Jesus enjoins Judas to seek [after the] spirit within you.

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

Customer Reviews

 

Beyond Anger to Revelation, April 18, 2007

By Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States)

 

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 of the Christians were

not part of the divine will but were part of the world below. The

realm of the spirit could be reached, for the author of the Gospel of

Judas, by an effort to " bring forth the perfect human. " In the text,

Jesus enjoins Judas " to seek [after the] spirit within you. "

 

The Gospel of Judas thus is an attempt to recast what became standard

religious religious thought by internalizing God and the spiritual

search. This theme, in broad outline, resonates with many people

today who find themselves religiously inclined but uncomfortable with

what they perceive as traditional religious dogma.

 

Pagels and King admirably place the Gospel of Judas in the context of

the development of Christianity. They offer a nuanced account that

recognizes the value and the need for the four traditional Gospels in

establishing a foundation for Christianity in its many creeds, from

Catholicism and Orthodoxy to evangelical Protestantism. But the

fascination with the text is ultimately the fascination with the

message. This book, as well as other recent works exploring

Gnosticism, casts light on traditional religious belief, but it also

encourages the efforts of those contemporary readers who wish to

explore alternative forms of spiritual development.

 

Robin Friedman