The Gnostic Gospel of Judas: first impressions

[sophiaserpentia]

ladyattis posted a link to this extensive online article about the newly published Coptic Gnostic Gospel of Judas, which includes a link to the entire English text (it's not very long, as the gospel is fragmentary). Thank you!

The manuscript dates to the same era as the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library and contains a lot of the same terminology. My impression upon first reading is that it has language which is strongly reminiscent of Valentinian literature -- although interestingly it contains smatterings of Sethian language too, and has cues which remind me of the Gospel of Thomas, which the Valentinians mostly avoided. So it is something of a confusing hodgepodge, like a quilt sewn together from several clashing fragments.

In this text, Jesus is shown laughing at the disciples for their ignorance of Gnostic secrets. Also, he is shown predicting that most of the people who worship in his name will be immoral hypocrites -- child slayers (abortionists?), fornicators, and homosexuals. Jesus tells his disciples that the way they can avoid this fate is to turn away from religious practices such as sacrifice, a prominent theme in the Gospel of Thomas.

There is an unusually bitter, sectarian, and moralistic tone here, reflecting mistrust of others within the church and showing strong identification with the disciple labeled traitor and betrayer -- which most likely reflects the experience of the author, as a Gnostic dealing with rejection by the church as a whole.

This leads me to believe that the text was probably written quite late, when disputes between mainstream and Gnostic Christians had reached a high pitch. earlychristianwritings.com (cited by davidould) dates the text to 130-170 AD; i personally suspect it may have been written significantly later than that.

In this text, Jesus is shown speaking to the disciples of their "stars" as personal guides; these seem akin to the guardian angels described in other Valentinian texts; it is also reminiscent of the astro-mysticism common in esoteric texts of late antiquity.

As with other late "patchwork" texts cut-and-pasted by Gnostic redactors, there is an awkward break in the narrative so that Jesus can reveal to Judas the Gnostic creation story, and tell him about the Archons, particularly Saklas, the arrogant misguided demiurge named in the opening of the Hypostasis of the Archons. Jesus claims that worship that will be offered in his name will actually going to Saklas -- an assertion, essentially, that a church which worships Jesus has been taken over by the demiurge and given over to evil.

As for the allegation that Judas is a knowing collaborator in a plot with Jesus to bring about his crucifixion... this practically follows from the Gospel of John, where the passion is shown as a carefully scripted event in which nothing, not the smallest detail, is insignificant or happens simply by chance. If this is so, then it is impossible to imagine that Judas was not playing a role in a cosmic script written by God; that Judas is a knowing collaborator is not a far leap.

Comments

[sable-twilight.livejournal.com]

Child slayers could refer to killing children in any number of ways, not just abortion. Neglect, for example. Or by driving people into crippling poverty and then refusing to render humanitarian services.

[mlfoley.livejournal.com]

omg y do u h8 fredum

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yes, absolutely. My instinct tells me it refers to abortionists, though it could mean more generally anyone who is ruthless.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Yeah... abortion, contrary to what revisionist "pro-lifers" want people to think, was not considered murder back in the day. Also, there were no surgical abortions done at a clinic as we have now - what abortion methods there were were unreliable or sometimes even dangerous. What was much more common was the practice of "exposing" an unwanted child after it was born - usually because it was deformed, female, or the mother was unmarried and wished to avoid social sanction. It seems more likely he was speaking against this.

[erykah101.livejournal.com]

Child slaying is almost certainly not related to abortion. There is a long history of child sacrifice which is far more relevant.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

"It is likely that motif of stealing children was inspired by the traditional understanding that babies were sacrificed to Moloch. The ancients would heat this idol up with fire until it was glowing, then they would take their newborn babies, place them on the arms of the idol, and watch them burn to death."

"Eissfeldt further concluded that the Hebrew writings were not talking about a god Moloch at all, but about the molk or mulk sacrifice, that the abomination was not in worshipping a god Molech who demanded children be sacrificed to him, but in the practice of sacrificing human children as a molk. Quite possibly this sacrifice of first-born children as a molk was even offered up at times to Yahweh himself, although relevant Scriptural passages depict Yahweh condemning such practices."

People have been butchering their children for thousands of years in the name of their various gods. There is also the example of Abraham himself and his willingness to sacrifice his child because God asked him to. With the cast of Gnostic thought, the comment could even be railing against that.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if you would write about this as I saw the headlines of the last few days.

[mystiphi.livejournal.com]

thanks for the links

I believe they carbon-dated it to around 300 AD. I was looking forward to your interpetation upon reading this.

[glamwhorebunni.livejournal.com]

I heard 220 to 340 AD...

But that's the date of the actual physical object. It might not have been written then, it could be written earlier (or be a translation of an earlier text).

[davidould.livejournal.com]

yeah, the actual fragments they have date around 300AD, the original text is probably late 2nd century, as evidenced by the direct response by Iranaeus.

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Jesus claims that worship that will be offered in his name will actually going to Saklas -- an assertion, essentially, that a church which worships Jesus has been taken over by the demiurge and given over to evil.

It's obvious! Saklas=Sinter Klaas=Santa Claus! Jesus' church has been taken over by the worship of evil commercialism! :P

[mlfoley.livejournal.com]

Truth, humour... such llittle difference between the two, sadly.

[chimpstop.livejournal.com]

Tangentally, there's an old Borges' story about Judas being the actual messiah/savior/died for our sins kinda guy:

"In “Three Versions of Judas,” Borges logically proves Judas to be the Son of God as a hyperbolic way to debunk dogmatic adherence to accepted interpretations of the Gospel Story. Whereas “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” examines storytelling as it relates to literature and history, “Three Versions of Judas” addresses the relationship between storytelling and interpretation in Scripture. The story’s narrator, Nils Runeberg, begins with a parochial and fundamentalist principle in assuming that “to suppose an error in Scripture is intolerable; no less intolerable is it to admit that there was a single haphazard act in the most precious drama in the history of the world.” This statement places Runeberg in a twentieth century religious context, where many faiths condemn slight digression from doctrine as heresy. By the logic of “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” such blind faith in the infallibility of a narrative referred to as “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” signals an immediate refusal to read Biblical history skeptically. However, Borges sets Runeberg against his time period, citing it as a mere turn of fate that “God assigned him to the twentieth century, and to the university city of Lund.” Whereas Runeberg’s contemporaries fail to see Scripture in the light of Kilpatrick’s fictional/factual biographies, Runeberg works within the restrictions of his faith-based belief system to find alternative interpretations supported by textual evidence. Initially, Runeberg’s subscription to the notion of the malleability of textual analyses appears to supercede his reliance on religious doctrine. However, his interpretation of Scripture proceeds from the accepted doctrines of Christ’s humanity, Christ’s sacrifice and the idea that God created Christ and Man in His image. Therefore, Runeberg employs sound reason in paralleling Judas’s spiritual descent into Hell and Jesus’s physical sacrifice on the cross. By assuming that God “could have chosen any of the destinies which together weave the uncertain web of history,” Runeberg’s logic implies that God could have chosen all destinies, including Alexander, Pythagoras, Rurik, Jesus and Judas. Runeberg, however, never reaches this final step. Instead, he commits a fatal error by essentially producing an interpretation of the Gospel Story that is as rigid and incontrovertible as the one from which he proceeded."

From:

http://www.themodernword.com/borges/borges_papers_mcgrath.html

[davidould.livejournal.com]

This leads me to believe that the text was probably written quite late, when disputes between mainstream and Gnostic Christians had reached a high pitch. earlychristianwritings.com (cited by davidould) dates the text to 130-170 AD; i personally suspect it may have been written significantly later than that.

Thanks for the nod. It's an interesting one, isn't it. The original dating has got to be latest end of the 2nd Century, given that Iraeneus attacks it. But some of the gnostic imagery appears later and more developed.

Perhaps the 4th Century text that's being translated is a later reworking of the original?


either way, it's tosh ;-)

[aethyrflux.livejournal.com]

thanks for sharing your initial thoughts with us!
i trust that you don't mind me linking to your post?