Judas Revisited
The first time I read the "Gospel of Judas" I really just skimmed over it to find the parts that were being touted in the media as so controversial and such a threat to Christianity. Now I’ve looked at it more carefully, and all I can say is, “Yikes.” This is not your Grandpa’s King James.
It’s pretty strange, but of course that just makes me all the more fascinated. Lots of people are going to be fascinated, and any Biblical scholar with a lick of sense ought to be hard at work getting a book written out as fast as humanly possible—before the sensation dies down.
I won’t pretend to actually “get it,” but I will say that after looking at Judas more carefully and listening to people who have studied these things far more than I discuss it, I have a better understanding of why some things that were called Christian gospels in their day were just never real contenders for what was to become The Bible As We Know It.
The big issue of the Gospel of Judas is not that Jesus asks Judas to betray him. It’s that Jesus is not the same person I was ever taught about in Sunday School. In the gospels of my childhood Bible drills, the character and teachings of Jesus are depicted in the tradition of Jewish prophets—as would be expected of the Messiah sent to fulfill the Jewish prophecy. In the Gospel of Judas, the character and teachings of Jesus aren’t Jewish at all. They aren’t monotheistic. This Jesus is a Greek mystic rather than a Jewish prophet. His teachings more closely resemble Greek and Egyptian mythology rather than what we know today as Christian traditions.
It’s all very intriguing, and I hope to keep learning more about it, but what I’m beginning to see about Gnosticism is that it is not so much an alternative sect of Christianity as an attempt to merge Christianity with other belief systems altogether. So instead of seeing it like I did before as being sort of like Baptists and Methodists perpetually unable to agree on Baptism therefore unable to worship together while still basically practicing the same religion, I see Gnostic Christians as being more like Baptist Hindus than Baptist Methodists.
For whatever that is worth…
It’s pretty strange, but of course that just makes me all the more fascinated. Lots of people are going to be fascinated, and any Biblical scholar with a lick of sense ought to be hard at work getting a book written out as fast as humanly possible—before the sensation dies down.
I won’t pretend to actually “get it,” but I will say that after looking at Judas more carefully and listening to people who have studied these things far more than I discuss it, I have a better understanding of why some things that were called Christian gospels in their day were just never real contenders for what was to become The Bible As We Know It.
The big issue of the Gospel of Judas is not that Jesus asks Judas to betray him. It’s that Jesus is not the same person I was ever taught about in Sunday School. In the gospels of my childhood Bible drills, the character and teachings of Jesus are depicted in the tradition of Jewish prophets—as would be expected of the Messiah sent to fulfill the Jewish prophecy. In the Gospel of Judas, the character and teachings of Jesus aren’t Jewish at all. They aren’t monotheistic. This Jesus is a Greek mystic rather than a Jewish prophet. His teachings more closely resemble Greek and Egyptian mythology rather than what we know today as Christian traditions.
It’s all very intriguing, and I hope to keep learning more about it, but what I’m beginning to see about Gnosticism is that it is not so much an alternative sect of Christianity as an attempt to merge Christianity with other belief systems altogether. So instead of seeing it like I did before as being sort of like Baptists and Methodists perpetually unable to agree on Baptism therefore unable to worship together while still basically practicing the same religion, I see Gnostic Christians as being more like Baptist Hindus than Baptist Methodists.
For whatever that is worth…
posted by Sharon Gerald | 6:40 PM
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