HeartBreakLog

Continuing our commentary on the “Judas” document:

In the comments from National Geographic: Gospel of Judas Pages Endured Long, Strange Journey, we find:

"We can consider it a real miracle [my emphasis] that [such an ancient literary work]—especially one threatened by the hatred of the great majority of its contemporary readers, who saw it as a shame and a scandal, destined to be lost … would suddenly appear and be brought to light," said scholar Rodolphe Kasser.

But early Christians and their doctrines and teachings endured the concerted and ongoing efforts of the most powerful empire ever seen on the Earth up to that time to destroy them. How many ancient copies of the Greek texts of the New Testament are available to us [http://www.greekbible.com/]? How many current copies of the Bible are there, in how many languages?
It is a salient fact about the "Judas" document that its contemporaries endured its "loss", while the legitimate, Inspired Christian Gospels and Letters live on without interruption.
NG’s “news” story goes on to embellish this collective hallucination of the 2^nd Century Cainite cult as one of the “diverse beliefs”, or “alternative theological views” to the ”more structured faith based on the New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.” That the sole surviing ancient copy of these lunatic gnostic ravings [So, read them yourself, if you don’t believe me: http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/document.html] more closely resembles a modern Scientology tract (so, sue me...oops.) than any bone fide Old or New Testament teaching doesn’t seem to have infiltrated the cocoon of sensationalized melodrama which has engulfed these “researchers’” point of view.

Labels: Bible and Religious Commentary

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Our Easter sermon included a strong rebuttal of the latest fads in pseudo-Biblical sensationalism, including the “Gospel of Judas”. I dismissed the whole "Judas" document last week as “just another heresy”, but the additional information makes it clear just how far the TV documentaries and the rash of news stories went to avoid legitimate academic thought and virtually all other relevant facts to sensationalize the document as somehow revolutionary, or requiring a complete re-thinking of Christian doctrine. Yes, the “Gospel of Judas” is an authentic 3^rd-Century document, which is historically and academically interesting in some respects. No, in every other sense, it isn’t remotely worth the papyrus it’s written on.
I was kind of surprised to find that the Wikipedia entry for "Gospel of Judas" includes the broader academic and historical context. It identifies it as a "gnostic gospel", fundamentally opposed to Christian tradition, and associates it with the gnostic Cainite cult of the 2nd Century A.D.. It also mentions the rebuttal to the gnostics and this “gospel” by Irenaeus, who repudiated it in 180 A.D. as “fictional”.
To see how National Geographic views Christian criticism of the Judas document, such as the anti-heretical writings of Iranaeus, see Gospel of Judas Pages Endured Long, Strange Journey :

"St. Irenaeus's method was to savage alternative theological views...."

National Geographic has made a translation of the surviving portion of the "gospel" available on its "Gospel of Judas" site , but reasonable people shouldn’t have to read much of it to identify it as basically pathological.

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Ephesians 4:14-15
14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

[I was hoping to hit the intellecual snooze button on this, but it just isn’t going away fast enough.]
the "Good News", usually tranlated as "Gospel", properly referring to the "Good News" of God's Love, and our Salvation and freedom from slavery to sin and death through Jesus Christ. [graphic NT Greek text from http://www.greekbible.com/]
Then, there's this other...stuff. Over the centuries, every possible permutation of every possible combination of lies, insults, and venomous assaults against Jesus and the other personalities of the Gospel and writings of the Apostles must have been committed to writing or other media at least once. In the last couple of decades, fanciful melodramas (aka "soap operas") featuring New Testament names for their characters have become very popular. Evidently the whole "Bible code" fad was losing steam, though...
National Geographic presented a documentary about the latest fantasy last night on their cable channel [also in The Lost Gospel of Judas--Photos, Time Line, Maps--National Geographic]. Here we have either a) an extremely clever and scientifically/ archeologically literate forgery involving authentic 3^rd -Century papyri and sophisticated “missing link” ink, or, b) a real 3^rd-Century example of an uncountable number of psuedo-Christian heresies, here involving a purported plot between Judas and Jesus to vault Jesus to world stardom through martyrdom, or something---ignoring the fact that Jesus had repeatedly rejected such opportunities throughout His life, and nearly every other possible fact involved in the legitimate Gospels. Moreover, unlike Gnosticism, Arianism/Monophysitism/Monoelitism, Catholicism, Mormonism, and other heresies that caught on to various degrees, this one was so poorly received that it survives only as a single fragmented copy stuck in a book, probably to distract the roaches from the important papyri in the stack (okay, so I’m not an archeologist, I’m mostly disinterested, I’m overdue for my afternoon espresso drink---why expect more scientific rigor from me than from these “Bible coders” you’ve been wasting your time on?).
Don’t you people have anything better to do? Who paid for this, anyway?

Labels: Bible and Religious Commentary

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