Copy of Gnostic's "Gospel of Judas" found in 70's dates to 300 CE

[papau]

A copy of the Gnostic's "Gospel of Judas" (for those that believed that Judas Iscariot alone understood the true significance of Jesus' teachings), that was first mentioned in 186 AD, was found in the desert in Egypt in the 1970s and has now been authenticated by carbon dating to 300 AD.

National Geographic said the author of the gospel of Judas .

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/04/06/gospel.judas.ap/index.html

Ancient text offers revelations about Judas
Manuscript indicates disciple betrayed Jesus -- at his request

Thursday, April 6, 2006; Posted: 10:52 a.m. EDT (14:52 GMT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- National Geographic unveiled an ancient manuscript Thursday that may shed new light on the relationship between Jesus and Judas, the disciple who betrayed him.

The papyrus manuscript was written probably around 300 A.D. in Coptic script, a copy of an earlier Greek manuscript.<snip>

Unlike the four gospels in the Bible, this text indicates that Judas betrayed Jesus at Jesus' request.

<snip>The manuscript was first mentioned in a treatise around 180 A.D. by a bishop, Irenaeus of Lyon, in what is now France. The bishop denounced the manuscript as differing from mainstream Christianity and said it produced a fictitious story.

[On the Road]

1. I've Tended to Ignore the Gospel of Judas

as being late and containing little authentic material, but maybe it requires another look.

The Gnostics liked to turn things on their heads, such as referring to the God of the Old Testament as an evil demiurge. This would account for why they would write a Gospel of Judas and portray him in a favorable light.

I do suspect that Jesus engineered his own capture. The triumphal entry and the Temple incident should have been sufficient, but if they weren't, he might have needed a confidant to turn him over.

[papau]

2. "Jesus engineered his own capture" - Gospels of John and Mark agree w you

The New Testament gospels of John and Mark both contain passages that suggest that Jesus not only picked Judas to betray him, but actually encouraged Judas to hand him over

[On the Road]

3. Which Passages Suggest That to You?

Just curious.

The accounts of the last supper may not have come from eyewitness accounts, but it's interesting to read them that way. When Jesus says "Do what you have to do," Judas simply gets up and walks out. If he were caught in act of betrayal, that would be a very strange response.

I also think Jesus was part of a larger group that did not include the disciples and of which the disciples may not have been aware. When Jesus made arrangements for the Last Supper, he told his disciples to find a man carrying a jug of water in a certain square. When he needed a donkey for the Triumphal Entry, he instructed his disciples to find a donkey at a certain place and say to the owner "The master has need of it." Christians have tended to look at these events magically, but they make more sense if Jesus had an arrangement that he didn't tell his disciples about.

Who were these other people? The most likely candidate is his brother James, who lived in Jerusalem as a priest and immediately became the leader of Jesus' followers upon his death.

[papau]

4. We disagree on much - but here the atheist complaint that "determinism"

in Mark and John before Mark 14:10-11 and John 13:21-30 makes Judas innocent has at least the fact that Mark and John do have a determinism theme (the "We" in the heading refers to the atheists on this board).

Of course the direct words in Mark say Judas was into greed, and John says Satan and again greed in the form of theft. So we have Judas believing that betraying Jesus would be worth a lot of money and therefore pointing him out to the cops - a "handing him over" moment.

The Roman Catholic view is to go with the actual writing in Mark 14:10-11 and John 13:21-30, and to "hate" Judas.

Other Christians think about Jesus' forgiveness and the Gospel's determinism, and we do not hate Judas.

So the "Gospel of Judas" is a plausible reading/spin of the history that has obviously been around from the beginning. It was well known with the usual books written on that theme well before the discovery in the 70's (indeed since 180 CE we have writings about this view).

By the way - I buy into the finding a donkey at a certain place was a miracle! :-) But that is just my opinion.

[On the Road]

6. I'm Not Trying to Either Accuse or Exonerate Judas

just trying to understand what might have happened by thinking about how the different accounts are worded.

A reading that involves normal human reactions from all the characters is preferable to one in which people act in ways that are unlikely or difficult to understand. Someone who owns a donkey is unlikely to hand it over to a perfect stranger. However, the reaction is perfectly understandable if "the Master has need of it" were a prearranged signal between two parties that knew each other.

The man with the jar of water on his head was likewise an arrangement for meeting unknown people in a public place. Women were generally the ones to carry water, thus it was an unusual sight for a local. It is also possible that it was a means of being discreet, especially towards the Romans, who might not even notice that anything was amiss.

According to the gospels, Jesus knew about his impending capture and decided to let it proceed. The only question is whether he actively helped the process along by deliberately provocative acts and/or by arranging with a disciple to hand him over.

[papau]

8. Interesting - I have not a clue as to what is the correct interpretation

good luck!

:-)

[Rowdyboy]

5. I look forward to reading more on the subject.....

Read a book on the Gospel of Thomas a couple of years ago and was totally en rapt. Its amazing to realize that, 330 years after the time of Christ, they simply chose from among dozens of works to form the Bible. I found Thomas (and portions from several other minor gospels included in the book) very readable and certainly more in line with my thinking than anything Paul ever wrote. Perhaps the wrong authors were ommitted.....

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Has this been dated to anytime before 180 AD?

because something written 150 years after the events would seem to have relatively little authority. If someone wrote a new account of Lincoln's thoughts leading up to the Civil War now, would we give it much weight?

[papau]

9. Gospel of Judas was known by the writings disputing its idea - the earliest

such refutation known to us is from 180 CE.

The actual "Gospel of Judas" was reconstructed by working backwards from all the refutations over those early years - I think I saw a modern book that did a reconstructed Gospel that was published recently.

But the 1970 discovery of the copy from 300 CE is the first actual copy of the "Gospel of Judas" to be discovered.

[Solomon]

10. No one has answered the question that Thomas Paine raised a couple

of hundred years ago. Why did christ need a betrayor? IF he was a preacher running around gathering large crowds to hear his message, then why did he need someone to tell the roman soldiers where he was "hiding?" In other words, why was he hiding at all? What's all the skulldugery about? The story is inconsistent in this regard.

He didn't need a Judas in the first place. What's the point of using Judas to betray him when he could have just walked up to the roman soldiers and said "here I am?"

[Solomon]

11. And to take it a step further, why didn't god send a dove down when he

was either captured by the romans or before Pontius Pilate, and say "this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased", "leave him the hell alone"?

I agree with Thomas Paine on christianity. What was all the skulking around about and why?