| The Gospel of Judas (Part 3 of 3) | | Date Created: May 06, 2006, 06:52 AM |
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What does the Gospel of Judas tell us about the historical Judas and Jesus? Well, sorry: nada. And it's funny how some people who refuse to trust first century documents' accounts of first century find room in their hearts to trust second and third century takes on first century events (provided they're shocking). It's like people a few centuries in the future watching DVDs of Disney's Pocohontas to find out what motivated the British settlers.
Even the most enthuiastic proponents of the Gospel of Judas acknowledge that the earliest it could have been written was over 100 years later. Written in a different language. By someone from a very different culture. And bearing distinctive marks of that different culture.
So, let's be clear. The Coptic Gospel of Judas is the historical equivalent of going to Japan and finding a document written last week in Japanese in which John Wilkes Booth has a conversation with President Lincoln who asks to be shot in order to join his honorable ancestors.
This may be fascinating to you if you're a student of how the Japanese portray the West through fiction. If you're interested in Abraham Lincoln or Wilkes Booth, it's comic relief.
Even the most enthusiastic of the anti-othodox academics are only claiming that it provides rich new evidence about the diversity that existed within Christianity early in the going. Except that it doesn't. We already knew this group existed and wrote this fake gospel from Irenaeus's book. And we also know that the Church had a pretty clear opinion about this group. So it's an interesting find for people who are very interested in the details of 2nd and 3rd century history. The rest of you should probably wait for the inevitable film. "Matthew McConaughey IS Judas of Iscariot."
<Part 1: radical?> <Part 2: coherent?> <Part 3: historical?> |
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