Stephen C. Carlson tried to put this to rest once for all, but apparently without success:14
The Australian Daily Telegraph now has an article about it: “Controversial gospel to be translated” (Mar. 30, 2005). The news article relies heavily on a person from a certain Maecenas Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, which seems to be involved in exploiting this document….
Another aspect of the news article is no news: “‘We do not want to reveal the exceptional side of what we have,’ Mr. Roberty said,”—except that “the Judas Iscariot text called into question some of the political principles of Christian doctrine.”
Nevertheless, that did not prevent the article having its Da Vinci Code moment:
The Roman Catholic Church limited the recognized gospels to the four in AD 325, under the guidance of the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine.
Thirty other texts—some of which have been uncovered— were sidelined because “they were difficult to reconcile with what Constantine wanted as a political doctrine,” according to Mr. Roberty.
Not this canard again. The canonization of the New Testament was a long process that began well before Constantine and ended decisively decades after him….
Given how Mr. Roberty is quoted, it is not clear whether he is fully responsible for this historical nonsense…
A newspaper in Turin, Italy, La Stampa, reported on January 11, 2006, that some sources said the apocryphal manuscript would lead to a favorable reevaluation of Judas. This was picked up January 12, 2006, by the London Times, in an article written by Richard Owen according to the byline, with the headline “Judas the Misunderstood” and the subtitle “Vatican moves to clear reviled disciple’s name.” It says of Monsignor Walter Brandmüller, president of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Science, that he is leading a campaign “aimed at persuading believers to look kindly at a man reviled for 2,000 years.” Then this article was followed the next day, January 13, 2006, by an article in the London Times, written by Ben MacIntyre according to the byline, entitled “Blamed, framed or defamed. Three good reasons to free the Judas One.” This essay is clearly a spoof, formulated as Judas’s defense attorney’s final appeal to the jury to acquit him. There is a similar article the same day, January 13, 2006, in the London Guardian, written by John Crace according to the byline, entitled “Judas Iscariot: his life and good works”:
Reports emanating from the Vatican suggest that the Catholic Church may be about to rehabilitate the reputation of Judas, the apostle commonly held to have betrayed Jesus. Scholars now suggest that, in fact, Judas was merely “fulfilling his part in God’s plan.” Below, we pre-empt the possible rewriting of the gospel.
Thereupon follows a rewriting of the canonical story, which is ridiculous, or infuriating, or both, only to conclude:
Jesus blessed him. “I forgive you now, but it will take everyone else 2,000 years.” And so it came to pass.
This was followed up on January 16, 2006, in the Toronto Star, written by Rosie DiManno according to the byline, entitled “Judas reborn: Are we ready to rethink the fink?” It retraces the same steps as the other newspaper articles of the preceding days, only to end: “It’s scheduled for publication at Easter. Nice timing.”
But Monsignor Brandmüller told the Catholic news agency of Rome, ZENIT: “I have not talked with The Times. I can’t imagine where this idea came from.” “This news has no foundation.” He went on to explain:
In regard to the manuscript, it must be emphasized that the apocryphal gospels belong in the main to a special literary genre, a sort of religious novel that cannot be considered as a documentary source for the historical figure of Judas.
When it was suggested that the rehabilitation of Judas would favor the dialogue with Jews, Monsignor Brandmüller replied:
The dialogue between the Holy See and the Jews continues profitably on other bases, as Benedict XVI mentioned in his visit to the Synagogue of Cologne, in the summer of 2005 during World Youth Day, and as he stressed last Monday in his meeting with the chief rabbi of Rome.
In an interview late in January 2006 with Stacy Meichtry, the Vatican correspondent of the Religious News Ser vice, Monsignor Brandmüller is even more explicit:
This gospel is apocryphal—a kind of historical fiction. Religiously and theologically it is of no interest. But it helps to illustrate the literary scene of ancient Christianity… for thought that is non-religious and non-theological. It is a literary work, not a religious or theological text. With all probability, the author knew that. He knew what he was writing.
There is no campaign, no movement to rehabilitate the traitor of Jesus. The reports are absolutely false…. One has to admit that the figure of Judas has always been a mystery. As a result he has stirred much speculation and attempts to interpret his betrayal. But an accepted explanation does not exist. The mystery remains. He remains a figure on the margins.
We welcome the publication of a critical edition like we welcome the study of any text of ancient literature.
A fan club, a group, never existed. Some one (an individual) probably went to work writing a novel on Judas.
Much could depend on the critical study of the text itself. Some small finding could emerge, but I don’t believe so. It is a product of religious fantasy. Usually these apocryphal gospels originate from a desire to know details beyond that which we read in the gospels.
Thus the Roman Catholic Church has maintained its calm, reaffirming its traditional position, and refusing to be drawn into a discussion one way or the other that could only serve the sensationalists.
Actually, this dimension of the story had already been anticipated, if you will, even prior to The Gospel of Judas becoming the sensation that it now threatens to become. A novel was published in 2000, entitled, of all things, The Gospel of Judas: A Novel. A priest in Rome, Father Leo Newman, receives fragments of a first century scroll (of course) found near the Dead Sea (of course), which he is to decipher. It is an account of Jesus’s life apparently written by Judas even before the canonical Gospels, explaining that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Father Leo realizes it could blow apart the foundation of Christianity and of his own life as a believing priest. So when he is called upon to validate and interpret the fragments, everything comes apart.
This book, apparently written without knowledge of the ancient Coptic papyrus manuscript of The Gospel of Judas, does in substance what some would expect (want?) the real Gospel of Judas to effect. But amazon.com lists one hundred new and used copies available from $0.49.
Pöhner cannot help concluding his story on his own secular note:15
A fictional story. In our unchristian time the text appears as a weighty historical document, though its religious power will have limits. Yet perhaps it can arouse our fantasy: What, if the view of that Judas priest had prevailed? What significance would then loyalty have for us, what would betrayal be? What was the lie?
Of course the publication of the translation of The Gospel of Judas will in effect end this tempest in a teapot, just as the publication of the long-withheld parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices did.
In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a sensational effort was undertaken to use the Scrolls to discredit the Roman Catholic Church. Robert W. Eisenman, a Jewish scholar at Long Beach State University, had launched the theory that the unpublished fragments were being withheld by the Roman Catholic Church, lest their contents completely disprove the validity of Christianity. He claimed that the founder of the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was none other than Jesus’s brother James! In this case James, and presumably his brother Jesus, would, just as the Teacher of Righteousness in the Dead Sea Scrolls (whom Eisenman identified as James), advocate very strict adherence to Judaism. This would mean that Paul’s departure from Judaism, and the church of today following Paul’s lead, is illegitimate! But this theory breaks down for a series of very solid scholarly reasons.16 As a result, Eisenman did not have an academic fo
llowing. But he was somehow able to secure, out of Israel, a copy of the monopolized photographs of the unpublished fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Then he enlisted my aid, since he knew of me as a monopoly-breaker in the case of the Nag Hammadi Codices, to help him get them published. So we worked together as odd bedfellows, he to prove his sensationalist theory, me to disprove it.17 Now that the fragments in question have been available for over a decade, Eisenman’s sensationalistic theory has simply disappeared from the media. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which are of great significance to scholars in the field, have been left to them, Jewish and Christian scholars alike, to be studied carefully and soberly, free of that kind of sensationalism.
In the case of the Nag Hammadi Codices, the sensationalist was Jean Doresse, a French graduate student who made his reputation by being the first to publicize the material in Cairo.18 He arranged an interview with the French-language newspaper of Cairo, which published his sensational report:19
According to the specialists consulted, it has to do with one of the most extraordinary discoveries preserved until now by the soil of Egypt, surpassing in scientific interest such spectacular discoveries as the tomb of Tut-Ankh-Amon.
Here again, once the Nag Hammadi Codices were published and fully available to the public,20 the sensationalism in the news media disappeared and serious scholarship took over. Of course the Nag Hammadi Codices are of great importance for reconstructing early Christian history. But sensationalism only serves to discredit discoveries of such importance as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices.
It will no doubt be the same in the case of The Gospel of Judas. Once it becomes available, one will find that it does not shed light on what happened during Jesus’s trip to Jerusalem (which is what the sensationalists imply), but rather will shed light on a second-century Gnostic sect. This will be important for scholars, but not for the sensationalists. But by then the Maecenas Foundation will, no doubt, as the memorandum of December 15, 2000, stipulated, have achieved its first objective:
The promoters of the Project have incurred and will incur substantial expenses of money and time in order to realize the Project. It is a clear understanding that they shall be fully compensated and shall make a decent profit.
They can then turn The Gospel of Judas over to the scholarly community, to achieve the other objective stated there:
On the other hand, it is understood that this Project leads into a dimension far beyond a commercial transaction. The manuscripts involved being of potential importance to a major part of mankind imposes an approach substantially different to an ordinary business transaction.
So let us close on that happy note!
Notes
CHAPTER ONE: THE JUDAS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
1. The Critical Edition of Q: Synopsis Including the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and Thomas with English, German, and French Translations of Q and Thomas, eds. James M. Robinson, Paul Hoffmann, and John S. Kloppenborg (Minneapolis: Fortress, and Leuven: Peeters, 2000).
2. William Klassen, Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996).
3. Claire Clivaz, “Douze noms pour une main: nouveaux regards sur Judas à partir de Lc 22.21–22,” New Testament Studies 48 (2002): 400–416.
CHAPTER TWO: THE HISTORICAL JUDAS
1. Origen, Against Celsus, 2.9, cited by William Klassen, Judas: Betrayer or Friend? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 138.
2. R. S. Anderson, The Gospel according to Judas (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1991).
3. Hans-Josef Klauck, Jesus: Ein Jünger des Herrn, Quaestiones Disputatae 111 (Freiburg: Herder, 1987).
4. Klassen, Judas.
5. Kim Paffenroth, Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002).
6. Klassen, Judas, 48.
7. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, a translation and adaptation of the fourth revised and augmented edition of Walter Bauer’s Griechisch-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der übringen urchristlichen Literatur, by William F. Arndt and F. Wilburg Gingrich, second edition revised and augmented by F. Wilbur Gingrich and Frederick W. Danker, from Bauer’s fifth edition (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1958).
8. Klassen, Judas, 74.
9. The quotation is in fact from Zech. 11:12–13.
10. Klassen, Judas.
CHAPTER THREE: THE GNOSTIC JUDAS
1. Irenaeus, Refutation of All Heresies, 1.31.1.
2. Epiphanius, Panarion, 37.3.4–5; 6.1–2; 38.1.5.
3. Henri-Charles Puech, revised after his death by Beate Blatz, in New Testament Apocrypha, revised edition, ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher, English translation ed. R. McL. Wilson, 1: Gospels and Related Writings (Cambridge, England: James Clarke & Co; Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox, 1991), 386–87.
4. The Testimony of Truth, Nag Hammadi Codex IX, Tractate 3, 45,23–48,15.
5. James M. Robinson, as Permanent Secretary of the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices nominated by UNESCO and appointed by the Arab Republic of Egypt, The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices, twelve volumes, 1972–84.
6. See my detailed analysis in The Facsimile Edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices: Introduction (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984).
7. Ralph Pöhner, “Judas der Held,” FACTS: Das Schweitzer Nachrichtenmagazin (January 6, 2005): 76–79.
8. They are reprinted in James M. Robinson, The Sayings Gospel Q: Collected Essays, ed. Christoph Heil and Joseph Verheyden, BETL 189 (Leuven: University Press and Uitgeverij Peeters, 2005), 711–883.
9. See my “Evaluations.” Q 12:49–59: Children against Parents—Judging the Time—Settling out of Court, Documenta Q: Reconstructions of Q Through Two Centuries of Gospel Reserarch Excerpted, Sorted, and Evaluated (Leuven: Peeters, 1997).
10. The Fifth Gospel: The Gospel of Thomas Comes of Age, by Steven J. Patterson and James M. Robinson, with a New English Translation by Hans-Gebhard Bethge et al. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1998).
11. The Nag Hammadi Library in English, translated by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, James M. Robinson, Director and General Editor, James M. Robinson, Managing Editor Marvin W. Meyer (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977, paperback edition 1984; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977, paperback edition 1981).
12. The Gospel of Philip, Nag Hammadi Codex II, Tractate 3, 73,8–19.
13. The Gospel of the Egyptians, Nag Hammadi Codex III, Tractate 2, 40,12–13. A second, more fragmentary copy is in Codex IV, Tractate 2.
14. The Gospel of the Egyptians, Nag Hammadi Codex III, Tractate 2, 69,18–20.
15. The Gospel of the Egyptians, Nag Hammadi Codex III, Tractate 2, 69,6–17.
16. The Gospel of Truth, Nag Hammadi Codex I, Tractate 3, 16,31–34.
17. A. J. Droge and J. D. Tabor, A Noble Death: Suicide and Martyrdom among Christians and Jews in Antiquity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), cited by Klassen, Judas, 168 and 175.
18. William Klassen, Judas: Betrayer or Friend of Jesus? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 47, quoting Augustine, City of God, 1.17 and Sermon 352.3.8 (Patrologia Latina, 39:1559–63).
19. The translation, by Morton S. Enslin, “How the Story Grew: Judas in Fact and Fiction,” in Festschrift in Honor of F. W. Gingrich, ed. E. H. Barth and R. Cocroft (Leiden: Brill, 1972), is quoted by Klassen, Judas, 173.
20. Quoted by Klassen, Judas, 7.
21. Klassen, Judas, 18–20.
22. Roger Thiede, “Das JUDAS-Evangelium,” FOCUS 13, 2005, 116.
23. Thiede, “Das JUDAS-Evangelium,” 116.
24. English translation by M. E. Heine (London: Hutchinson, 1977).
25. Michael Dickinson, The Lost Testament of Judas Iscariot (Dingle, Brandon, 1994).
26. Ernest Sutherland Bates, The Gospel of Judas (London: William Heinemann, 1929). It had been published already in 1928 in the Unite
d States under the title The Friend of Jesus (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1928). But The Gospel of Judas was Bates’s original title.
27. Hugh S. Pyper, “Modern Gospels of Judas: Canon and Betrayal,” Literature & Theology 15 (2001): 111–22.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS SURFACES IN GENEVA
Secrets of Judas Page 17