The historical Judas

by Editor · April 26, 2006

The release earlier this month of the content of the long-lost Gospel of Judas is exciting news indeed. How can the emergence of a text lost for at least 17 centuries not fascinate us?

In as far as the text offers insights into what some early followers of Christ believed and what it reveals about the plurality of the early Church, the Gospel of Judas’ is an invaluable document.

The media’s sensationalist claim, however, that the Judas gospel might have any impact on the way Christians understand the faith never mind alter their perceptions of Jesus’is entirely preposterous.

The early Church was faced with a multiplicity of theories and theologies. Some it retained, some had to be rejected.

The Gospel of Judas is a gnostic gospel, supporting a mystical theology which was rejected as a heresy by the early Church.

The fundamentals of our faith were neatly distilled in the 4th century Nicene Creed (originally formulated to counter another heresy, Arianism), which we still recite today. The gnostic theories, such as those proposed in the Judas gospel, are wholly excluded from the Creed.

These two strands of theology, though both rooted in the divinity of Christ, were incompatible then as they are now. One could not follow both (though some tried), just as modern Catholics cannot also be, say, a Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Gospel of Judas was written by gnostics for gnostics. It offers little new that other non-canonical gospels do not except for the suggestion of Jesus conspiring to let Judas betray him (it is a terrible, and indeed inconceivable notion that Jesus might have persuaded his supposedly closest friend to become an eternal fall guy).

This is an unlikely spin on the events of Holy Thursday.

The New Testament, especially the letters of St Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, reflects the Christian tradition from its beginnings. There is no record of people who knew Jesus, least of all the apostles, having espoused any form gnostic theology.

The Gospel of Judas is valuable as documentation to a now extinct strand of early, alternative theological thought.

If modern Christians were to find truth in that theology on the basis of the Judas gospel, they would not only depart from Christian orthodoxy, but embrace a different religion altogether.

Much as the hype that accompanied the carefully timed release of the gnostic text would like to persuade us otherwise, the Gospel of Judas is useless to our understanding of the chain of events leading to Christ’s crucifixion, and the role Judas played in it.

The emergence of the Judas gospel, however, may prompt us to prayerfully re-examine the story of Christ’s betrayal by Judas.

Did Judas deliver Jesus out of greed, as traditionally held (and reiterated by Pope Benedict during his Holy Thursday Mass homily)? Or might he have had a different, perhaps even forgivable, reason for doing so (as hinted at scholars such as by Mgr Walter Brandmuller, head of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Science)?

Has Jesus, in his infinite mercy, forgiven Judas? And if we believe he has, should we too have mercy on Judas, as we ask Jesus to have mercy on us? Is there a limit to divine mercy?

Whatever our conclusions, the answers to such questions will not be found in The Gospel of Judas.