Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex

It seems that the secret knowledge of gnosticism has always been with us but in various manifestations as times have changed. However, Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and National Geographic are doing what they can to bring back the original version. Here is Msgr. Swetland’s response to National Geographic:

What Should Christians Make of the Gospel of Judas?

Rev. Msgr. Stuart W. Swetland, S.T.D.

On Palm Sunday of this year, the National Geographic Channel ran a program on the Gospel of Judas. This was preceded a few days earlier by a press conference announcing the results of an effort to restore, authenticate, and translate the document, written in an ancient Egyptian script known as Coptic. The tenor of the media coverage implies that this was a long suppressed Christian gospel that provides a competing view of Judas and Christ. The questions that many of my students have been asking me are “What is this document?” and “What does it mean for the Christian faith?”

Until about 30 years ago the Gospel of Judas was known only through a reference in the work of an early defender of orthodox Christianity St. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyon. In his book Against Heresies written about A.D. 180, St. Irenaeus called it a “fictitious history.” To understand the significance of this document, we should look at the document and who produced it.

A group of experts, assembled and financed through the National Geographic Society, have determined that the document is almost certainly a 3^rd to 4^th century Coptic translation of a second century Greek text. The Gospel is composed of 13 papyrus pages, written on both sides, and is in very poor condition, with significant segments of the text missing. There is reason to believe that the original document may have been much longer. The text begins: “The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week three days before he celebrated Passover.” The rest of the document generally corresponds to Irenaeus’ description and what is called gnosticism in general.

Irenaeus writes of the Gospel of Judas:

They [the gnostics] declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things [basic gnostic teachings], and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.

What is gnosticism? It is an ancient near-east mystery cult whose teachings and practices are very similar to much of what we call today “new age” spirituality. It took various forms, but it originates from early Greek philosophy implanted first into Judaism and then Christianity. In general, gnostics of the Christian era believed the God of the Old Testament was the evil creator of the world and that the God of the New Testament, Jesus’ Father, was the good, higher God who was in conflict with the creator. Thus, the material world was evil and the body a prison from which one was to escape through enlightenment. To these gnostics, Jesus was a gnostic teacher who came to earth to provide gnosis, a secret knowledge through which a chosen few would be enlightened and whose souls would escape to the heavenly places.

In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus is portrayed as condescending to his disciples who are not enlightened and so have no chance of being “saved” as the Gnostics understood salvation. Judas was the only one who showed he had the required knowledge. Thus, Judas alone was worthy, and so Jesus set him apart to help in his plan. However, the Gospel of Judas suggests the plan was not to save all of humanity but to help Jesus escape from entrapment in his material body by delivering him up to crucifixion. The dialogue between Jesus and Judas is aimed at undermining the authority of the Church and Christianity itself.

Thus, the Gospel of Judas certainly is no gospel. It is not “good news.” It portrays a deceptive, elitist Jesus who came only to save a few like-minded individuals. This is not a sect of Christianity; it is a completely different religion. The Apostles who witnessed Jesus’ healing ministry, His appearances after the Resurrection, and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost testified to a much different Jesus whose mission opened the way of salvation to all, not just a few. An unbroken Christian witness to this truth, through the successors of the Apostles, is what allowed St. Irenaeus and the other leaders of the early Church to confidently dismiss the gnostic Jesus as a fraud.

What can Christians today take away from the Gospel of Judas? Simply the confidence of this same witness and the sure knowledge that the Holy Spirit continues to work through the Church, the community of believers in friendship with God. St. Irenaeus and other Christians knew that this purported gospel was a fraud because they knew Jesus personally and intimately through prayer and the celebration of the Sacraments. Thus, they saw, as anyone can today who knows the Lord, that the Jesus of the Gospel of Judas is not the Jesus of Nazareth they know and love.