The Gospel of Judas

Remember a year or two ago when the Gospel of Judas was released with such hype? The people selling the books (in this case, the National Geographic Society) said that the recently discovered Gnostic text told the story of how Judas was really a good guy, the most trusted disciple, and turned Jesus over because that's what Jesus wanted.

Well, it turns out that the Gospel of Judas doesn't say that at all. In December 2007, April Deconick, a Professor at Rice, wrote a devastating piece in the New York Times based on her translation of the original coptic.

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist. (source)

So much for Judas being the misunderstood good hero. The latest chapter is that the National Geographic Society (NGS) team is now working with the community of scholars (including Professor Deconick) and have substantially revised the English translation that got so much attention:

Marv and Gregor's revised popular edition of the Gospel of Judas should be released any day, and it is a much more "neutral" translation. Marv and Gregor asked each of us at the Codex Judas Congress to take a look at it and give input. Of course, they made the final decisions on what was changed and what was not, and there is not unanimous agreement. But their willingness to ask other scholars to be involved is exactly how the best scholarship is accomplished. It is too bad that the NGS policy did not allow for this the first time around, but that is water under the bridge now. (source)

The whole thing is another example of how the media's quest for sensational stories about Jesus distort scholarship. Yet it's hard to ignore the money these organizations have to fund research.

-t