Lost Gospel of Judas Discussed at RSE Part 1

Bart D Airmen is the James a gray distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he has served both as the director of graduate studies and the chair of the department of religious studies he's got credentials professor airmen received both his Masters of Divinity and a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary where his doctoral dissertation was awarded magna laude an expert on the New Testament and the history of early Christianity he has written or edited 29 books numerous scholarly articles and dozens of book reviews he's had four books on the New York Times bestseller list we have all four of them in the quantum cafe Jesus interrupted an account of scholarly views of the New Testament God's problem an assessment of the biblical views of suffering misquoting Jesus an overview of the changes found in the surviving copies of the New Testament and of the scribes who produced them and forged the book I just held up which discusses why some books in the New Testament are deliberate forgeries professor Airmen's books have been translated into 27 languages and so the eight languages that we're translating in tonight his books are available in your local Amazon fill in your language comm Professor Airmen's books have been translated he has been featured widely in the media including the Daily Show with Jon Stewart the Cobell Ribera pour CNN the Discovery Channel The History Channel National Geographic and the BBC his book the lost gospel of Jesus as the lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot was originally published in 2006 and is the topic of his presentation tonight please welcome Bart airman thank you thank you very much thank you very much thank you well it's a pleasure being with you tonight it's been a pleasure to be introduced to this the school and some of the staff and I've met some of the people I feel a little bit odd not sitting on the floor but I'm I'm glad to be with you this this lecture is on a gospel that was discovered in modern times Gospels show up now and then and this is a the most recently discovered Full Gospel that has appeared the Gospel of Judas Iscariot and I'm calling this an alternative vision of Christianity so I want to begin by talking about my my first knowledge of this gospel how I first came to know of its existence which was through a series of somewhat unexpected events beginning with the strange phone call that I received almost exactly nine years ago in November of 2004 I was in my office at Chapel Hill talking to a graduate student and my phone rang I picked it up and there's a woman named Sheila whom I've known over the years Sheila is a person who sponsors archaeological digs in Israel whom I've known through archeological circles and we talked for a while we chitchat and she asked me at the end of our little talk what do you know about the Gospel of Judas I thought this was an odd question because I knew we didn't actually have a Gospel of Judas and so that's what I told her I said well we don't have we don't have a Gospel of Judas and we know that there was one once because the Church Fathers talked about it but well it doesn't survive anymore so she thanked me and we and that was that I thought well that's that's odd and so I decided I better look it up just to make sure I had been right about that and I pulled out my books I remembered that the Gospel of Judas had actually been mentioned in a in the writings of a a church father named irony 'as irony is was a church father who was a opponent of false forms of Christian belief in his view the church father who lived around the Year 180c II so he he's living about 150 years after Jesus he sometimes known as a heresy ologist which is the highfalutin word that people use when they want to talk about a heresy hunter if you are out hunting out heresies you are a heresy ologist and he was one of the first in early Christianity first heresy ologist he wrote a five volume book called against the heresies where he attacked a number of different heretical groups from his opinion especially groups of Gnostic Christians about which I'll be saying a few words later on one of the groups that he talked about was a group that he called the K Knights the K Knights were like other Gnostic groups in that they believed that the world that we live in now was not the creation of the one true God how can you possibly say that this world was created by the one true God this is a world that has hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes and famine and drought and war and oppression and injustice you want to say God created this place what kind of God is that so the K Knights like other Gnostics maintained that in fact the true God had not created this world this world is a cosmic disaster and some of us don't actually belong here I felt like that ever since the development of the tea party what what world is this I don't belong well the K Knights didn't feel like they belong here the K Knights were named after a biblical figure that you may have heard of Cain the son of Adam and Eve Adam Nev had two sons Cain and Abel the thing about Cain is that he murdered his brother Abel he was the first murderer so why would a group of Christians want to be considered followers of Cain the first murderer on earth well it's because Kane murder table and God punished Cain but the God who punished Cain was the God who controlled and created this world who was the evil God Cain was on the side of the other God the true God and so the K Knights believed that Cain was right and that Cain was on the right side the basic teaching of the K Knights then was that the God who created this world is not to be obeyed that there's a greater God a greater spiritual force in the universe and the Cain was the one who who followed this God this led to some rather unusual teachings among the K Knights the short story is they thought that all of the bad guys of biblical history were in fact the good guys and so they revered the men of Sodom and Gomorrah and they obviously they thought Cain was a good guy and anybody who was a bad guy turned into a good guy for the K Knights including including as we're going to see Judas Iscariot who was not the evil betrayer of Jesus but he was the one who was Jesus closest companion and friend and who is the one who did Jesus will they're unusual teaching got manifest in other ways as well since the God who created this world is the God who gave Israel its law then if you wanted to be on the side of the right God you should obey the god of this world so if the god of Moses said for example that you should keep the Sabbath you should not eat pork and you should not commit adultery the way to be on the side of the right God was to disobey the Sabbath law to eat pork and to commit adultery as you can imagine they had their share of converts among other things the the remote stopped working among other thing there we go right Gospel of Judas among other things the K Knights according to irony as' had a Gospel of Judas a gospel that propounded their particular teachings so I looked this up and I read what what irony is it said about the canine side okay so so that that's the story irony s and the canines so about a week later I get another strange phone call this time it's from somebody I don't know who identifies herself as someone who works for National Geographic and after she identifies herself she says what do you know about the Gospel of Judas III ok so I told her what I know I said so all right so what's the deal and she said well would you think it would be significant if we discovered it ha uh yes that would be significant all right how significant would it be so uh I don't know I said it depends what's in it if it's a gnostic gospel as it apparently was that propounds a gnostic understanding of the world then it would be significant for people like me who study ancient Christianity and who are interested in Gnosticism and so that that would that would be sick they would be highly significant for us so but if it's a gospel where Judas actually is portrayed as the good guy and he has conversations with Jesus and he's the one who knows and he's the he has the right answer is it that that would be big that would be front-page news so what do you have and she says we don't know we would like you to help us authenticate this new gospel that that's been discovered I said well okay so give me some information so what language is it written in to what's written in in Coptic so a Coptic is an ancient Egyptian Egyptian language and I can read some Coptic with a dictionary but I'm not an expert so I say okay well if it's written in Coptic you don't need me you need a cop ologist she's oh great what sac apologist a cop Tala gist is an expert in the ancient Greek in the ancient Coptic language somebody who could actually read the text and be able to tell you its relationship to other Coptic text a lot of our ancient Gnostic Gospels are written in Coptic and so you need a cop Allah just an expert in that she said well actually what we wanted to do was to figure out the date of this manuscript we want to figure out whether it was a medieval forgery or we want to know is this really an ancient manuscript I said oh okay that's fine I said then you need a paleo offer oh good she said so what's a pail agra fir alright a paleo gopher is somebody who studies ancient manuscripts the way you date an ancient manuscript is on the basis of the handwriting you do a handwriting analysis there are people who are trained to do this paleo a grothy writing it's a study of ancient writing and it's because in ancient times before the invention of printing hand writing styles changed slowly over time it took generations to change handwriting so if you're an expert in ancient handwriting if you're an expert saying Greek paleography you can date a Greek manuscript within about 50 years if you're if you're any good and so what you need is a Coptic paleography so she said well alright but what what we really wanted to do was to carbon-14 date the manuscript could you help us with that no I can't help you with that I'm not a scientist look alright look I said you don't need me I'll I'll get you a Coptic paleography and you find somebody who does carbon-14 and you'll be set she said no actually we want you to be involved because we want to know if this thing is authentic how does it fit into the history of early Christianity is this a significant gospel or not as well I can do that that's fine that's what I do so so ok fine so we'll find somebody does carbon-14 if you can find us a Coptic paleo offer all right well so I mean as it turns out I know Coptic paleography and so the third strange phone call was uh I called a I called a person that I I knew named a Stephen Amal Stephen Amal is an American who happens to teach in Germany at the university of Muenster and he's one of the world's world premiere Coptic paleography so I called him up and got him on the phone said Steve I said I don't know if you've heard this but they think they found the Gospel of Judas and Emmel says to me yeah he says you know I heard that I think I saw it 20 years ago oh really want to see it again said yeah I said okay it's in Geneva so let's go to Geneva and so uh so the manuscript was in Geneva Switzerland being restored there by by specialists that National Geographic had found out about so Steven amel and I flew to he flew from Germany I flew from North Carolina and we and and National Geographic had found a scientist who did carbon-14 dating zuv manuscripts and we we assembled in Geneva and we went to look and lo and behold they they had a manuscript there it was obviously an ancient manuscript it was clearly my expertise is in is in Greek manuscripts not in Coptic manuscripts but this was obviously an ancient manuscript and we we were shown it we were able to examine it and it clearly was was the real thing when we found out who had been working on this for the last three years there was no doubt in our mind anyway because the move the the premier Coptic scholar in Europe had been dealing with this thing for three years in National Geographic just wanted to verify that in fact this was what this person had said it was this is the first page of this Gospel it's a 62 page manuscript you will note whoops sorry I did not want to do that you will note that there are holes in this manuscript that makes it very difficult to read when there are holes in a manuscript and so what scholars do who who do this sort of thing is they figure out what was in those holes what words were there and so this is just the first page and it goes on for a number of pages this manuscript is 62 pages long and it actually has four different documents in it it's a little anthology of texts and one of those texts turns out was in fact and is in fact the Gospel of Judas this gospel was discovered we later found out in the late 1970s it had floated around on the antiquities market in Europe and then the United States and had been put in a safe-deposit box for 16 years on Long Island in a town called Hicksville where where it suffered from being subject to humidity for 16 summers after being in Egypt for 1,600 years without any damage to it it ended up being a damaged manuscript but they were able to restore it and and there are now stories about how it got restored I don't want to talk about the restoration of this manuscript I want to talk about what it is and I'll begin that by talking about what it is not what the Gospel of Judas is not so the Gospel of Judas is not a gospel that was written by Judas Iscariot Judas Iscariot of course was the betrayer of Jesus and is the bad guy of the gospel stories this gospel does not claim to be written by Judas Iscariot and it certainly was not written by Judas Iscariot this gospel was not written by an eyewitness to the life of Jesus it was written much later if it's the gospel that I Renea snow in the year 180 then it was probably written around the Year 140 or 150 so it's probably 60 70 years after the Gospels of the New Testament this gospel then is not as old as our other Gospels and it is not a historically accurate account of what actually happened in the life of Jesus so you say well you know if it's not written by Judas it's not an eyewitness and it's not that old and it's not historic lack so why is it interesting I mean it would be more interesting if it's one of these things right well yeah it probably would be but it's not one of these things it's still really interesting and really important for other reasons what is this gospel this is one of our oldest non canonical Gospels in existence we have four Gospels in the Canon of the New Testament Matthew Mark Luke and John and we have a lot of Gospels from outside the New Testament people give various estimates about how many Gospels are outside the New Testament that that great authority on all things involving early Christianity dan Brown in his book The Da Vinci Code where most people get their knowledge about early Christianity by reading that I tell my students that if they want to know about the history of the Middle Ages the way to do that is not to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail and if they want to learn about the history of early Christianity the way to do that is not by reading The Da Vinci Code so Dan Brown says that there are 80 Gospels vying for a position in the New Testament it's completely wrong these books are not vying for position in the New Testament we do know of about 40 Gospels that are not in the New Testament we know of about 40 Gospels including now the Gospel of Judas and the Gospel of Judas is one of the earliest of these 40 so it's a very old gospel not as well as the New Testament Gospels but nonetheless very old and even more significant it's an ancient Gnostic gospel I want to explain what that is before talking specifically about the Gospel of Judas itself I want to talk about what early Christian Gnosticism was and was all about the short story is that early Christian Gnosticism refers to a group of religions at around the time of the beginning of Christianity most of them are Christian in some sense related to Christianity but rather than emphasizing the importance of faith in Jesus death and resurrection for salvation they emphasized the importance of knowledge for salvation the Greek word for knowledge is gnosis spelled with a G G nos I asked gnosis means knowledge these people are Gnostics because they're people who were in the know what is it that Gnostics knew Gnostics knew who they really were they knew who they were where they came from how they got here and how they could return they knew who they were where they came from how they got here and how they could return Gnostics realized that they came from the world above the world of spirit and the goal of this religion was to provide the knowledge that they needed the gnosis that they needed in order to return to their heavenly home specifically we can say several make several points about early Christian Gnosticism Gnostics believed that the ultimate true God was an unknowable God the true God is unknowable he is so fantastic and so great and so superior and so spiritual that we can't fathom what that God really is like now when I was a when I was a Christian many years ago we used to say God is beyond anything we can imagine and here's what he's like so Gnostics are somewhat like that Gnostics said that the true God is so far beyond anything in this material world that we can't really know them but then they go on and tell you some things about him Gnostics believed that this world we live in is not the creation of the one true God but is a cosmic disaster creation is a disastrous place and the reason is because the God who is superior and unknowable didn't create this world what happens in the Gnostic mythologies the the Gnostics told mythological they gave mythological explanations for how the world came into existence these mythologies begin by explaining how the divine realm came into existence because there's not just one God there are lots of divine beings this one God had emanations that came out from himself often in pairs and these pairs emanated other divine beings and so you have divine beings with names such as truth and foreknowledge and spirit and Christ and wisdom and these are all divine beings that live up in the realm called the play Roma the fullness the fullness is the fullness of the divine beings and according to Gnostics what happened is one of these divine beings fell from the flit play Romo got expelled from the play Romo somehow got kicked out of the divine realm or left the divine realm and this divine being who's often named Sophia which is the Greek word for wisdom Sophia generated other divine beings outside the play romo imperfect divine beings these other imperfect divine beings believed that they alone existed and they didn't know that the play romo existed and they created this world they created this world in part as a place to entrap parts of the divine they entrapped parts of the Divine in human bodies some people have within them a spark of the divine and the Gnostic religion is designed to set them free some of us are here even though this isn't our home and so divine sparks have been entrapped here in this disastrous creation and the way to escape this entrapment is by acquiring the secret knowledge of who they really are the divine sparks need to know who they are this knowledge is not available to everybody its esoteric knowledge it's secret knowledge it's mysterious knowledge and it's only for insiders now you ask well what is the knowledge well the reality is I know the knowledge but I can't share it with you because I have some questions about a few of you if I were sure that you two had the divine spark huh I would let you in on the secret but I'm not so sure it's secret knowledge sorry where does this knowledge come from in fact you can't acquire this knowledge by looking around the world and figuring out because this world is a disaster and the knowledge is not embedded in this world the knowledge has to come to you from the divine realm you need a redeemer from the divine realm to come down to give you the secret knowledge that you need the gnosis that can set you free from the entrapment to your body you need to escape your body and that happens when you acquire the secret knowledge and so that's what the Gnostic systems were all about Jesus is the one who comes down from heaven to reveal the truth that can make you free so that's what Gnostics taught church fathers who were against the Gnostics considered them to be very dangerous in part the Church Fathers found them very hard to argue with and the reason was because the Gnostics knew and they knew that they knew and the Church Fathers didn't know and so the church father said well you're wrong because of this they would simply say well you don't know so you can't argue with that one time I was giving a lecture in Chapel Hill years ago and I was giving a lecture on Gnosticism and I was explaining about Gnosticism about 40 people in the room and this elderly woman in the back row kept raising her hand and correcting me and this went on and on and on so at the afterwards she came up to me and shook my hand introduced herself and said you may have noticed that I corrected you on a few things yes I did notice that she said well I'm a Gnostic oh well then you know the gospel of judas is a gnostic gospel that conveys gnostic ideas including a particular retelling of the Gnostic myth eyerly er said that Gnosticism is a kind of umbrella term for a number of groups a number of groups that had they have differences among themselves there are different religions it could be considered Gnostic because they all have the same basic way of looking at the world the same basic theology same basic mythology but different groups had different different ways of expressing these theologies in these mythologies and the gospel of judas comes from a group whether it's this gospel actually was by the king by the k knights or not it comes from some distinctive group with its own distinctive features it is a very interesting gospel I think and so I want to summarize for you what happens in this gospel and you can you can easily get this gospel yourself there are translations that are available I just recently one of the books that I recently published is a collection of all the Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament that we still have and so you know we have a translation of the Gospel of Judas in there so let me give you an overview of the Gospel of Judas we get a hint of what the Gospel of Judas is going to be like from the very first sentence I pointed out by the way that there are holes in the manuscript we're missing about 10% of the Gospel of Judas we're missing is we have 90% of it we have the beginning we have the end we have much of the middle but we are missing places but we do have the beginning it begins by these words the secret word of revelation that Jesus spoke with Judas Iscariot in the course of eight days three days before he celebrated the Passover this is going to be a secret revelation that Jesus delivers specifically to Judas Iscariot this is a gospel where Judas Iscariot is the one disciple who has an inkling about who Jesus is as we're going to see the other disciples don't have a clue this then is a it's actually a series of revelations that Jesus gives he has conversations with his disciples and above all conversations with Judas Iscariot his betrayer this gospel is not going to emphasize the death and resurrection of Jesus as the way to salvation it's going to emphasize the importance of this of the secret revelation and frankly much of this gospel if you're not used to reading Gnostic Gospels much of this gospel will be mind-boggling it is when Jesus gets really gets into it and starts giving his revelation about how the divine realm came into existence it's tough going if you're not used to this kind of thing but it is really interesting because of what happens here so let me give you some of the highlights the first encounter of Jesus and His disciples at the very beginning Jesus disciples are gathered around having a meal together and they're giving thanks over their food they're having a Eucharist so the word Eucharist usually refers to the communion meal that Christians have and and Eucharist simply means Thanksgiving well the disciples are giving thanks for their food they're having a eucharist meal and Jesus starts laughing at them they don't think it's so funny what what are you laughing at we're doing what's right and Jesus tells them that in fact your God will receive praise through this and they're confused they say teacher you are the son of God and Jesus tells them that they don't know who he is Jesus goes on and says whoever is strong among you let him bring out the perfect human being and stand before my face stand up and look me in the eye and none of the disciples can do it except judas iscariot stands up even though he stands up he can't look jesus in the eye but Judas does say I know who you are where you have come from you have come from the immortal Aeon of Barbelo this is the point at which you realize you're not going to understand some of this text you're from the iana bar below well if you know about Gnostic writings bar below is a very common name when I said at the beginning there's this unknowable God then emanations come from this tokens God creating the divine beings in the play Romo the first emanation is an emanation called bar below who's understood to be the mother of all things Jesus is said to have come from bar below in other words Judas knows that Jesus didn't come from this world and Judas is the only one who knows this Jesus says to Judas separate from the others and I will tell you the mysteries of the kingdom not so that you can go there but that you may grieve greatly Judas is going to learn the secrets of the kingdom but it's going to be frustrating because he can't go there that's the first part of this gospel so the disciples have a vision that they relate to Jesus they don't understand and so Jesus shows up and the disciples say teacher we've seen you in a vision and they start describing this vision that they've just had they saw a house and they saw an altar in the house and they saw 12 men who were priests who are making sacrifices on this altar and it turns out that some of these priests who are making these sacrifices were sacrificing their own children and wives on the altar some were sleeping with men some were performing murder still others can in a multitude of sins and the disciples want to know what is this thing we were seeing and Jesus tells them that in fact these twelve priests who are sacrificing their wives and children and so forth and so on are in fact the twelve disciples they were sacrificing their wives and children and doing these other evil things evil in their views they were committing fornication they were murdering children they were doing all sorts of acts of impurity lawlessness and error God has received your sacrifice but your God is a minister of error so these the disciples aren't the good guys here they're in fact acting acting in horrible ways and Jesus reprimands them for it so Judas then has a vision Judas says to Jesus I've had a great vision the twelve disciples were throwing stones at me well okay that's easy enough to interpret sometimes you don't need a deep Freudian analysis to figure this one out the disciples are going to hate you Judas because of what you're going to do Judas goes on to say that he saw a house with great people around it and he wants to go inside and Jesus tells him that no one born of a mortal can enter that house it's reserved for the Holy Judas may know about Jesus but not even he can enter into this house Jesus then launches into a mysterious revelation about how the world came into be he says that originally there was an invisible spirit this is the great unknown God and this invisible spirit called forth a luminary cloud and out of this cloud came a being called the self originated this point you know you're in trouble this is going to be a complicated revelation there are eons that are created and in areas that are created and angels that are created and firmaments that come into being all these things come into being populating the divine realm and then there comes into being the realm of chaos and what is the realm of chaos the realm of chaos is here where we live twelve angels are called forth to rule this chaos and then one in particular comes forth there's an angel who appears whose face breathes out fire his appearance was defiled with blood his name was never Oh which means rebel and accompanying him is another angel named sac loss which is a word that means fool and its sack loss fool who says let us create a human being after our likeness and image and they molded Adam and his wife Eve humans were not created by the one true God this human race was created by a bloodthirsty rebel and a fool the next section of this gospel is the fate of Judas Judas wants to know how long people will live and Jesus tells Judas that he will be a ruler over all the other disciples and that in fact he will surpass all the disciples for an interesting reason one of the key verses in this entire Gospel Jesus tells Judas you will surpass them all for you will sacrifice the man that bears me Wow you will surpass them all for you will sacrifice the man or the human being that bears me Jesus while he's here giving his revelation is also in a human body but that human body has to be shed so that he can return to the play romo just as those who are trapped spirits here need to shed their body to return to the play Roma and how is it going to happen that Jesus will return to the play Roma he has to shed his body which means his body has to die Judas turns him over so that his body will be crucified so he can escape and return to his heavenly home so you will surpass them all for you will sacrifice the man that bears me the account continues on then by describing Judas turning Jesus over to the authorities and it ends by saying Judas received some money and handed him over to them period then comes the title the Gospel of Judas this gospel does not end with Jesus being crucified because for this gospel that's irrelevant it doesn't matter that Jesus died on the cross because he didn't die on the cross for the sins of the world he wasn't raised bodily from the dead because the whole point is to escape the body the resurrection of the body is offensive to this author the idea of the resurrection of the body is the idea that you're going to live eternally in your body but for this author the body is the problem you need to escape your body and so Jesus too escapes his body and so his body doesn't get raised from the dead he returns to his playroom I haven't given the revelation that's needed for people in order to escape this world the betrayal the key point of this text things are not what they seem and things are not what most Christians think things are not what they seem or what most Christians think specifically seven points Christians most Christians today Christians like irony Asst Christians who are opponents of the Gnostics Christians of the side that won the debates between Gnostics and others the Christians who ended up winning decided what Christians would believe for all time scholars talk about the early debates between orthodoxy and heresy orthodoxy is a Greek word that it actually comes from two Greek words that means right belief orthodoxy means right belief heresy comes from a Greek word that means choice so heretics are people who choose not to believe the right belief the other word for heresy a synonym for heresy is the word heterodox see another belief so you have right belief orthodoxy and heterodox see another belief as one wag is put it orthodoxy is my dog see and heterodoxy is your doc see that's the problem with these terms I mean the word Orthodox if it means right belief by definition everybody is Orthodox because everybody thinks they're right but nobody thinks they're wrong if anybody thinks they're wrong they change their views so they'll think what's right and so everybody thinks that what they think is right which means that everybody is Orthodox so on one level these terms are not very helpful as historical descriptors but historians still use the term more that often heresy not to decide who's right and who's wrong but to describe the group that ended up winning in the debates over what to believe in early Christianity and all the groups that ended up losing orthodoxy is the winning side the heresies are the losing side and historians aren't saying that one sides right together is wrong they're just saying that's you know one side won and the others lost the winning side said there's only one God and that continues to be the belief of Christians today that there's one God who created this world and the Gnostics say that that's not true at all there's there's a whole play romo of gods a whole divine realm there's not just one God Orthodox Christianity came up came finally came out saying that the world is controlled by the one through God and the Gnostics including the author of the gospel Judas said no this world is not controlled by the one true God this world is controlled by a lower evil malignant ignorant divinity this world is controlled by a bloodthirsty rebel and a fool not by the one true God the Orthodox side the Orthodox side said that humans were made in the image of God no according to this understanding in Gospel of Judas they're made in the image of these lower divinities they're made fleshly they're not made spiritual beings even though some of us do have a spark of the Divine within the Orthodox side said Jesus is the son of the God who created this world he's the son of God no not for the Gnostics not for the author of the Gospel of Judas Jesus comes from the play Roma he's from a higher realm he's a spiritual being not the son of the Lord God who created this world the Orthodox said that Jesus death and resurrection bring salvation and the author of the Gospel of Judas said no the death and resurrection of Jesus have nothing to do with salvation salvation comes by receiving secret knowledge the Orthodox side said that the apostles of Jesus are the ones who know the truth this became a very important teaching in Orthodox Christianity in Orthodox Christianity it was taught that the leaders of the current churches say in the year 1 AD when the irony is his writing the leaders of the churches were appointed by people who were appointed by people who were appointed by the apostles of Jesus and so God sent Jesus Jesus had his apostles his apostles appointed the leaders of the churches who appointed their successors who appointed their successor you see I mean you get you still have this in the Roman Catholic structure where the Pope ultimately can trace his line all the way back to Peter the right-hand man of Jesus well the Orthodox thought that the Apostles who were with Jesus during his lifetime were obviously the ones who understood the truth and so if you have writings that the Apostles wrote then if you follow those writings then you're in you you're right and if the Apostles appointed leaders of the churches then you should follow what the leaders of the churches say the Apostles were the ones who know that's why you get so many apostolic writings in early Christianity you get all sorts of books that claim to be written by Peter or by James or by John or name your apostle why in fact these people didn't write these books Simon Peter did not write any book we in the New Testament we have two books the first first Peter and second Peter that claim to be written by Peter outside the New Testament we have a gospel of Peter we have three apocalypses of Peter writing books in the name of Peter was a cottage industry in early Christianity and the reality is Peter didn't write any of them and for a very good reason because Peter didn't know how to write Peter was a lower-class Aramaic speaking fisherman from the rural area of Galilee who never went to school he certainly could not write so why do you have all these books claiming to be written by Peter because the Apostles are the ones who know and if you write a book and you're a nobody then nobody's going to read your book but if you're a nobody and you write a book and you sign it Peter then Christians might read it and so you claim to be Peter in other words you lie about it and people did that a lot so this is all predicated on the idea that the apostles of Jesus are the ones in the know but according to the Gospel of Judas it's not that way at all the apostles of Jesus don't understand him they are ignorant Judas is the only one who has an inkling of what's going on in the Orthodox view Judas was the worst and the heinous apostle the betrayer the one who is condemned for all time but not according to the Gospel of Judas the Judas in this gospel is the one apostle who actually knew who Jesus was where he came from and he knew Jesus private revelation that Jesus gave to him this attack on the Apostles was not simply an attack on the followers of Jesus it was an attack on those people who claimed to be the spiritual descendants of the Apostles especially the leaders of the churches in irony as his day the leaders according to this view the leaders of the churches they are the successors of the Apostles and what does that mean well for the Gospel of Judas that means that they are ignorant like the Apostles they are violent oppressive and immoral immoral they're ignorant violent oppressive and immoral that's what the apostles are remember they have this vision of this altar where they're sacrificing these these they're sacrificing their own children they're sacrificing their wives they're committing acts of immorality that's the Apostles so the leaders of the church is yes they descend from those apostles and they're just like them is that who you want to follow or do you want to follow those who have the secret teaching that can lead to eternal life this is why I'm calling the Lost Gospel of Judas an alternative vision of Christianity thank you very much

Channel: Bart D. Ehrman

Views: 240,977

Rating: 4.5601525 out of 5

Keywords: Ramtha, J. Z. Knight, Gospel of Judas, Bart D. Ehrman, Gnostic, Gnosticism In Modern Times (Religion)

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Length: 51min 33sec (3093 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 25 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/BCRE8TVE]

Quick question, I have heard many a religious person say that Ehrman was either flat-out misrepresenting consensus in the field or making shit up in this video. I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough to make the call myself, and of course not being religious I tend to like the ideas Dr. Ehrman exposes, and many a religious person does not.

TL;DR does Ehrman's point of view come down to biased selection of evidence against theism, or is scriptural support really that weak?

[u/extispicy]

This lecture, which was filmed at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, has the most endearing Q&A sessions I've seen. I loved their enthusiasm and love for Mary Magdalene, and Bart really seems to enjoy the casual venue.

[u/JustThisOneSuitedPen]

Can you explain the 'love him or hate him' part? Seemed to be a very straightforward overview of the text with mainstream conclusions very much in line with the analysis I'm familiar with from Elaine Pagels'.