A correspondent points out what should be obvious. This so-called “news” (about the Gospel of Judas) should hardly be “exploding myths,” especially for tenured professors at Princeton. As Dr. Pagels herself points out, Irenaeus duly recorded the document in the late second century. And many, many Fathers were eager to note the wild diversity of heresy. A short list of those who published exhaustive catalogs of the polymorphous perversity of the Gnostics: Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Ephiphanius, and John of Damascus. All of their works have been in print, in English, in multiple translations, since the end of the nineteenth century. And they’re all online, too.
Maybe the Gospel of Judas is different, though, in that it really does take the matter to the omega point, overturning everything once and for all. The Orwellian summary might be: Judas is Peter. As freedom is slavery, and war is peace.
How far out of the mainstream these nuts were is clear from the first lines of the document, where Jesus laughs out loud at the Apostles as they said Mass. This is certainly not the Church of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Irenaeus. Nor is it the Church of the Abitina martyrs, who said, “We cannot live without the Mass.”
This is not your Fathers’ oldsmobile. The Gnostics were trying to distance themselves from historic Christianity, and they did it by mocking the one unmistakable sign of the Great Church: the Eucharist. We should wish them, once again, all the success they enjoyed the first time around.
A well known Evangelical Biblical scholar, Bruce Chilton, notes that there is little evidence to support a connection between this “Gospel of Judas” and the one in Irenaeus. He points out other problems and discrepancies in an article he wrote which appeare in the NY Sun. You can access it at what appears to be a good Catholic blog “Built on the Rock” at billcork.blogspot.com or at nysun.com under the “arts and leisure” section
Of course, the “discovery” of this book simply underlines a simple fact: it was lost. In the modern vernacular, “it went out of print.” Why? Apparently, no one thought it was worth copying.
(Where were those secret relatives of Jesus, who Dan Brown tells us kept the traditins alive secretly? Looks like they really dropped the ball on this one!)
I suspect it will go out of print again.
I googled the Abitina martyrs. Thanks for the inspiration. Our Sunday Visitor has a nice
page that expands on your theme.
Thanks, Dennis. The great thing about the Abitina martyrs is that we have pretty much the court transcript of their interrogation. They were willing to die rather than miss a Sunday Mass.
[…] Please note that Irenaeus did not try to hide these Gospels for fear of a rival interpretation, but instead countered their teachings by showing its error. Christians have known about the Gospel of Judas for millenia. As Mike Aquilina says, “The Gnostics were trying to distance themselves from historic Christianity, and they did it by mocking the one unmistakable sign of the Great Church: the Eucharist. We should wish them, once again, all the success they enjoyed the first time around.” […]