The Press has raised a great hue and cry about the newly discovered “Gospel of Judas.” There is talk of the Church conspiring to hide the truth. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Gospel of Judas was written by a tiny fringe group of Gnostics in the second century who rejected the God of Jews and Christians. Gnosticism was a religious movement that thrived in the second and third centuries. It set itself apart from the traditional religions of the Roman Empire as well as from Judaism and Christianity by proposing a secret knowledge (in Greek, gnosis,) which was available only to an elite few. They generally believed that the physical world and particularly the human body were evil, created by a rebellious minor aeon, or divine being. Seeing the popularity of Christianity, many Gnostics associated this evil creator with the God of Jews and Christians. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church taught that the physical world and the human body are good, because created by the good and only God, and that the human body is especially holy because God became a human being in Jesus Christ.
Irenaeus of Lyons (circa CE 180) mentions the “Gospel of Judas” when he finishes his tour of contemporary Gnosticism in his book Against Heresies. Irenaeus’ analysis of Gnosticism has been borne out by the truly significant discovery of the Nag Hammadi library. After surveying the larger groups of Gnostics, Irenaeus mentions a tiny fringe group who venerate Cain and other “bad guys” in the Jewish Scriptures because they would not worship what they considered to be the minor god who created the evil physical universe. Irenaeus writes:
Still others say that Cain came from the Absolute Sovereignty above, and Esau, Korah, and the men of Sodom, along with every person of this sort, have the same origin. They were hated by the Creator because though attacked they suffered no harm, for Sophia took to herself what was her own in them. The traitor Judas was the only one of the apostles who possessed this knowledge (cf. John 13:27). For this reason he brought about the mystery of the betrayal; through him all things on earth and in heaven were destroyed. They provide a work to this effect called the “Gospel of Judas.” (Against Heresies, 1.31.1)
The “Gospel of Judas” was thus written by a group of second century Gnostics who rejected the Creator God. This group attempted to co-opt Jesus away from the Catholic Church for Gnosticism. Jesus is portrayed teaching typically Gnostic doctrines, e.g. the imprisonment of the soul in the flesh, the multiplicity of divine aeons, the creation of the world as an act of rebellion by a lesser aeon (namely, the God of Jews and Christians). Judas is portrayed as the true Gnostic who liberates Jesus from his physical body and who is rejected by the Catholic Church, represented by the Twelve Apostles, who worship “their God,” the rebellious aeon who created the evil, physical cosmos. The anti-Christian character of the “Gospel of Judas” is further shown by its portrayal of Jesus as mocking the Eucharist and vilifying the Church’s ministry. What little Christian veneer the “Gospel of Judas” has is taken from the four canonical Gospels, albeit in garbled Gnostic form. Irenaeus of Lyons quite accurately describes the “Gospel of Judas.” It was neither secret nor hidden; it simply did not excite sufficient interest to be copied very often because it was written by a tiny fringe group.
An English translation of this work is available in PDF format on the National Geographic website. The website also provides a history of the badly damaged third century manuscript that can be identified as a Coptic translation of the second century Greek “Gospel of Judas” mentioned by Irenaeus. The talk of the Church conspiring to hide the truth is nonsense. The Catholic Church has played no role at all in the entire affair. Indeed, the manuscript was lost and hidden and is so badly damaged because of the greediness of antiquity dealers. The Church has played no role other than to authenticate the document by the public description in Irenaeus’ work.
I invite anyone who is interested to read the document itself before reading the historically uninformed sensationalism of journalists. Then one can clearly see that the “Gospel of Judas” cannot stand up as a Gospel in comparison with any one of the canonical four. The “Gospel of Judas” was clearly derived from and written in relation to existing Christian traditions about Jesus; and the canonical Gospels’ portraits of Jesus simply could not have developed from the portrait of Jesus in the “Gospel of Judas.” The document illustrates second and third century Gnosticism, but it has nothing to do with the historical Jesus.
Fr. Gregory writes from the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem, where he has spent the last semester doing research. He will teach the Johannine corpus and the Pauline corpus in the fall.
