First Person: Sensationalizing Gnostic Christianity
Is all the recent hype about the Gospel of Judas really justified?
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A story on the new Gospel of Judas, released by the National Geographic Society at a news conference a week before Easter, appeared on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world the day after it was announced. The promotion was a masterful display of professional hype by National Geographic—two books, a major article in its magazine, a TV special, an exhibit in Explorers Hall and the new gospel’s own Web site.
Was all this justified? James Robinson, the distinguished editor of the Nag Hammadi codices that include several Gnostic gospels similar in many ways to the newly released gospel, called the Gospel of Judas a “dud.” For the National Geographic Society, however, which paid over $1 million for the right to publish it, the Gospel of Judas is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The reason is that the Gospel of Judas paints a different picture of Judas from the one portrayed in the New Testament. In the latter, Judas is the arch-betrayer, the traitor who identified Jesus to the Roman authorities with a kiss. His motive was money; in the Gospel of Matthew, the amount is specified: 30 pieces of silver.
In the Gospel of Judas, on the other hand, Judas’s motive is quite different. Here, we are told, he identified Jesus to the authorities at Jesus’ request, enabling Jesus to escape his physical body and enter heaven as pure spirit.
In the National Geographic presentation, the Judas of this Gnostic gospel is an alternative view to that of the canonical Gospels.
For scholars, this recently released apocryphal gospel offers significant insights into the arcane world of Gnostic Christianity, a diverse movement centered in Egypt between the second and fourth centuries. Gnostics regarded the world of the flesh as the creation of an evil deity and believed that secret knowledge (gnosis, in Greek) could provide the means to escape the material prison of their bodies so that they might ultimately enjoy an elevated spiritual existence in heaven. For the early church, the Gnostics were heretics.
The Gospel of Judas is significant for another reason: It adds to our understanding of the development of early Christianity. As Professor Elaine Pagels of Princeton University observed at the National Geographic news conference, early Christianity was even more diverse in its variety of traditions than the Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Mormons, etc. are today.
Yet neither of these reasons accounts for the immense public interest in this gospel. The Gospel of Judas elicits such intense public concern because we are led to believe that it may give us—contrary to the portrait of Judas in the canonical Gospels—the real story of Judas.
Imagine a headline that read “New Text Illuminates Gnostic Christianity.” That would be a true description of the Gospel of Judas. But that article would hardly make it into a major newspaper. Or how about this: “New Text Documents Diversity of Early Christianity”? That, too, would be an accurate description of the new gospel. That might even justify a brief article on the “Religion” page.
The headline in The Washington Post, however, was typical: “Newly Translated Gospel Offers More Positive Portrayal of 066Judas.” The first paragraph of the story revealed that the newly translated gospel “depicts the most reviled villain in Christian history as a devoted follower who was simply doing Jesus’ bidding when he betrayed him.”
More than 33 inches later, the article notes that “Scholars disagreed on whether the gospel shed any new light on the historical Jesus and Judas Iscariot.” Even that’s an exaggeration. The fact is that it will be a rare scholar who will argue that this Gnostic gospel is historically trustworthy in its description of Judas’s motivation in betraying Jesus. If I am wrong, I hope some scholar who takes that view will contact me.
Yes, the new gospel may cause us to focus on some similarities between its portrait of Judas and that of the canonical Gospels. In both, Judas is portrayed as very close to his master—indeed, closer than the other disciples. The new gospel might also occasion some reconsideration—independent of the evidence of the new gospel—as to whether the canonical Gospels provide an entirely accurate portrayal of Judas, a reconsideration perhaps especially justified because some passages have spawned so much hideous anti-Semitism. But the idea that this new gospel might be an accurate historical report of the reason for Judas’s betrayal of Jesus is arrant nonsense.
In sum, the way the National Geographic has played up this story makes it guilty of unjustified sensationalism. I realize that some may consider this a case of the pot calling the kettle black. If that be treason, however, make the most of it.
A story on the new Gospel of Judas, released by the National Geographic Society at a news conference a week before Easter, appeared on the front page of almost every newspaper in the world the day after it was announced. The promotion was a masterful display of professional hype by National Geographic—two books, a major article in its magazine, a TV special, an exhibit in Explorers Hall and the new gospel’s own Web site. Was all this justified? James Robinson, the distinguished editor of the Nag Hammadi codices that include several Gnostic gospels similar in many ways to the […]
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