Gospel of Judas: What Does It Really Say?

for centuries scholars knew that there once was a Gospel of Judas a gospel that portrays Judas the famous betrayer of Jesus in the New Testament as somehow having secret knowledge about who Jesus really was IRA Gnaeus the Christian Church Father in heresy ologists wrote about this long lost gospel in the 180c ii while criticizing a particular Christian sect they say that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things and that he alone knowing the truth as no others did accomplish the mystery of the betrayal by him all things both earthly and heavenly were thus dissolved they produce a fictitious history of this kind which they call the Gospel of Judas almost 2,000 years later we probably have the text that ironies talks about in 2006 National Geographic released the details of a so-called Gnostic Gospel of Judas now there is no guarantee that this gospel is the same gospel that irony's talks about but it does portray Jesus and Judas having some sort of secret conversation however except for a few sound bites from the media most people still don't really know much about this text or its significance so what do we know about this gospel and what does it really say the discovery of the Gospel of Judas is a long and convoluted story and it's not really well documented what we do know is that an Egyptian treasure hunter discovered the Codex and the Mini of province of Egypt about 120 miles south of Cairo sometime in the 1970s in a cave the treasure hunter supposedly found a limestone box containing several ancient documents including the Codex that contains the Gospel of Judas these texts were eventually sold to an antiquities dealer in Cairo who goes by the name of Hana ossible he then turned around and tried to sell the text or the astronomical price of three million dollars however after several years he was not able to find a buyer so in 1984 he smuggled the Codex into the United States and he stored it in all places in a safe deposit box in Long Island now this proved to be a huge mistake for anyone that knows the New York climate it's not exactly the dry sands of Egypt so after 16 years of being in the safe deposit box the Codex slowly started to disintegrate in the humidity of New York finally another antiquities dealer Freda a nutburger chako's bought the text in September 2000 who to get it to some real manuscript conservators but by then the gospel had sustained heavy damage scholars estimate that at least ten or fifteen percent of the gospel had been lost because of this mishandling so after 30 years of bouncing between antiquities dealers and art conservators finally National Geographic gained the rights to publish the Codex and in April 2006 they published a translation and photographs of the gospel for the whole world to see and finally scholars could start analyzing one of the most important discoveries of early Christian history from the past century codex tchacos is about 16 by 29 centimeters and originally included four texts the letter of Peter to Philip the first apocalypse of James The Book of Allah journeys and the Gospel of Judas it is written in sahih Coptic an ancient Egyptian language that was spoken in the late Roman province of Egypt many of our other ancient Christian texts are written in Coptic to radiocarbon dating places the Codex in the 3rd or 4th century but if this gospel is the same gospel that irony is talks about then we might be dealing with a third century copy of a second century text maybe one that dates back to 150 C II which makes it surprisingly early for a non canonical gospel now it's important to lay down some fundamental assumptions that may seem way too obvious to some of you Judas Iscariot the disciple of Jesus and the betrayer of Jesus according to the New Testament did not write this text remember it dates to at least 150 C E which is a century after Jesus and His disciples would have lived nor does this gospel tell us anything about the historical Jesus remember as a 2nd or 3rd century text it tells us a lot about what 2nd and 3rd century Christians were thinking about but doesn't tell us much at all about a first century rabbi living in the Roman province of Palestine I would summarize the Gospel of Judas as a series of discussions between Jesus and His disciples interspersed with more personal conversations between Judas and Jesus about cosmology or the creation of the universe pay attention to three things how the gospel portrays the 12 disciples the Gospels mythology and theology which is very different from Nicene Christianity and how the gospel portrays Judas himself the gospel begins with the discussion between Jesus and His disciples that portrays the twelve disciples in a very unfavorable light the disciples are there worshiping together it's implied they might be practicing the Eucharist together and then Jesus walks over and starts laughing at them and the disciples are confused they're like why is Jesus laughing at us we're doing the right thing with our Eucharistic prayer and Jesus responds I am NOT laughing at you you do not do this by your own will but by this your God will be worshipped your God wait is Jesus implying that the 12 disciples are worshipping the wrong God well naturally the 12 disciples are very confused by Jesus's comment teacher are you not the son of our God to which he responds truly I tell you no generation will know me from the people who are among you pretty harsh words for supposedly the 12 most important men in early Christianity throughout the Gospel of Judas the 12 disciples are portrayed as angry ignorant confused men who are blasphemous towards Jesus himself remember we're talking about the second and third century here Christianity was not yet a well-organized institution Nicene orthodoxy didn't yet exist in the form that we know it and a lot of church leaders were claiming their authority stems from the Twelve Apostles themselves certain Christian groups might have had a lot to gain by attacking this authority but Judas is different here among the disciples only he knows the true nature of Jesus none of the other disciples could stand before Jesus but Judas was able to stand before him Judas said to him I know who you are and whence you have come you have come from the immortal realm of bar below and he who sent you I am not worthy to proclaim his name okay okay this is where things get really confusing so a little bit of background in Sethi and Gnostic theology will help a lot you see many scholars classify the Gospel of Judas as a Sethi on text or sometimes a Sethi and Gnostic texts now it's important to say that these categories Seth Ian and Gnosticism are extremely complicated and contested categories among academics as I talked about in another video Gnosticism is a modern category that scholars have used to try to classify certain Christian texts we shouldn't think of Gnosticism and Sathya nism as clearly defined religions in antiquity no one in antiquity ever uses the word Gnosticism no one in antiquity ever says I am part of a religion called Gnosticism but I'm using the terms here to help draw out similarities between the Gospel of Judas and some other texts that scholars have classified as Gnostic or sofyan such as the apocalypse of Adam the apocryphon of John the Coptic gospel of the Egyptians Allah Genizah and Zoe's Triano's the Sethi and mythology in these texts is essentially a prologue to the book of Genesis while Genesis says that one supreme god created the universe the Gnostics say that this being was merely an evil lesser being named yaldabaoth or sockless which means fool the truly supreme God is an unknown unnameable God who through a series of emanations or spontaneously expanding his essence created a series of celestial beings called eons and archons one of which being sockless the evil creator God this is why Judas says you have come from the immortal realm of bar below and he who sent you I am not worthy to proclaim his name Judas here is talking about the Supreme God the unknown God who he can't even name and bar below is one of the first celestial beings that emanated from the Supreme God so in the Gospel of Judas the twelve disciples are worshiping sockless the evil creator of the world and they mistaken Jesus to be from sockless when in actuality he is one of the heavenly beings like bar below later in the gospel Jesus describes this creation myth to Judas next sockless said to his angels let us create a human being according to the likeness and according to the image then they formed Adam and his wife Eve so this closely mirrors a verse from Genesis where God says let us make man in our own image but in the Gnostic version this story is flipped on its head with the world being created by an evil lesser God's aquas so Judas is special here because only he recognizes where Jesus truly comes from and because of the secret knowledge that Judas has many scholars assumed that the gospel is portraying Judas in a very favorable light as opposed to the other disciples who are being portrayed as idiots when National Geographic first published this translation they said that Judas is portrayed as Jesus's most loyal disciple and his best friend but many scholars have later disputed this one reason being Jesus refers to Jude as a demon Judith said teacher listen to me now just as he listened to all of them for I have a great vision but when Jesus heard this he laughed he said to him why are you getting worked up 13th demon speak now and I shall bear with you both in Greek and Coptic the word diamond can mean either an evil demon or a neutral spirit in the National Geographic version they translated this verse as Jesus laughed and said to him you thirteenth spirit why do you try so hard the scholar April to Connick an expert on Gnosticism argues that the thirteenth demon is a title given to sockless who dwells in the thirteenth realm so to call Judas the thirteenth demon is to call him the earthly double to the evil creator God himself but there's a lot of debate over whether Judas is portrayed in a favorable light or an unfavorable light but I'll include an entire bibliography on my website if you really want to delve into this yourself but at the very least we should be very hesitant to say that the Gospel of Judas portrays Judas as some best friend and confidant to Jesus the text just doesn't seem to bear that out over all the Gospel of Judas is a fascinating text and has greatly contributed to our understanding of Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd century a time when even the theology of creation and God himself was still in flux as always thanks for watching and subscribing and I'll see you next time

Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

Views: 1,087,879

Rating: 4.6724029 out of 5

Keywords: Gospel of Judas, Judas, Jesus, Sethian, Gnostic, Gnosticism, Sethianism, Sethian Gnostic, early Christianity, ancient Christianity, Barbelo, Ialdabaoth, Saklas, betrayal of Jesus, National Geographic, National Geographic Judas, gnosticism, gnosticism vs christianity

Id: _Tv2vY3ga3g

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 21 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/egress63]

I remember hearing about this a lot a few years back on how the discovery of this 'new' Gospel would 'destroy Christianity' (and other tall claims). And then nothing came of it. This video helps clear some points up. The guy has a PhD in early Christianity so he does have expertise in this area.