You know, there are dozens of books written in the same time frame that the early Christians did not view as important. But the thing about The Gospel of Judas is that it is Gnostic. The Gnostics were a heretical sect that believed in some very strange things.
Here is a link (link)
For the Catholic view of Gnostics (link)
Gnostics were little more than writers of Biblical fan fiction. This Gospel of Judas is not going to change anything about the Christian faith.
It is valuable as a tool to study the culture of the time period, and some of the ideas and thoughts of people from that era...But it, just from the fact that it is Gnostic, offers no theological insight into Christianity.
Look at it this way, one Gnostic could write the Gospel of Judas. A Gnostic next to him could write a Gospel of Judas and the story be the opposite of the other...and both are right as far as each of them is concerned. And both of them have nothing whatsoever to do with the real Judas or Christianity.
It is kind of like watching two episodes of Seinfeld. They are about nothing. They don't connect. You might laugh. And in the end the plot of ER stays the same. Make sense...no. Good. Neither did the Gnostics.
I would love to see this interest in the Gospel of Mark or John. I would love to see this interest in any book of the Bible as we move into Holy Week.
PS: This is a post is because I have a news search on Coptic and the Gospel of Judas was written in Coptic. So over two months I have had over 450 stories on the Gospel of Judas and 30 on the sufferings of the Coptic Christians. I really think if you wrote a book in ancient Coptic called, "Judas..Judas, Judas." But made it about the modern suffering of the Coptic people. You would get more media attention than you could want. A sad view of our media.
7 comments:
Yeah I guess I will have to get around to reading that one since this is the big sensation.
I think New Advent has that one in their early writings data base right? New advent is my main source for Church fathers as well as pseudopigra.
or is that pseudographa...
Oh well I think you know what I mean.
made a mistake in my first comment, a website I thought it was on didn't exist.
I think they (New Advent) have it. If they don't it is all over the place right now.
I always like to go to new advent for my stuff too.
Since I work in a library, we have alot of it here, but I try not to get too involved in reading Church Fathers at work or I'd wind up in the middle of an stack of books and not doing my job :)
I've been reading a pretty cool Reformed Church blogger, known as "Jolly Blogger".
Anyway he had a link to this article concerning the Gospel of Judas. I've only scanned it, a bit, but looks pretty good.
http://markdroberts.com/#apr906
Amen. Enough publicity for the Gospel of Judas. The news reports are suggesting that Jesus "asked" Judas to betray him. It is hard to reconcile that with the fact that the canonical Gospels tell us that "Satan entered Judas." Blessed Sacred Triduum to you.
Blessed Sacred Triduum to you as well Sister. It is sad that people want to create mystery and confusion where there is already an answer.
May the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit turn their eyes to a deep study of the Holy Scriptures, rather than the Gospel of Judas.
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