

'Was Jesus born of a virgin?' He says Mark and Paul say 'no' and then point to scriptures that have nothing to do with Mary or virginity.

'What was the attitude of Jesus about giving signs?' Here he uses quotes out of context when Jesus was working with two VERY different groups. The first were those that just wanted Jesus to give them a show while the second were those that genuinely believed in Him and sought His blessings.

And lastly, he seems to think that jsut because the Gospels say different things, they must disagree. In reality, as I have said before, you should take the Gospels together. Where one says X and another says Y ask, 'Can both be true?'
Example: The Gospels all say different things about who first went to the tomb. One says it was Mary Magdeline, another says her and other women, another says a group of women including a few others who are named, but no mention of Mary. None of them say this was all that was there. None of them say the entire group consisted of X or that someone went alone. More than likely, different authors picked out different people to focus on.

EDIT: and I didn't see any 'evidence' for when John was written, just his claim.

 

I don't have a problem with differences in the Gospels. For starters, the Gospels are supposedly a recording of events through the eyes of an observer, regardless of whether it was first hand observation or not. I think we both can agree upon the notion that two different people can witness the same event and yet will report slightly different variations of what exactly happened. Just watch the 10:00 news on FOX, and then watch the 11:00 news of NBC. They'll report the same story, but have different interpretations of that story. Even if both report "the facts" what facts they deem important enough to talk about often vary.

Such is what I think happened in the Gospels as well. The things that are really important are usually the same. For example, it isn't important if Mary Magdaline was there by herself, with other women, or present at all. The important part was that the rock was moved aside and Jesus had been resurrected. I'm certainly not going to nitpick on the ancillary facts.

What I find most interesting in your response however, is that I think we may have stumbled upon a basic difference between two Christian viewpoints - my Catholic viewpoint, and your Baptist viewpoint. Because what I was taught regarding the Gospel writers (and this was at the Jesuit university I attended in courses taught by priests, so they were certainly spouting the Catholic belief) is in direct opposition to what you report. Perhaps Baptist belief is that the author of the Gospel of John was the apostle (in which case it would certainly be a first hand account) whereas Catholic belief is that the author is John, one of Paul's followers (in which case he wasn't even born yet at the time of the crucifixtion, making a first hand account impossible).

Another difference in belief is I know some Protestant groups that believe Jesus was born in either 1 BC or 1 AD, which seems impossible if you also believe in the story in the Bible concerning Herod. Through a variety of sources, Herod's death has been determined to have occurred in 4 BC. Therefore, if the Biblical story of Herod killing all children below the age of 2 is to be believed, Jesus had to be born no later than 4 BC - and potentially even a few years earlier. In fact, if Herod was killing all children below the age of 2, it suggests the Jesus had to be born by 6 BC (which also means he was closer to 40 when crucified). Again, these are minor points. It doesn't matter if he was born in 1 AD or 4 BC or even 8 BC or 12 BC. It also doesn't matter if he was a little over 30 or almost 40 when he was crucified. They are facts that aren't worth arguing about.

Finally, to say something not the reasons why the four Gospels that made it into the New Testament seem completely reasonable to me. You pick the four that all include the main points of the faith (the Gospel of Judas that leaves out the resurrection simply won't do) and also is written in a manner that people can understand are obviously the best chioces.

 

I don't think that it missing out the ressurection would really have been a big problem in this case - just a minor detail seeing the amount of heresies included in it Gnostics had a really screwy cosmology which Jesus explains to Judas at length, not to mention it painting bad guy in a positive light thing...

 

The Gnostics believe that part of the divine is in every person's body, and it is released upon the person's death, so Jesus' death was part of the master plan, and therefore Judas wasn't a bad guy. My point was that since the certral tenant of Christianity is belief in the resurrection, you can't have a Gospel that basically leaves out the most important part.

 

We're talking about a much older version of gnosticism (I think) that claimed everything spiritual or thought based was good and everything material was evil and sinful. This directly contradicts the critical claim that Jesus was both human (material) and perfect (sinless and good). By Gnostic phylosophy this was impossible and God could not have a physical form.

 

Unforunately, you didn't comment at all about the much longer post I did previously that had a lot more material in it. Oh well. Anyway, the thing that many people forget is that "Gnosticism" as it was practiced around 2000 years ago, wasn't even called Gnosticism. It was name given to them by others who observed what they did. If you asked any of them to describe what religion they were, they would have told you "Christian". That's what I mean before when I said that 2000 years ago there was not one form of Christianity, but many. Now obviously, in the debate the Gnostic viewpoint lost out, so that no significant portion of Christians believe that today, but to villify them for practicing the same religion you do in a slightly different form seems suspect.

 

Sorry, missed the earlier one, not sure how.
:whips out uber big hat of knowledge on theological history + umpteen billion:
I got a bunch of these things.
Ok, a little explanation. I'm sure the Catholics have gotten together and decided who they want to believe on the issue of authorship, dating, etc. and made it official church doctrine. For the rest of us, though, it isn't nearly so clear cut. There's a lot of evidence pointing to the Apostle John as the author, but there's some that suggests he was already dead by the time it was written, too. Note I said suggests, not proves. This is where the real conflict begins. If John the apostle was dead (unclear as to both when he died and when it was written), he couldn't have written it. If he wasn't dead, he almost certainly did. There are a lot of people that believe either way.
As for dating things around the AD-BC division, there's a lot of controversy as to exactly when 1 AD was in reference to the Roman system, the Greek system, and a couple of others. We know Jesus was born in the reign of the Great King Herod, and the Bible suggests Herod found out about Him and issued the order when He was 2, and that Jesus was crucified at 33 years old. What's unclear is when all this happened in reference to the modern period. I've heard schemes that set Jesus's birth at everything from 6 AD (putting the curcifiction at 39 AD) to 12 BC (putting it at 21 AD). And by the way, the death of Herod falls into the same questioning as the rest of this. The AD system wasn't developed until the old roman system was already gone, so the connection between the two is a little murky, and that's the problem.
As for Gnosticism, well, again, things aren't so clear. The philosophy of Gnosticism actually predates Christ. It was a Greek philosophy that said the followers had been granted 'special knowledge' from God/the gods. This is why it was called Gnosticism (Gnosis=knowledge). When Christianity came around in Greece, it was very popular, and a lot of people joined. Some of the Gnostics got jelous and 'joined up' without getting rid of their Gnostic beliefs. They called themselves followers of The Way (as Christianity was called at the time), but denied either that Christ came in the flesh or that He was ressurected in the flesh. Paul has some very nasty things to say about them in several of his letters.
uts hat away: