Remember the buzz last year about the third-century Gnostic “Gospel of Judas,” which allegedly cast Judas as a hero (rather than villain) of the Gospel story? We noted it here at TC, and it generated a fair amount of controversy and discussion, hitting the public eye just as the hype around the Da Vinci Code book and movie was picking up steam.
Well, according to a piece in the NYT this weekend, the Gospel of Judas was mistranslated and does not, in fact, feature a heroic Judas. Quite the opposite, in fact:
The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples.
It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.
This isn’t going to shake up anybody’s faith (or lack thereof); Christians don’t even recognize the Gospel of Judas as canonical, so it doesn’t affect mainstream Christian theology in any way no matter what it says about Judas. (Even with Judas cast as the villain, it’s not an orthodox Christian work by any means.) But between this embarrassing mistranslation, the Jesus tomb hoax, and the James ossuary forgery, is it too much to hope that future claims of Christianity-shaking archaeological discoveries will be met with skepticism, rather than breathless headlines and much-hyped TV specials?
(And really, the Judas-as-hero heresy isn’t even a new idea: it cropped up in Jorge Luis Borges’ fictional essay “Three Versions of Judas” several decades ago.)
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December 4, 2007 at 06:52
It constantly amazes me (though it really shouldn’t) how quickly people jump onto the media bandwagon. The bible talks about this though, right? Would you rather build your house on shifting sands, or on a rock? When we firmly ground ourselves in Christ and in His teachings, stuff like this should not even make us think twice. Yet, so many people jump onto the bandwagon and readily feed on whatever the media has to offer.
Thanks for posting this!
December 4, 2007 at 09:00
The sad truth is that people want to disprove the Scriptures. It’s all about who gets to call the shots in our lives – us or God.
As long as that mindset exists, we’ll see this type of thing. Hopefully, Christians will be grounded in their faith and not be shaken by the deceits of man.
December 4, 2007 at 10:13
There will always be flotsam like this. My concern is more with the response it demands. Because National Geographic published a story too early without proper scholarship, thousands of professors, journalists and pastors had to think and write about it.
In order to maintain credibility in their field they had to be able to refute the claims the Gospel of Judas was making. Very similar to the whole Divinci Code mess: many, many well-meaning people ended up reading the book not because it was a moderately enjoyable work of fiction, but to unmask the plot to kill the church either to follow or defend against it.
Anyone actually know someone who left the church over the Gospel of Judas?
December 4, 2007 at 14:16
very good response Chris. I wish as well that people wouldn’t get so involved in the huge media hypes when books, t.v. shows or whatever may be controversial to the church. I think the church has a big role in making the issue more of a problem that makes the church look bad in the end. When the Passion came out, the huge controversy that arose was not on the content of the movie, but if Mel Gibson was a bigot or not. The media wants people to listen to them, they know that if they push Christians’ buttons…people will get involved in the controversy everytime.
December 5, 2007 at 09:40
The fact that the Bible contains just exactly what God had intended, and no more or less, tells us to beware of other writings, for whatever reason chosen. The Bible even warns us about adding or deleting content, lest we give Satan a foothold in our beliefs. Added content from other religions has diluted the awesomeness of what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf.
December 5, 2007 at 21:08
Translation is always a problem. It is not surprising there would be more than one. It is hard to know the real meaning of canonical texts when we are not conversant in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek… and those who are have differing interpretations. (Jewish rabbis teach that God created Eve from Adam’s side, not his rib, and that the translation “a virgin shall conceive and give birth” was a mistranslation into Greek of a Hebrew word meaning “a young woman of child bearing age,” with no reference to her sexual experience.) The problem of the media attaching themselves to earthshaking “discoveries” is exceeded only by Christians who make them major topics of discussion. The DaVinci Code is a work of fiction! The Gospel of Judas is, as noted, a non-canonical text at best. Who cares? Discovery Channel once introduced some archaeological research into a skull that might have been Rameses II’s son as “a murder mystery of Biblical proportions.” It wasn’t. Even if it was Rameses’ son, and if said son was killed by a knife, who knows if it was his first-born? And Exodus doesn’t specify the nature of “The Destroyer” either. Science can no more disprove matters of faith than faith can render science illusory. Both are real.