The Gospel of Judas

By Henry E. Webb

In 1978 an Egyptian farmer discovered an ancient papyrus manuscript while digging in a cave near Nag Hammadi, site of an earlier discovery of several ancient texts. Realizing it was a valuable piece of antiquity, but having no idea as to its identity, he sold it to a dealer who brought it to the United States and offered to sell it to Yale University for $3 million.

Unable to dispose of it, the dealer placed it in a bank vault where, unprotected from exposure to air, it deteriorated badly. Another antiquities dealer obtained possession of it in 2002 and took it to Switzerland where the fragments of the text were put in proper sequence and placed between glass for protection and translation.

The text was recognized as Coptic and taken to the University of Munich, where it was identified as the Gospel of Judas and translated into German, English, and subsequently into other modern tongues. The National Geographic Society sponsored its English publication in May of this year.

Previously Known

What is the Gospel of Judas, and what is its place in the literature of the time? Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, France, in the second century, knew of this gospel. He identified it as a Gnostic composition. It was originally written in Greek, and its authorship is unknown.

In ancient times there were no laws against plagiarism, and pseudonyms often were used. To give credibility to a composition, it would be given the name of a well-known person. The second century abounds with gospels attributed to almost every one of Jesus” associates: Andrew, Peter, Philip, Mary, and Thomas, among others. Some of these books have been sold under the title The Lost Books of the Bible. Most were never lost; they were simply rejected by the church when the canon of the New Testament was finalized because they were considered to be spurious and often contained doctrines the church considered non-Christian.

Secret Formulas

The manuscript of the recently discovered Gospel of Judas is in Coptic, the language of Upper Egypt, where there was much Gnostic influence. To understand this gospel it is necessary to bear in mind the nature of Gnosticism, which was widespread in the second and third centuries and was a grave threat to the survival of the Christian faith. Gnosticism derives from the Greek work gnosis, which means “knowledge,” but not knowledge as we understand the word today. Rather, it referred to secret formulas provided to a select few by special revelation. Such esoteric secrets held great fascination for many people in the early Christian era.

Although the Gnostic sects differ widely among themselves, they all share a few common characteristics. The most significant is they uniformly hold to a dualistic understanding of all existence. Everything exists as matter (which is evil), or spirit (which is good). On this, there is no compromise.

There are many gods in the various systems, usually in an ascending hierarchy. Most systems provide that one of the lower-level gods, as an act of spite or vengeance, created matter. Humans are the unfortunate victims of this action inasmuch as humans are composed of both of these incompatible extremes””a soul (spirit/good) and a body (matter/flesh/evil). So, humans need salvation (deliverance from their evil bodies), which comes only to those who possess the saving secrets (knowledge/gnosis). In some Gnostic systems, those who don”t possess saving knowledge are destined to be reincarnated numerous times until, hopefully in some future rebirth, they come into possession of the secrets that will enable them to escape their imprisonment in evil flesh.

Obvious Implications

Such an understanding of matter and the human body has obvious implications for Christians. The Judeo-Christian understanding of things/matter never sees it as evil. Things are morally neutral. Things are neither good nor evil in themselves. Human attitudes toward things can be good or evil. Making things the supreme value in life is evil and is condemned, as in the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:13-21). This distortion of values is idolatry, a violation of the first Commandment. Jesus had several disciples who were rich; but they evidently kept these assets in proper perspective. Riches are not evil in themselves, but loving them above all else is evil.

Identifying material things as evil had a certain attraction in the culture of antiquity. It offered a very simplistic, and hence widely accepted, understanding of evil. Numbers of texts in the writings of Paul can be interpreted in this way (see also 1 John 2:15-17). Thus it was easy for Gnostics to slide their doctrines into the churches, particularly in Gentile areas. While Gnosticism was rampant as the church spread further into Gentile territory in the second century, there are indications that its influence may be seen as early as the late first century (1 Corinthians 8:1-3; 1 Timothy 6:20, 21).

Believing that the human body is evil had an ambivalent impact on Gnostic teachers. Some went to extremes in repressing bodily impulses and became ascetics. Other Gnostics went to the other extreme, holding that since salvation was obtained by possession of the true knowledge (gnosis), they were above concern over physical problems and could be indifferent toward fleshly impulses. They became extremely libertarian and morally loose. Probably the “sect of the Nicolaitans” in Ephesus and Pergamum (Revelation 2:6, 15) was of this type. Both extremes are the tragic results of a Greco-Roman view of reality displacing a Judeo-Christian understanding.

Believing that the physical human body is evil had serious implications for the doctrine of Jesus Christ. Gnostics held that if he were the Son of the good God and came to bring redemption to mankind, he absolutely could not have had a human body, for that would have plunged him into evil and sin. There was no incarnation. Most held Jesus was human but Christ was divine. The divine Christ descended on the human Jesus at the time of his baptism (Mark 1:10, 11), a heresy later called Adoptionism. And Christ, the Son of the good God, not having a physical body, could not have died on the cross. Only the human Jesus died; Christ had departed. Thus, human Jesus cried out, “Why have you forsaken me?” which the divine Christ had done when the human Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane.

So, for Gnostics, there was no atonement, which is at the heart of the Christian gospel. The divine Christ appeared only after the crucifixion of the human Jesus. That the resurrection was only spiritual is seen in the fact that Christ could disappear from sight (Luke 24:31) and pass through closed doors (John 20:19). Gnostics held that there was no bodily resurrection. Explaining away the incarnation, atonement, and the bodily resurrection pretty well destroys the gospel. Gnosticism actually presented a more serious threat to the survival of the faith than did persecutions, which also multiplied in the second and third centuries.

How could the church protect the faith against such insidious perversion? A struggle of enormous consequence followed in the second and third centuries. Historians of early Christianity generally agree that three critical steps were taken by the churches in the historic centers of Christendom:

1. With a plethora of spurious writings in circulation among the churches, it became incumbent on the church to determine which were genuine and trustworthy. This was a process that took years to complete. Most of the 27 books in our New Testament were of unquestioned authenticity. But a few were marginal. Eventually the content of the canon was fixed and accepted as standard for determining the faith.

2. The baptismal formula (Matthew 28:19) was enlarged to eliminate Gnostic doctrines. What we call “the Good Confession” was usually made at baptism. The phrase “I believe in God, the Father” was altered to “I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his Son, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, descended into Hell, and on the third day he arose again from the dead.” The words in caps were added to the baptismal statement because Gnostics could not affirm them. Thus the Gnostic invasion of the church was curtailed.

3. In keeping with Acts 20:28-30, the power to interpret the faith was vested in the bishop (by the second century most of the churches had a single bishop) and they were uniformly determined to purge Gnosticism from the church.

Thoroughly Gnostic

How can we know the Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic writing? Three reasons:

1. Although it was known at the time the New Testament was compiled, it was not accepted by the church as genuine. It was regarded as Gnostic by the church leaders.

2. It was preserved by the Coptic Church in Egypt, a body heavily influenced by Gnosticism.

3. The only event disclosed in advance of publication of the text portrays Jesus taking Judas aside in the upper room and disclosing to him secretly that the act he was planning would make him the greatest of the apostles because it would destroy “the man (the human Jesus) that clothes me.” This is a basic Gnostic idea. According to this, Judas was a hero who has been defamed by a church that has been in bondage to Jewish, Old Testament ideas.

Some in our culture seek to undermine the credibility of the biblical accounts of Jesus and they will try to use the discovery of the Judas text to this end. However, knowing the several characteristics of Gnosticism will make it clear why the Gospel of Judas was not included in the canon of our New Testament. We should resist the excessive claims some interpreters will make in regard to the discovery and significance of this text.

 

 

Henry E. Webb is retired history professor from Milligan College, Tennessee, and author of In Search of Christian Unity: A History of the Restoration Movement.