http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/gospel/

Are they from Judas?
Does he lie in them?
If they are true, what problems / inconsistencies does it pose for the rest of the gospels / bible?
How is / should the church responding?
Does it matter?
What else is there to ask?

From Darren…

It seems pretty interesting, from what I know of it.  I saw the special on Nat.Geo. channel, and enjoyed it.  Portraying Judas that way is very creative and it suggests yet another Gnostic rendering of earlier, already popular traditions of Jesus’s life (canonical gospels).

But I don’t think the Gospel of Judas represents Jesus’s ministry accurately.  I don’t think Jesus and Judas conspiring to arrange Jesus’s death is compatible with second temple Jewish theology.  The NT writers took great pains to hold on to their Jewish identity from the past, while widening their scope to include the whole world in the future.  Gnosticism overemphasizes Greek theology.  Gnosticism is inconsistent with Christianity’s Jewish roots, and the Jewish character of the early Jesus movement, represented in the NT.  The notion of God’s creation being “very good” (Gen 1) is lost in Gnosticism to the dualism of an evil demiurge of darkness, and the true God of light.  This idea is not Jewish.  Isaiah emphatically writes that “I am the Lord and there is no other, apart from me there is no god…I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster.”(Is.45)  Although I believe Isaiah was railing against the dualism of Zoroastrian influence on exiled Judah, the principle applies to Gnosticism as well.  Instead of being compatible with first century Judaism, Gnosticism seems to me like an extreme Platonism.  Matter and spirit are completely incompatable (in this extreme form).  In this system, it’s only logical that the crucifixion was good, and it liberated the spirit from Jesus’s inhospitable, material body.  But I see Judaism as a religion where God’s physical creation has good purpose; it’s meant to be harmoniously linked with the spirit world.  Jesus’s spirit was not trapped in his body, but it was (is) perfectly at home, the way God originally intended it.  He is God come in the flesh, a perfect union of matter and spirit.

This gospel should be used as an opportunity to discuss with others the goodness of God’s world, when “led by the Spirit”.  The physical resurrection of Jesus stands as a testimony and firstfruits of the total renewal and restoration of creation.  We can explain to people that when other religions see only spiritual things as good, they deny who we are: spirit and body unions.

So, what do you think of it, Shane?
Darren

Shane Again…

My first thought was that it was all a complex advertising ploy by the producers of the soon to arrive, Divinci code movie to generate buzz… no that was not my first thought….

I guess it brought me back to that wonderfully unsettling moment when I discovered the story how our bible came to be.  Then I started talking to Christians and non-Christians about it and noted the difference in perspective.  Most Christians were eager to dismiss and disqualify it as scripture and move on.  Non-Christians found it fascinating and wanted to explore the story of the early church and what seems to be the second most popular character in the NT, next to Jesus, Judas.

I guess my current perspective is that it is another book of the apocrypha… which I have only given a glancing read and am not familiar with their “renderings” of Christ and the early church… but now my interest is peeked…

Categories: Bible Study, Theology