The Judas Code: Another Non-Gospel
A Positive Appraisal
All Christians and scholars of early Christianity should welcome the recent publication of the Gospel of Judas. With some dissension, the general scholarly consensus so far runs like this: the Gospel of Judas is a third to fourth-century Gnostic text written in Coptic, an ancient Egyptian language.
More importantly, the Gospel of Judas is thought to be a copy of an earlier text of the same name that was most likely written in Greek during the late second century, and which St. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, condemns since it was authored by the Cainites, an extremist Gnostic sect completely out of touch with mainstream Christianity.
As such the third-to-fourth century Gospel of Judas will help us to learn the Weltanschauung (world-view) of its anonymous author(s) and where his or her teachings fit into the serpentine skein of pre-Nicene Gnosticism. Moreover, the discoveries of texts such as the Gospel of Judas help to remind one of the early Church's vigilant discernment in combating heresies such as Gnosticism, in rejecting heterodox "Gospels," and also in boldly propagating the orthodox regula fidei (rule of faith).
So, insofar as such texts shed historical light on the heretical offshoots of normative Christianity, we should be thankful for their restoration and publication.
Furthermore, in augmenting our historical knowledge of heresies such as Gnosticism, these texts better prepare Christians to respond effectively to the myriad heresies of today, which are often cleverly recycled copies of their patristic prototypes.
Flesh and Gnosis
A close look at The Gospel of Judas reveals the stark contrast between this third-to-fourth century apocryphal document and the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of the first century.
The most obvious difference between the real Gospels and this fictitious one is that the latter portrays Judas as a hero rather than a reviled traitor.
To understand why the anonymous author of this document portrays Judas so positively requires some understanding of Gnostic mythology, particularly its strict adherence to a philosophical dualism.
In general, the Gnostics denigrated the originary event of creation, physical matter, procreation, the human body, and the entire cosmos as evil and infinitely inferior to spiritual realities. For them, the spiritual soul was imprisoned during this earthly life inside the human body and alienated from the higher world of the spirit, while death offered the soul's only chance to escape the prison of this inherently corrupt material world and enter the pure spiritual realm.
In short, the Gnostics believed that matter is irredeemably evil in se, while spirit is absolutely good.
Thus, it becomes understandable why a Gnostic text would lionize Judas for assisting Jesus to shed his false skin, that is, to liberate his true inner self from his corporeal prison and ultimately from the cosmic gulag of this world.
Accordingly, at one juncture in the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, Jesus says to Judas: "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."
Judas "will exceed all of them," that is, all of the disciples of Jesus. Why?
It is because Judas "will sacrifice the man that clothes" the spiritual soul of Jesus; he will help destroy the human body that hinders Jesus from realizing his true self, his inner divine spark.
In fact, the editors of the Gospel of Judas indicate just that in a footnote: "The death of Jesus, with the assistance of Judas, is taken to be the liberation of the spiritual person within." However, in this view Judas' "betrayal" is essentially an act of love done on Jesus' behalf and upon Jesus' request, an act of love precisely intended to crucify and kill Jesus.
In effect, Judas, not Jesus, is asked to make the ultimate sacrifice, to offer up the life of his master so that he may finally be free from the shackles enslaving him to this world. However, it is in fulfilling his mission that Judas proves himself to be Jesus' best friend, the disciple who exceeds the rest, and not the villainous traitor that the "other" Gospels have purported him to be.
Another salient feature of Gnostic mythology also found in the Gospel of Judas is the concept of an esoteric knowledge that only a few privileged possessed.
To be sure, Gnostic soteriology taught that salvation comes not through Jesus' death and resurrection, but instead through the secret knowledge that Jesus revealed to select individuals.
In fact, the Gospel of Judas reveals alleged conversations between Jesus and Judas that had been kept secret from the rest of the disciples, for only Judas, Jesus' favorite disciple, was able to apprehend the full import of this higher form of gnosis (knowledge): "Knowing that Judas was reflecting on something that was exalted, Jesus said to him, 'Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it.'" And again: "Jesus said, 'Come, that I may teach you about secrets no person has ever seen.'"
In addition to the "mysteries of the kingdom" Jesus reveals only to Judas, he also entrusts him with a secret mission that only Judas is capable of apprehending and fulfilling: betrayal as love.
And that's the Gospel of Judas.
The Judas Code: A Gospel Minus the Good News
Someone with an even shallow understanding of Christianity's core beliefs can recognize that the Gnostic ideas espoused by the anonymous third-to-fourth century author of the Gospel of Judas conflict radically with Christianity and the four canonically accepted Gospels of the first century.
First, the Gnostic idea that Jesus needed and wanted to be released by Judas from the "the man that clothes me" (i.e. Jesus' own physical body) is incompatible with the Christian understanding of the human body and all of God's creation as ontologically good, in se, precisely because God in his own nature is all good and therefore cannot create anything that is in itself not good. Indeed, the human body is so good within the Christian worldview that God himself becomes fully human in Christ in the event of the Incarnation (Jn 1.14) and even retains his body in a glorified form after the Resurrection.
Secondly, the Gnostic notion that only an elite few like Judas can ascertain the knowledge requisite for salvation is patently anti-Christian, for the Gospel "is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile" (Rm 1:16).
Thirdly, the Gnostic conception that a rarefied knowledge and not Christ's redemptive act in the Crucifixion and Resurrection is the linchpin of salvation is a Gospel without any good news.
Not surprisingly, Christ's redemptive action in the Crucifixion and the Resurrection are nowhere to be found in the pages of the so-called Gospel of Judas.
Fourth, as opposed to the compassionate Christ of the canonical Gospels, the merciful God-man who gives the New Law of Love to all, in the Gospel of Judas we receive the sardonic condescension of a Christ who literally laughs at, mocks, and angers his disciples when they cannot understand him. How inspiring.
Fifth, the Gnostic-inspired Gospel of Judas recasts betrayal from a malevolent to a morally virtuous act. In effect, an evil means can be used to reach a good end. One shudders to think of the outcome if such a consequentialist morality ever became the normative modus operandi of moral decision-making today. Stalin all over again.
Finally, the so-called Gospel of Judas is so replete with Gnostic terminology that in the end it is more akin to a Barnes and Noble New Age best-seller than it is to a canonical Gospel. Just to cite a few of its catchy Gnostic code words: the immortal realm of Barbelo, Nebro, Yaldabaoth, Saklas, Harmathoth, Galila, Yobel, Adonaios, Zoe, the luminaries, the luminous cloud, the incorruptible generation, your star, the eternal realm, and aeons. A litany of groovy shibboleths.
For the six reasons above, and others we would gladly add if we had the time and space, the Gospel of Judas bears virtually no resemblance to the Christianity of its particular historical epoch or any other, and consequently it was and will continue to be rejected by the Church as heretical, or as a "fictitious history" as Irenaeus deservedly declared it in the second century. Better yet, "The Judas Code" in the contemporary vernacular.
"Yet those early Christians [read Gnostics] who loved and revered such texts [read Gnostic Gospels] did not think of themselves as heretics," said Elaine Pagels, the doyenne of early Christian studies and a professor of religion at Princeton University.
Case in point — I fully concur. Of course the Gnostics did not think of themselves as heretics; heretics rarely ever regard themselves as such. The Arians did not consider themselves heretics any more than the Donatists considered themselves schismatics. Heresy, schism, and betrayal are always accompanied by a necessary network of rationally synthesized stratagems that exculpate the heretic and psychologically mollify him or her so that the cause may move forward. That is precisely the nature of the beast.
Conclusion
Who's afraid of Judas? Well, no one really. Ultimately, the Gospel of Judas is a much ballyhooed but in the end rather ho-hum Gnostic document. It's much ado about nothing.
In 1945, 52 Gnostic texts were discovered and we now have one more. That makes it 53. Will people 100 years from now or even next year really care about the Gospel of Judas? The popular interest will wane and dribble out, leaving in the end only a score of hermetic scholars stoked. And as the general scholarly consensus has already shown, this new text tells us nothing more about the historical Jesus and Judas than does Jesus Christ Superstar.
The final point worth remembering is that the codex containing the Gospel of Judas had been illegally smuggled out of Egypt without that country's required authorization, illicitly trafficked for decades, and according to international law the present owners cannot sell it because they do not and cannot possess a legal title to it since it is in fact stolen property. Perhaps it is a mere coincidence — I would say a providential irony — that a codex whose actual contents exculpate Judas for betraying Christ for 30 pieces of silver is itself stolen property. Indeed, it has a history that is marred and "replete with smugglers, black-market antiquities dealers, religious scholars, backstabbing partners and greedy entrepreneurs," as Professor James Robinson has documented in his research.
Yet the even more poignant irony in this whole Judas saga, one that has surely escaped the myopic vision of those Mammon-hungry promoters peddling the Gospel of Judas, is that amidst all the revisionist rhetoric regarding Judas not really betraying Jesus, betrayal is happening all over again. As Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the papal household, put it in his Good Friday sermon: "Christ is still being sold, no longer by the leaders of the Sanhedrin for 30 pieces of silver, but by editors and by libraries, for millions."
© Urbi et Orbi Communications
This item 7117 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
