The Gospel of Judas

About 70 people arrived to participate in the Gospel of Judas discussion evening last night at St John's. There seems to be a large amount of interest in this ancient text. Perhaps a part of the "hype" surrounding the document is a result of National Geographic needing to recover large amounts of money invested in the restoration and translation of the Codex. They presumeably hope to recover some of this investment from interest generated in the document. This must account for their decision to release the document during Holy Week, just before Easter.

A Translation of The Gospel of Judas is readily available on the internet here. The document's significance lies in it's historic authenticity, and not so much in it's contents. It is a genuine 3rd Century papyrus containing a Coptic translation of the Gospel of Judas that was probably orignally written in Greek, in the second Century. The contents of the Gospel is less dramatic. While it suggests that Judas was the closest disciple to Jesus, the author of the document is clearly motivated by their theological view-point i.e. gnosticism. Gnostics believed, simply (you can read more about gnosticism here and here) that the Spirit was to be honoured and that the body (all physical reality) was a diminished expression of the spiritual (a bad representation). This essentially undermines the Christian doctrine of Incarnation (God affirming human life and physical creation by entering into our experience in the human life of Jesus).

We may be interested in this fascinating old document, and the extraordinary process required to make it available to us today in an English translation, but it's contents are not particularly ground-breaking unless you are interested in the study of second and third century Christianity and Gnosticism in particular.

Questions on this subject are welcome and may encourage a helpful conversation about Gnosticism. Although the historical movement was treated as a heresy, I would suggest that subtle aspects of Gnostic thought are prevalent in our thinking today and it may be helpful to identify this kind of dualisitic thinking and consider it's consequences. If you would like to leave a comment or question, but don't know how to click here for some directions...