Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

Judas Iscariot has played the role of Christianity's ultimate traitor for centuries. Tradition, as portrayed in the synoptic gospels, claims that he handed Jesus over to the Romans for thirty silver pieces. This vile act led to Jesus' crucifixion and death. So repugnant was this that his name has become synonymous with deceit and betrayal. For example, when Bob Dylan abandoned folk music for electric rock in 1966, an appalled audience member at the Royal Albert Hall yelled "Judas!" Right or wrong, everyone knew what that single name implied. Some cheered, some hissed. Pope Benedict XVI upheld the tradition in 2006 by accusing Judas of greed and power mongering. And why did the leader of the Catholic Church feel the need to reiterate this well-worn point in the twenty-first century? Because the long lost Gospel of Judas had resurfaced. A translation of this document's extant text appears in Part Two of "Reading Judas." Written sometime before 180 CE, the short gospel inverts tradition by depicting Judas as Jesus' most trusted Apostle, as his bosom buddy, his confidante. Not only that, Jesus shares the "mysteries of the Kingdom" with this great deceiver. And only with him. The gospel portrays the other Apostles as weak and conniving dolts who, according to Jesus, worship the wrong God through cruel sacrifice. Jesus' delineation of the "Mysteries" evoke elements similar to Pythagorianism, Platonism, Vedanta, and Buddhism. Certain sections of the gospel read more like Plato's "Timaeus" than the New Testament. In these passages, Jesus outlines a mystical mathematical transcendental cosmology involving a pantheon of lesser imperfect gods, one of which, called Saklas, created humanity, and the all knowing all seeing "Great Invisible Spirit" (the "real God") from which everything emanates. Humans have this Spirit within them, but they must search for it by examining the Self. Jesus' death will serve as an example to humankind that they can escape their physical bodies and enter the Heavenly Kingdom via the discovery of this inner Spirit. Jesus entrusts Judas with initiating this sacred event. Judas then indentifies Jesus to the accusers as instructed, receives some copper coins, and the text ends. Thus does Judas become, in this long lost gospel, the catalyst to humanity's salvation. Judas also sees the vision of his demise. The other Apostles will apparently stone him to death. But, as Jesus points out, such is the price for the "Mysteries of the Kingdom." Part One of "Reading Judas" analyzes the Gospel in historical context. Drawing from voluminous sources, including the Bible, other Gnostic gospels, and various miscellaneous ancient texts, the essay's authors, Pagels and King, frame the Gospel of Judas as a text infused with anger. What caused this anger? In the second century CE, Christianity as we know it was solidifying under the auspices of bishops and clergy. Recent discoveries show that other interpretations of Jesus' death co-existed with the

Ms Pagels and King's Reading Judas is an excellent, accessible read on the recently restored Gospel of Judas. After 2000 years, the theory that Judas was Jesus' closest disciple while the other apostles were deemed clueless as to Jesus' true message, parallels some facits of the current religious climate in this country. King and Pagels' writing style is entertaining and insightful. A thought provoking read for believers and non-believers.Galactically Speaking

In April 2006, the National Geographic Society published an ancient text, the "Gospel of Judas" that had been discovered in the mid-1970s in Egypt. The original Greek text dates from about 150 A.D., although the version recovered was a Coptic translation written several hundred years thereafter. The publication of the "Gospel of Judas" excited a great deal of scholarly and popular interest due, in part, to the light it might cast on the early development of Christianity. In their recent book, "Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Early Christianity" (2007), Elaine Pagels and Karen King offer early thoughts on the Gospel of Judas and its significance. Pagels is Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and the author of several books on Gnostic Christianity, including "The Gnostic Gospels". King is Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Harvard Divinity School, and she has also written several books on Gnosticism. This short but difficult book is in two parts. The first part, "Reading Judas" consists of four chapters jointly written by Pagels and King examining the Gospel of Judas in the context of the traditional New Testament canon, the history of early Christianity, and other Gnostic texts. The second part of the study consists of an English translation of the Gospel of Judas by King together with her detailed commentary on the translation. Interpretation of this newly published text is difficult. It is obscurely written with names and characters that are unfamiliar. Extensive and important passages of the text have been lost over the years. It should also be remembered that the text of the Gospel of Judas is itself a Coptic translation of an original Greek version that we do not possess. Pagels and King present their text as casting light on the diverse character of early Christianity before it assumed its canon and orthodox formulation, but the fascination of the Gospel of Judas is at least equally due to the text itself. As Pagels and King point out, the text is the work of an angry author who was critical of the disciples of Jesus and of the form that what would become mainstream Christianity was taking and who was anti-semitic and homophobic as well. But they find the text passing "beyond anger to revelation" (p. 103) as it leaves polemic behind and ventures into the realm of the spirit in considering the nature of God, human character, and the problem of evil. Pagels and King argue that the Gospel of Judas was written as a response to Christian martyrdom at the hands of the Romans. The author of the Gospel could not believe that a just God would allow His followers to be murdered, tortured, and sacrificed in His name. In place of what the Gospel author saw as a cruel, vengeful God, the author proposed a creation story consisting of a realm of two levels: the higher level the realm of the spirit, and the lower level the realm of the physical world. The persecutions

Taking off where she has left off in her other books about the origins of Christianity, Pagels, with co-author King, has written a terse 150-page analysis accompanied by Judas' Gospel to argue that there are other books, gnostic included, that offer a diverse unorthodox view of the Christian faith. Her main point is that those in political power were motivated to assert control and unity over the land and that the Bible as we know it was formed by that motivation. Of course, this is not a traditional Christian view. Pagels asserts that Judas has a contrarian voice, that he is specifically, appalled by the apostles' betrayal of Jesus' teaching and that Judas, rejecting blood sacrifice, sees Christianity as based on spirit, not the body. Pagels does an excellent job of showing the tumult that existed during Christianity's origins as splinter groups jockeyed for power and for their interpretation of Jesus to be the one true interpretation. A good companion to this book is Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman.

Jesus taught a message of acceptance so it should come as no surprise that Pagels and King present here: 1) inclusive concerns that cuts across the "liberal" versus "conservative" divide that is used to to steer readers away in advance from reading works from a presumably "other camp". 2) a Christian teaching that is neither strictly orthodox nor Gnostic, that does not depend on any argument for an earlier dating of the text, and which addresses issues that Christians faced in the 2nd century including persecution and matyrdom. 3) A work by two knowledgable and gifted women at a time when discrimination by gender still persists, at times blatent, within not only society at large but within Christian denominations, churches and schools. This book is divided into two parts: 1) A general presentation, "Reading Judas", on which Pagels and King colloborated. 2) King's translation of this gospel and her fine-grained comments on that translation. Pagels and King help us to understand a time when there were genuine Christian concerns that the theme of sacrifice and appeals for matyrdom were being manipulated by many early church leaders.