Overview of Chapters 10 through to 14 (Gospel of Judas)

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Overview of Chapters 10 through to 14 (Gospel of Judas)

 

(P.143) This long section contains Jesus's revelation to Judas about the origin

and shape of the universe. This is the most prominent topic in the entire gospel

- it takes up more than 40 percent of the 'Gospel of Judas' and dominates

Jesus's teaching throughout. From the very beginning, when the gospel says that

Jesus came for the salvation of humankind, we are told that he delivers that

salvation by teaching people about " the mysteries which are beyond the world and

the things which will occur at the end. "

 

Yet contemporary readers may well ask: How can such teaching help anyone? Many

people I have spoken with find most of it bizarre, if not simply

incomprehensible. What message of any value could it possibly contain? The alien

names and aeons, the strange and complicated use of numbers, and many missing

parts of the ancient manuscript - all these make it difficult, if not

impossible, to grasp the underlying message. Yet understanding this material is

crucial, because it contains the answers to every important question in the

'Gospel of Judas': the nature of God, what it means to be human, why people

suffer and die, why Jesus was crucified, why Judas handed him over, and much

more.

 

Moreover, this kind of thinking is not as difficult to comprehend as it may

first appear. Arcane as ancient cosmology may seem to contemporary readers, we

are familiar with the basic concept: What we know about the universe directly

relates to what we understand about human nature. We can see this kind of

thinking today, for example, in the debates over evolution and intelligent

design (or creationism). (P.144) Here, too, people are trying in various ways to

confront some of the most central issues that people in any age must face: What

is the nature of reality? How did the world and humanity come into being? What

is the place of humanity in the universe? Does the universe have a moral order

or is it all random? What is the truth of the Bible and revelation - or, for

that matter, any religious claim?

 

This debate illustrates how disputes over the nature of the universe often

involve basic religious and philosophic questions about how to understand human

nature, how people should live, and how, if at all, they are to relate to the

divine. We are not dismissive of any position in this debate - neither that of

scientists who defend evolution and genetics nor that of people unwilling to

give up the Bible as a moral and spiritual anchor. Yet many people still wonder

what the debate is really about. They ask why some religious people object to

evolutionary theory and genetics, since intelligent design lacks the scientific

evidence to challenge them. Moreover, many scientists and theologians agree that

religion and science are not mutually exclusive. [14] What, then, is the

problem? For many, the issue is not so much what scientists say as what their

theories might imply - as Pope John Paul II put it, seeing " the cosmos as the

result of an evolution of matter reducible to pure chance and necessity. " [15]

The Dalai Lama adds that this kind of materialist philosophy would be an

invitation to nihilism and spiritual poverty. " [16]

 

Moreover, some Christians argue against evolution because it challenges their

interpretation of the Bible and its authority. For them, the fundamental values

at stake are not bound to science but to particular readings of what they regard

as divinely inspired Scripture. Their position excludes anything that does not

accept their reading of the 'Genesis' account as the authoritative framework

within which science must work. Similarly, the Church's dispute with Galileo was

not about his scientific views but about what some people took to be their

implications for what it means to be human and how humans relate to God. (P.145)

In both cases, scientific theory seemed to threaten the Christian teaching that

humans have a special relationship to God. No longer at the center of the

universe, people seem left either to the machinations of uncaring chance or to

rigid necessity.

 

In the 'Gospel of Judas', Jesus teaches people about the kinship they have with

God and about how to live according to the moral order of the universe

established by God. People, Jesus says, have spiritual resources within them

beyond what they know. He explains this message by telling Judas about the

nature of the universe - that another realm exists beyond the material world,

and an immortal holy race above the mortal human race. If people can understand

this reality, they can fulfill their highest nature and understand how they

should live now. He explains that human beings were created following the divine

image of the heavenly First Man, Adamas. To honor this divine image in people,

God sent divine spirits to everyone, giving people the potential to turn and

worship him. By looking within themselves, people can " bring forth the perfect

human " - they can discover what is divine and immortal within themselves.

 

But people need to understand, too, how it is that they are ignorant of this

higher realm and of their own inner spiritual nature. Jesus explains that

although people are made according to the divine image and likeness, they are

nonetheless created by the lower angels God put in charge of the material world

- the realm of chaos and oblivion. Because these angels are themselves subject

to error through their own arrogance and ignorance, they have led humanity

astray by getting people to worship them. They confuse some people into thinking

that human beings are righteous when they perform seemingly pious acts like

sacrifice, fasting, prayer, and baptism. By performing these acts, such people

become hardened in their ways and, like the twelve disciples, resist Jesus's

criticism, especially since - as becomes clear throughout the gospel - following

Jesus does not mean gaining power and glory in this world; it means being

cursed, suffering, and dying.

 

(P.146) This theme - that Christian discipleship means following Jesus by

imitating his suffering and death - is certainly not new to the 'Gospel of

Judas'. Already the earliest of the New Testament gospels, the 'Gospel of Mark',

sounds this theme, stressing repeatedly its message of suffering discipleship.

As we have seen, too, many Christians in the second century understood the death

of martyrs in this way. What, then, is different in what the 'Gospel of Judas'

says? The author stresses that the true God does not desire this suffering and

death. Indeed, Jesus is sent to demonstrate that death is only a step into

eternity. Suffering and death occur only because the world rulers and those who

follow them have gone astray. Yet their allotted time will come to an end, and

they will all be destroyed. Such is the justice of the true God on high. Nor

will bodies of flesh be raised to eternal life; the flesh belongs to the

material world that is destined to fall back into the chaos out of which it

came. Only false " Gods " promise that the perishable flesh can become

imperishable. That is a lie. They and all those who follow them will perish,

along with the world where they now rule.

 

Given this situation, how can people survive? In the 'Gospel of Judas', this

problem is posed as an eschatological problem; Jesus talks about life and death

in terms of what will happen in the end times. At stake is not merely the

personal survival of people beyond the grave but the question of whether the

world has a moral order, whether justice will prevail in spite of all the

violence, unjust suffering, and evil that people suffer. The author of the

'Gospel of Judas' affirms - against all the seeming evidence of Jesus's death,

Judas's death, and the persecution of Christians in his own day - that justice

does exist, that the glorious life of the spirit will triumph over every evil.

 

(P.147) Chapters 10-14 of the 'Gospel of Judas' contain the core of Jesus's

teaching. Many things Jesus has only hinted at before are presented here more

systematically. [17] We can best understand the thinking underlying the 'Gospel

of Judas' by grasping some of the core presuppositions the author assumes. The

author of the 'Gospel of Judas', like other early Christians, turned first to

the biblical book of 'Genesis' to answer questions about human nature, moral

order, and their relationship to God. But even as people today read their sacred

stories in terms of what they know about science, so too ancient Christians

interpreted 'Genesis' in the light of ancient philosophical and scientific

thinking, especially astronomy, as well as Jewish interpretations of Scripture.

Ideas from all these sources appear in the 'Gospel of Judas', as we will see.

Another presupposition is that the world we live in was patterned after a

higher, perfect realm of God above. These Christians read 'Genesis' knowing that

the account of the creation of the lower world would contain hints about that

heavenly realm, since this world is patterned upon it. They therefore not only

read 'Genesis' to learn about the nature of this world but also sought clues in

it about the nature of the transcendent realm of God above. In chapters 10-11,

Jesus describes that realm to Judas.

 

Reading Judas - The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity,

'Comments on the Translation' Pg. 143-147

Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King

Penguin Group - London, England

ISBN 978-0-713-99984-6

 

Notes:

 

[14] See George Johnson, " For the Anti-Evolutionists, Hope in High Places " ('New

York Times' " Week in review, " Oct. 2, 2005), p.4; Kenneth L. Woodward,

" Evolution as Zero-Sum Game " ('New York Times', Oct. 1, 2005), p.A29.

 

[15] Cited in Johnson, " For the Evolutionists. "

 

[16] Johnson, ibid.

 

[17] Many elements of the theology and cosmology of the 'Gospel of Judas' are

similar to a set of newly discovered writings found in Egypt that scholars

classify as " Sethian Gnosticism " or simply " Sethianism. " One of these is 'The

Secret Revelation of John', with which several scholars have compared the

'Gospel of Judas', notably Marvin Meyer ( " Judas and the Gnostic Connection " in

Kasser, Meyer, and Wurst, editors, 'The Gospel of Judas', op. cit. Not only are

there important similarities, crucial differences also appear. For example, in

'The Secret Revelation of John', the true God is not responsible for appointing

the lower beings who shape the material world, but rather against God's will,

the world comes into being at the hand of an ignorant and arrogant pretender

god. An extensive episode tells of how this happens when a divine being, named

Sophia ( " Wisdom " ) acts without the permission of the Invisible Spirit and her

male consort, thus setting in motion the creation of the lower world and the

enslavement of humanity to its wicked rulers. For more on these topics, see

Karen L. King, 'The Secret Revelation of John', op.cit., for more on Sethianism,

see Karen L. King, 'What is Gnosticism'?, pp.154-169.