|
JESUS LAUGHED
The great wheel of history always turns, if slowly, and so, at last, the ultimate betrayer, Judas Iscariot himself, comes around again for another inspection, a potential record-clearing moment occasioned by the publication of “The Gospel of Judas” (National Geographic; $22), a very ancient, though not actually contemporary, rendering of Jesus, as seen by the man who ratted him out. Written in Coptic, and found, three decades ago, within a papyrus codex that contains other non-canonic writing, the manuscript has known a bizarre Calvary of its own—including a papyrus-damaging sixteen-year residence in a safe-deposit box in Hicksville, New York—and has only now been edited and translated into English by an international group of scholars, each of whom has provided his own commentary. The event feels uncomfortably hyped; there is an accompanying book, “The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot” (National Geographic; $27), by Herbert Krosney, devoted to the tale of the Gospel’s rediscovery and sale, an all too human story suggesting, once again, that Mammon’s servant problem is more easily solved than that other master’s. Still, it is a genuine occasion, offering much to think about for believer and doubter alike. Known to exist since the second century, this “Gospel of Judas” is, in one way, simply another of the Gnostic Gospels, like those found at Nag Hammadi, in Egypt, sixty years ago: unorthodox Christian documents, written by, or at least circulated within, communities of eccentric faith that flourished in the first and second centuries. These Gospels play with a series of variations on Christian belief: the irredeemable corruption of the world we live in, the hidden truth that the Old Testament God who created it was an ignorant or malevolent demiurge, and Jesus’ essence as a being of pure spirit, an emissary from another and higher realm. What makes this second-century Gnostic Gospel different is, perhaps, the extreme aggression of its heresy; it represents “Christianity turned on its head,” in the words of one commentator, the religious historian Bart D. Ehrman, by making the villain in the story the hero. Its editors think that its significance is enormous (“one of the greatest discoveries of the century”), and right out of Dan Brown; the Krosney book quotes an American scholar saying that “it could create a crisis of faith.” It certainly makes for odd bedside reading. “The Gospel of Judas” isn’t actually a gospel by Judas, or, really, a gospel at all in the sense that we might expect: an account of the life of Jesus, from birth to death and rebirth. It is, instead, a mystical riff on a life already assumed to be familiar. It begins just before Jesus’ last Passover in Jerusalem, as the disciples are offering a prayer to God over the dinner table. Watching them, Jesus laughs. “Why are you laughing at us?” the nettled disciples ask, and Jesus says that he is laughing not at them but at their strange idea of pleasing their God. (One of the unnerving things about the new Gospel is that Jesus, who never laughs in the canonic Gospels, is constantly laughing in this one, and it’s obviously one of those sardonic, significant, how-little-you-know laughs, like the laugh of the ruler of a dubious planet on “Star Trek.”) The disciples are furious at Jesus’ condescension, except for Judas, who thinks he knows what the laughter signifies. “I know who you are and where you have come from,” Judas says, standing before him. “You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo.” Apparently startled by his insight, Jesus tells Judas, “Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the Kingdom.” The true mystery, as Jesus unveils it, is that, out beyond the stars, there exists a divine, blessed realm, free of the materiality of this earthly one. This is the realm of Barbelo, a name that gnostics gave the celestial Mother, who lives there with, among others, her progeny, a good God awkwardly called the Self-Generated One. Jesus, it turns out, is not the son of the Old Testament God, whose retinue includes a rebellious creator known as Yaldabaoth, but an avatar of Adam’s third son, Seth. His mission is to show those lucky members of mankind who still have a “Sethian” spark the way back to the blessed realm. Jesus, we learn, was laughing at the disciples’ prayer because it was directed at their God, the Old Testament God, who is really no friend of mankind but, rather, the cause of its suffering. What gives “The Gospel of Judas” a peculiar pathos is the sacrificial role that Judas must play in the divine story. Jesus is going back to Barbelo, and to get there he must “sacrifice the man that clothes me”; that is, his mortal body. The only way to do this is to accept his own death, and he urges Judas to become the agent of it. (Presumably, self-slaughter would not get him back.) But Judas has reason to worry that if he obeys his Lord he will be stuck with a bad reputation forever. “In a vision,” he says, “I saw myself as the twelve disciples were stoning me.” Jesus assures him that though “you will be cursed by the other generations . . . you will come to rule over them.” At the end, he supplies Judas with a beatific vision of a luminous cloud, and, in this Gospel’s one truly poetic note, tells him, “Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.” Judas accepts the bargain—temporal libel in exchange for eternal luminosity—and agrees to turn Jesus over to the high priests. The Gospel’s very last lines have an extraordinarily modern feeling of Hemingwayesque understatement, achieved perhaps inadvertently, by textual omission: “They approached Judas and said to him, ‘What are you doing here? You are Jesus’ disciple.’ Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed him over to them.” The conundrums that produced this Gospel are long familiar: if Christ is a full member of the Godhead and divine, how could he possibly be “betrayed,” and since his death is, anyway, the pivot point of human redemption, how could he be peeved at Judas, the agent who brought it about? In “The Gospel of Judas,” all problems are solved by making the Christ a pure spirit, and the Crucifixion his necessary, and presumably painless, crossing over. (The situation, really, is very like that at the end of “The Little Prince,” where the snake, like Judas, has to be persuaded to bite the celestial visitor in order to send him back, once again, to his star. And the last image of that book, too, is the single lonely personal star.) Obviously, “The Gospel of Judas” appears at a time of a new fashion, not to say rage, for “alternate” Gospels and revisionist retellings of the Jesus story. These are not the egalitarian, feminist versions of the story that were among the first fruits of the Nag Hammadi discovery. Instead, the new obsession is to introduce, or reintroduce, into Christianity something hidden, strange, and cultic—to reveal a deliberately suppressed story. And yet an odd double rhythm is at work. By making the Gospel story more occult, one also drains it of its cosmic significance; making it more mysterious makes it less mystical. (If Dan Brown or the authors of “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” are right—and they aren’t—then Jesus is reduced from the Cosmic Overlord to the founder of a minor line of Merovingian despots.) “The Gospel of Judas” turns Christianity into a mystery cult—Jesus at one point describes to Judas the highly bureaucratic organization of the immortal realm, enumerating hundreds of luminaries—but robs it of its ethical content. Jesus’ message in the new Gospel is entirely supernatural. You don’t have to love thy neighbor; just seek your star. The Gospel of Judas is, in this way, the dead opposite of the now much talked of Gospel of Jefferson, the edition prepared by the third President, in which all the miracles and magic stuff are deleted, and what is left is the ethical teaching. Orthodox Christians will point out, correctly, that there is no new “challenge” to the Church in the Judas Gospel, much less a crisis of faith. This is an ancient heresy, dealt with firmly, not to say brutally, throughout Church history. The finding of the new Gospel, though obviously remarkable as a bit of textual history, no more challenges the basis of the Church’s faith than the discovery of a document from the nineteenth century written in Ohio and defending King George would be a challenge to the basis of American democracy. There are no new beliefs, no new arguments, and certainly no new evidence in the papyrus that would cause anyone to doubt who did not doubt before. Yet the Judas Gospel is an eye-opener anyway. First, because it is useful to be reminded, in a time of renewed fundamentalism, that religions actually have no fundament: that the inerrant texts and unchallenged holies of any faith are the work of men and time. Any orthodoxy is the snapshot of a moment. That the Church has long had answers to gnosticism, in all its varieties, does not mean that gnosticism was always doomed to heresy. Bart D. Ehrman has recently written, touchingly and convincingly, of his own migration away from a fundamentalist Christianity on the basis of an increasing understanding of how time-contingent and man-made the foundational Gospels really are. As Borges once suggested, had Alexandria, where gnosticism flourished, triumphed rather than Rome, we would have had a Dante making poetry out of the realm of Barbelo. And then the new Gospel casts a spell—for sympathetic freethinkers, especially—because it reminds us of the literary strength of the canonic Gospels, exactly for their marriage of the celestial and the commonplace. We want a bit of Hicksville and a bit of Heaven in our sacred texts, matter and man and magic together. Simply as editors, the early Church fathers did a fine job of leaving the strong stories in and the weird ones out. The orthodox canon gives us a Christ who is convincing as a character in a way that this Gnostic one is not: angry and impatient and ethically engaged, easily exasperated at the limitations and nagging of his dim disciples and dimmer family relations, brilliantly concrete in his parables and human in his pain. Whether one agrees with Jefferson that this man lived, taught, and died, or with St. Paul that he lived and died and was born again, it is hard not to prefer him to the Jesus of the new Gospel, with his stage laughter and significant winks and coded messages. Making Judas more human makes Jesus oddly less so, less a man with a divine and horrible burden than one more know-it-all with a nimbus. As metaphor or truth, we’re sticking with the old story. Give us that old-time religion—but, to borrow a phrase from St. Reproduced from New York Times
2006-04-12 CAIRO - The world's only known copy of the Gospel of Judas, a heretical Christian text that portrays the apostle Judas as Jesus's faithful servant not his betrayer, was returned to Egypt Wednesday for public display, officials said. "Egypt has managed to reclaim the 13-page papyrus manuscript," said the head of the supreme council of antiquities, Zahi Hawwas. The manuscript, dated to the third or fourth centuries, had been undergoing restoration and translation in Switzerland, where the document had been acquired by the privately owned Maecenas Foundation based in Basel. It had passed through a succession of private hands following its reported discovery by a villager in Egypt's southern desert province of Minya in the 1970s. The completion of the restoration work was announced by the National Geographic Society in Washington last Thursday and the manuscript then unveiled at its headquarters. An English translation from the ancient Coptic language of Egyptian Christians was also launched. "The codex has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature," said the society's executive vice president for mission programmes, Terry Garcia at the launch. The manuscript, known as the Tchacos Codex after antiquities collector Frieda Nussberger-Tchachos who bought it in 2000, will be exhibited in Cairo's Coptic Museum. www.middle-east-online.com/ english/?id=16220
Religion: Judas Gospel Found in Basel (Switzerland)(2005-06-11) Related Discussion Theological sensation: A manuscript of the (believed to be lost) Judas gospel. The document could move the Apostel Judas, who is known as traitor, into a new light. The manuscript was offered for sale several times, but disappeared again and again from the scene.
The document could move the Apostel
Judas, who is known as traitor, into a new light. The manuscript was offered for
sale several times, but disappeared again and again from the scene.
www.tertullian.org/.../ gospel_of_judas/ The Coptic Ps.Gospel of Judas (Iscariot) 
Last Updated 21st April 2006. 12:00 GMT
The Gospel of Judas: "Was the betraying kiss a kiss of love?"
An ancient manuscript, discovered
after about 1,800 years in which it lay hidden, could alter perceptions shaped
by 2,000 years of Christian teachings, being billed as the most sensational
discovery of this sort since 30 ancient texts were uncovered in 1945 at the
Nag Hammadi library in Southern Egypt. "Forget the Da Vinci Code, this is the
real deal!" arts and antiquities dealer Michel Van Rijn said.
The 26-page manuscript, which experts have dated to a time between the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, is a copy in the old-Egyptian Coptic language of the lost Greek original, written by an unidentified Gnostic author. "The Gospel of Judas" redeems the ultimate villain, Judas Iscariot, portraying the disciple, whose name has been for ages synonymous with betrayal, malice and greed and whose treacherous acts have stood at the roots of anti-Semitism, as having been elected by Jesus himself to fulfill the special mission of delivering him into the hands of the Romans, Judas acting on Jesus' own will. In this new light, the infamous kiss Judas gives Jesus becomes a kiss of love which brings about salvation for mankind. The sensational content of the manuscript is only matched by its incredible journey prior to finding its way into the hands of the experts that restored and translated it to make its content available to the wide public. Since its discovery in 1978 by a farmer, presumably in a cave near the village Jabel Qarara in Egypt, the Gospel of Judas, part of a codex which contained three other Gnostic works, came to an antiques dealer, was later stolen only to return into the hands of its previous owner, who, unable to sell it, enclosed it in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, New York, where it stood for 16 years, subject to deterioration and decay. In 1999, it was purchased by a Zurich antiques dealer, Frieda Tchacos. "Judas was asking me to do something for him," Tchacos would later say for the National Geographic Channel, which has just recently broadcast the premiere of a documentary on this discovery of the manuscript. She placed the codex with the Maecenas Swiss Foundation and consequently it underwent a thorough process of authentication, restoration and translation by a team of international experts. Its journey, which lasted about 1,800 years and covered three continents, will end in its country of origin, Egypt, where it will be donated to the Coptic Museum in Cairo. Bucharest Daily News was the only newspaper in Romania to which Gregor Wurst, an ecclesiastical history and patristics professor and one of the editors and translators of the manuscript, disclosed information about the importance of this discovery for Christian religion, the work that went into the manuscript and the impact it may have in reshaping traditional Christian views. How long have you been working on
this text? In what state was the manuscript when you started working on it?
What can you say about the content
of the manuscript? What does the "Gospel of Judas" say? How exactly does the text end?
Does it say anything about Jesus' crucifixion? Just how significant is this text
for the study of ancient Christianity? What can you say about the
identity of the author? Who could have written this text? Could you please explain to the
readers what the term "Gnostic" means? How long is the "Gospel of Judas"?
During the press conference,
Catholic priest Donald Senior said that the impact of this Gospel will be
minimal, because this is just a vision written by a Gnostic sect. How do you
comment on this statement? In this text Judas is not
portrayed as a traitor but as an instrument of Jesus' will. What kind of
impact might this text have on anti-Semitism? How do you think the content of
this text will be received by the average Christian believer?
New Delhi
Bindu Shajan Perappadan NEW DELHI: What if an ancient gospel was rediscovered that offered a radically different perspective on a man that history has painted as the ultimate villain? What if these account turned Jesus' betrayal on its head, and in it the villain became a hero? This coming Sunday, National Geographic Channel will air the world premiere of "The Gospel of Judas", an exclusive two-hour global event that traces the incredible story of what has happened to the Gospel of Judas since it was found, the recent authentication process and analysis, and key insight gleaned from its laborious translation and interpretation. The ancient document tells a different story of Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus and has been synonymous with treachery and deceit. Discovered by chance in the 1970s, sold twice and stolen once, the gospel's condition had deteriorated severely. The race is now on to preserve its pages before they turn to dust. But when was this gospel written and by whom? The research and documentary reveal fascinating details contained within the document as well as key sections translated from its ancient Coptic script. A team of biblical scholars and scientists verified its authenticity. The authentication process, involving radiocarbon dating, ink analysis, multi-spectral imaging, contextual evidence and more is covered in depth. The special programme being aired on National Geographic Channel also examines the modern history of the document since it was found, including the exhaustive conservation process. The Gospel of Judas presents a lost version of the last days of Jesus, using dramatic recreations to portray and clarify the complex story of intrigue and politics of the earliest days of Christianity. The gospel reframes Judas as the disciple closest to Jesus, who committed his act of betrayal at Jesus' behest. "The Gospel of Judas turns Judas' act of betrayal into an act of obedience,'' says Craig Evans, Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Pages from the document will be exhibited at the National Geographic Museum in Washington. Once the conservation process is complete, the document will be delivered to its country of origin, Egypt, and housed in Cairo's Coptic Museum. Speaking about the
programme, Joy Bhattacharjya, Senior Vice-President Programming of National
Geographic Channel India, says: "The Gospel of Judas is the television event
of the year as it has already created excitement worldwide and brings to
light information that will make us rethink our beliefs.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
|
WHEN I WAS
WITH YOU I TOLD YOU THESE THINGS -
BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL
FOR THEY SHALL OBTAIN MERCY...
Posted By: Gnostic
Reposted From:
Rumor Mill News Website
Saturday, 1-Jan-2011
...Dearly Beloved,
When I was with you I told you these things!
Blessed are the Merciful for they Shall obtain mercy!
I desired to send this message into a very confused and upside down
world
to reiterate my earlier message. I feel balance is needed to begin
to understand
the mysteries of life and death. My friends, please understand, I
did not come
to have failure, thus there will be none. I came to reveal what has
happened to you
and how to free yourselves and be an example to others, all of you,
not just some, but it appears those that masquerade as supposedly
being my guardians and teachers on my behalf, have decided to bring
a new
message, one I would never attach my acceptance thereto.
So please if you have not understood my message try now to
understand
the revelation of salvation, it is simple, easy and there are no
complications.
The only discomfort anyone will have are those who for whatever
reason
resist the truth and continue to err in their perception.
Continue
Reincarnation
and the Early Christians
In December, 1945,
early
Christian writings containing
many secrets of the early Christian religion were found
in upper Egypt, a location where many Christians fled
during the Roman invasion of Jerusalem. Undisturbed
since their concealment almost two thousand years ago,
these manuscripts of Christian mysticism rank
in importance with the
Dead Sea Scrolls. These
writings
affirmed the existence of the doctrine of reincarnation
being taught among the early Jews and Christians.
These Christian mystics, referred to as
Christian Gnostics,
were ultimately destroyed by the orthodox Church
for being heretics. Their sacred writings were destroyed
and hidden with the belief that they would be revealed
at an appropriate time in the future.
The discovery in 1945 yielded writings that included some long lost gospels,
some of which were written earlier than the known gospels of Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John.
Read More
Outside Link to an extraordinary website