Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity?

New Testament scholar and Anglican Bishop N. T. Wright admits that when first hearing of the recently published Gospel of Judas his initial reaction was something on the lines of "Not another one of those gospels!" This was not to dispute the importance of the find for historical scholarship which Wright concedes is significant. It merely reflects his understanding that cranks, pseudo-scholars, and a gullible and willing press would turn the find into an attack on traditional Christian beleifs and use it to "prove" their were viable alternatives to the four gospels included in the New Testament. In this judgment, Wright has been unfortunately been proven correct. Wright responds to the hysteria generated by the media coverage in Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth About Christianity? - a clear, concise exposition of what this new "gospel" is and what it is not. Those familiar with Wright's rebuttals of radical revisionist New Testament "scholarship" know that he does not suffer fools gladly and so it is the case he as he completely skewers the claims of those promoting this newly discovered text as challenging the preconceptions about the Christian faith. As Wright points out repeatedly, this text comes from a period nearly a century after the New Testament gospels and so while they can tell us much about what was going on in the gnostic movement, they can tell us nothing about the real Jesus and Judas. Despite the fact that the various gnostic movements did not have the internal cohesion to put forward a unified doctrinal synthesis, Wright correctly points out that there were defining tenets that identified a movement as gnostic. The key among these were the following four points: the belief that the material world is inherently bad; the belief that the material world is the work of an inferior - and perhaps evil - god; the belief that salvation is achieved by escaping the material world for a higher plane of existence; the belief that the salvific escape from the evils of this world is gained through the knowledge provided by the group's leaders. Naturally, such an outlook would take a dim view of the Jewish emphasis on the redemption of the material world and thus would see the God of the Old Testament as the material world's capricious creator. Considering one of the claims against by contemporary apologists for the gnostics against traditional Christianity is its alleged anti-Semitism, Wright quite correctly replies that it was the gnostics who rejected any Jewish influence and the orthodox Christians who kept the link to Judaism alive and would identify the God of the Old Testament with the Triune God of the Christian faith. It is in fact the anti-Jewish elements of gnosticism that make the Gospel of Judas possible. Given that they saw the Apostles' maintanence of the link to Judaism objectionable and their belief in a bodily ressurection as abhorent, there was an inherent desire to turn everything topsy-turvy. Figure

Tom Wright, as few can, "quickly" responds in depth to the recently published, Gospel of Judas. He takes on the proposed "Alternative Jesus" and broadens our understanding of gnosticism, the gnostic gospels and their proponents. Another solid effort by Bishop Tom; very readable.

N T Wright, one of the world's greatest biblical scholars, tosses aside his usual calm and comes out swinging in "Judas and the Gospel of Jesus". He is clearly sick and tired of certain group of American scholars, the ones who claim there were all sorts of early Christianities, and, frankly, the one we ended up with was certainly not the best choice. So, for once, Wright is naming names and taking no prisoners. Wright's book is based upon "The Gospel of Judas" which was released with such great fanfare last Easter. No doubt you, too, had a laugh when that great biblical magazine, the "National Geographic", published a huge article on "The Gospel of Judas". And remember all those newspapers declaring darkly that "Judas" would shake the belief of those who still clung to Christianity? Oh please. It was just another late Gnostic text, and, as usual, poorly written and with rambling idiotic passages about aeons. Yet the usual suspects--I mean scholars--made false claims about the importance and meaning of "The Gospel of Judas". Wright doesn't exactly call Marvin Meyer, Elaine Pagels, and Bart Ehrman liars, but he comes thisclose. Most books about biblical scholarship are pretty tame. Not this one. Expect to enjoy yourself as you watch Wright tear Meyer, Pagels and Ehrman to pieces. Some instances bound to make you smile: Meyer and Pagels "try to use the motif of laughter to make this 'Jesus' appear friendly" (p 54-55), in direct contradiction to the fact that the text means something very different. It's about time someone mentioned how liberal scholars play fast and loose with the facts. Then there's the instance when Wright calls Elaine Pagels' statement about Jesus "breathtaking" and notes dryly, "It could only be sustained by a systematic and sustained rereading, and in fact a radical misreading, of the canonical gospels" (p 81). Now that's how a true gentleman calls someone a lying twit. Then there's Bart Ehrman's bizarre claims about early Judaism and Christianity while ignoring the obvious:that early Christianity and Judaism had much, much "more in common with one another than with Gnosticism"(p 115). The argument about there being many early types of Christianity is nonsense. People weren't wandering around in 200 AD unable to distinguish between a Christian and a follower of one of the schools of Gnosticism. As many of the early church fathers acidly noted, no Roman made a mistake and tossed a Gnostic to the lions. No, the Christians were the ones being eaten and the Gnostics were those preening about their insight or moaning on about how the universe and flesh were evil. Astrology has as much intellectual merit as Gnosticism, which was merely an attempt to paganize Christianity. Wouldn't you just love to know how Ehrman, Pagals, and Meyer react? You've GOT to get this book. Anyone interested in early Christianity and Gnosticism should get Simone Pe

N T Wright cuts through the modern assumptions that the canonical texts were some how in error and that Christianity really started in some other way. This book deal with the conspiracy theorists who want to claim the Church has covered up the real truth about Jesus and have made him Divine in order to have power and control. Wright clearly shows how that the real compromisers of the truth were the writers of the so-called gospel of Thomas and the other Gnostic texts that privatized religion and tried to move it out of the political realm in order to avoid persecution from the state. Those who held to the message that Jesus is Lord and Caesar and would not bow to the "lordship" of Caesar were the ones that were persecuted and killed. The real cowards and compromisers were the Gnostics. Those who held to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and not least Paul were thrown to the lions, had their property confiscated, were fried alive on the hot seat and suffered abuse and death at the hands of Rome, while Gnostics, who had de-politicized the gospel, sat home writing alternative Gnostic views that would not call into question the powers of Rome. This is a great book with a message that needs to be heard over against the message that normally gets presented on CNN, Fox News, or History channel specials.

The standing joke about Tom Wright goes like this: An inquiring student gives Dr Wright a call. His secretary says, "Sorry, but he is busy writing a book". To which the student caller replies, "That's OK, I'll hold". NT Wright is one of our most prolific New Testament scholars. It seems just a few months ago the media broke the story about the discovery of the so-called Gospel of Judas. And here we have a major critique of the find and the claims surrounding it. The gospel was in fact discovered three decades ago, but for various reasons, was only made public in April of 2006. The media made much of it, and it tied in nicely with the film release of the Da Vinci Code. Both were over-hyped and cast aspersions on the canonical gospels and the real Jesus. And both fed into conspiratorial claims about church cover-ups and the need to reinvent Christianity. Here Wright takes on the hype and the search for an "alternative Jesus". He demonstrates that this new find offers very little to our understanding of Jesus, and shows how far apart Gnostic teaching is from biblical truth claims. The document in question, a Gnostic gospel, is authentic, but from third or fourth century Egypt. Like other Gnostic writings, this Judas document presents an unbiblical dualism: this world is evil and needs to be escaped from, and a secret knowledge (gnosis) will help one to achieve that. Jesus and the early disciples, by contrast, taught that God's kingdom was breaking into this world. While this material world is in need of restoration, it is not evil in itself. Indeed, God created it, and will one day recreate it altogether. In orthodox Christianity, the goal of salvation is the redemption of this world, along with the resurrection of our bodies. In Gnosticism, the aim is to escape this evil material world. Thus the biblical gospels are this-worldly, while the Gnostic gospels deny this world. The message of the two are worlds apart. And so too is the dating. The canonical gospels are early (written within a generation of the lifetime of Jesus) while the Gnostic gospels are late (second and third centuries). And the genre differs as well. The canonical gospels are sustained narratives, while the Gnostic writings are usually loose collections of teaching. While the Gospel of Judas is a bit different, it still is closer to the latter than to the former. Wright correctly points out the irony of modern-day scholars trying to persuade us that the Gnostic gospels were radical alternatives to the `conservative' canonical gospels. Quite the opposite. The New Testament message was truly radical, and resulted in suffering and death. The Gnostic message was similar to the mystery religions of the day, and Gnostics rarely faced persecution for it. In other words, "the Gnostics were the cultural conservatives, sticking with the kind of religion that everyone already knew". In contrast, the orthodox Christians "were breaking new ground, and [were] risking their necks as they