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The Judas Gospel And An Old Adage

The media’s uncritical acceptance of the claims of The Da Vinci Code has been mirrored by its embracing of the Judas Gospel. Initial headlines suggested that the Judas Gospel forces us to rethink Christianity, as if it gives us some new and credible historical information. One writer even claims, "The reappearance of the Gospel of Judas will rank among the greatest finds from Christian antiquity and is without doubt the most important archaeological discovery of the past 60 years…. It will open up new vistas for understanding Jesus and the religious movement he founded." (Bart Ehrman, quoted on Early Christian Writings; http://www.earlychristian writings.com/gospeljudas.html; 6-5-06).

First, a little detail about this “most important archaeological discovery”. The only known copy of the Judas Gospel was found about 30 years ago. However, scholars did not learn of it through an archaeological discovery, but rather through an antique dealer, and then only after it had passed through several hands and sat rotting in a bank vault for decades. After recently resurfacing in the high-profit antiquities market, the National Geographic Society restored and translated it. This manuscript, dated to the 3rd or 4th century A.D., was in thousands of pieces when scholars began to work on it, but they were able to restore about 80% of it. You can easily read it for yourself at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/GospelofJudas.pdf.

However, I cannot help but wonder if people who make such claims as Mr. Ehrman have themselves read the Judas Gospel. This “Gospel”, which doesn’t claim to be written by Judas but rather is about him, is nothing like the canonical Gospels of the Bible, neither in literary form and quality nor in message. Like the other Gnostic writings (the 13 Nag Hammadi codices found in 1945), the quality of writing is extremely poor and difficult to understand -- nonsensical even. More importantly, it contains nothing of historical credibility. Remember, the Gnostic writings postdate the time of Christ by well over a century, while the canonical Gospels all come from contemporary companions and eyewitnesses of Christ or from others closely associated with them (e.g. Luke was a companion of Paul and interviewed many eyewitnesses; Mark was a companion of Peter).

Yet why do the media place such importance on a tiny handful of poorly-preserved documents that are far removed from the time of Christ, while discrediting the thousands of well-preserved and consistent testimonies from the eyewitness contemporaries of Jesus? The answer is obvious. When someone wants to reject the Bible, their excuse does not need to be reasonable or credible -- it only needs to be convenient. The current craze over The Da Vinci Code and the Judas Gospel are good examples of the old adage that says, “Don’t confuse me with the facts”.