The Gospel of Judas

1. There were various kinds of pseudographical gospels floating around in the post apostolic church, mainly in the patristic period. The Church Fathers with links back to the apostles (eg. Heggisippus and Irenius who was a disciple of Polycarp who knew John) held these to be heretical fabricated narratives of Gnostic sects used to justify the claims of the Gnostics. Many of these were Alexandrian and most of these were in the 4 th to 6 th centuries (such as the much later second Gnostic ‘Gospel of Thomas’ which Islamic scholars in Egypt said was the true record of Jesus used to justify the claims of Islam).

There were attempts by proto Gnostics to circulate these kinds of forgeries even in the first century giving the writings a counterfeit Apostolic attribution. Paul the Apostle makes mention of writing his epistle in his own hand to verify his authorship (1 Corinthians 16:21) and used his standard introductory salutation to identify his letters as authentic (CHARIS UMIN KAI EITANA APO THEO PATROS AMUN KAI KURIO IASOU CHRISTOU -  Chesd l’chem v’shalom m’et Elohim avinue v’ Ha Adon Yeshua Hamashiach).

Paul also warned the Galatians of those who preach another Christ. These later Gnostic forgeries became prolific in the early centuries of the church after the apostles were no longer alive to debunk them personally and were one reason Irenius wrote ‘Contra Heresium” (”Against All Heresies”) having obtained the original apostolic tradition of Jesus from Polycarp and his contemporaries who again received it from The Apostle John in Ephesus (and probably the later disciples in churches originally planted by Paul and Apollos in the region in and around Smyrna).

Yet, the Gospel of Judas is devoid of any such calligraphical verification, identifying idiosyncratic salutations, Patristic attestation, essential historical consistency with other earlier Christian records, or any other viable criteria establishing a demonstrable authenticity. It is a document in the wrong language with an ontogeny from the wrong century whose content is prima face incompatible with the documents in the correct languages of the correct century. There is not a single first or second manuscript to be found in any scriptorium in the world that provides The Gospel of Judas with a solitary speck of sustainable historical credibility fueling the thesis that Jesus put Judas up to betraying Him.

2. The bogus ‘Gospel of Judas’ is very obviously one such Post Apostolic forgery.

The original Gospels were written in Greek not Coptic and even existing Aramaic/Syriac manuscripts were translated from earlier Greek ones.  This Gospel of Judas is in Coptic (a manuscript language of later Alexandrian deviancy).

Even liberal scholars like JAT Robinson were finally forced to agree that the writers of  the canonical gospels had too much familiarity with Second Temple Period Israeli Judaism to be products of a post apostolic gentile literally embellishment (eg.‘Christ and Palestinian Judaism” by E.P. Sanders).

We have the Thiessen fragment and the first century portion of John (currently preserved in Manchester, England), so earlier first century documents in Greek testify to an early authorship of the accepted gospel accounts. The earliest copy of The Gospel of Judas is early 4th century is a manuscript written in Coptic and it can not even be verified as certain that it is a later and accurate copy of the same late Second Century Gospel of Judas denounced as a heretical and historically inaccurate forgery in the Patristic Era of the late Second Century because , as with the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, two or more variant documents from differing places and times (even centuries difference) may have had the same name.

While we have over 10,000 gospel manuscript documents (supplemented by an avalanche of later codexes), we  only have 420 of Julius Caesar and one of The Gospel of Judas. To lend any credibility to non-Greek/ non-Hebrew/   non-Aramaic account written over 260 years after the rime of Jesus in earth (which at best may be based on an earlier document written 150 years after the time of Jesus) is absolutely ludicrous in contrast to contemporary 1 st century eye witness accounts. This is particularly true where the fundamental accounts in the content are at categorical variance from the massive body of much earlier manuscripts. It is implausible to ascribe historicity to such a document as The Gospel of Jude in view of the overwhelming mountain of manuscript evidence firmly stacked against it.  

Rabbinic Jewish scholars who have investigated the gospels as history and Jewish literature all independently testify to the accuracy of the ‘Sitz im Leben”  of the established gospel narratives as first century Jewish literature. These include Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Lapide (Professor, Hebrew University), the late Rabbi Dr. David Flusser ( Professor, Hebrew University), Rabbi Dr. Jacob Nuesner (former Professor Brown University), Dr. Gezer Vermes (Professor, Oxford University and member of the Dead Sea Scrolls Commission, and arguably the world’s leading Jewish expert on ancient Christianity),  Rabbi Dr. Larry Schiffman (Professor, New York University and also a member of the Qumran Commission), and the late Dr. Haim Macoby (Spiro Institute, London) . Most of these Jewish scholars are Orthodox rabbis (except Gezer Vermes) and the leading experts in the modern world in academic Judaism, and have no pro Christian prejudices. Jacob Nuesner maintains that the original gospels are the pivotal first century Jewish religious literature between the inter-testamental apocrypha and the early midrashim.

Their findings are supported by Christian scholars who made the same investigations such as the late FF Bruce,  Dr. James Chareleston, (Professor,  Princeton University), ancient Semitic linguistic expert Dr. Siam Bhayro, (University College London and formerly of Yale University), and also Dr. RN Longenecker, the famed German critical scholars Bilderbeck & Strack, and Dr. RT France (former Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford who dismantled the Bultamarian “Criteria of Dissimilarity” by Perrins).

It is interesting in itself that is non-Christian orthodox Jewish scholars of late who have been at forefront of debunking myths manufactured by the dying breed of  higher critical academics such as the televised response of Dr. Larry Schiffman to the nonsense of Barbara Thierring of the so called ‘Jesus Seminar’. If such Jewish academics were to have a bias it would be logically assumed to be anti Christian. But rather it lends forceful credence to New Testament orthodoxy and must be considered objective.  

The Gospel narratives emerged from a First Century Israeli Judaism, and while Jewish scholarship (as well as Christian scholarship) affirms the authenticity of their Judaic content as first century source documents both form critically and source critically, this can clearly not be said for the later ‘Gospel of Judas’.        

In the age of sensationalized nonsense such as ‘Bible Codes’ and ‘Da Vinci Codes’ (and a naïve biblically ignorant public helping the innovators of nonsense to make a quick buck), we should not be surprised that wild conjectures about the Gospel of Judas are already being hawked by religious connivers with bogus and fanciful theories and silly people willing to hand over their money. The New York Times and other news publications are already raising ethical and financial questions and some manuscript scholars of serious note are even saying that National Geographic should not have published it.  

The pseudo scholarly biases of the declining liberal theological establishment not withstanding, we must ask why a first century copy of a Greek document like the Thiesson fragment affirming biblical orthodoxy  did not receive the same publicity as a 4 th Century Coptic one that is not supported or corroborated by any complimentary manuscript evidence?

From a technical linguistic, literary, and historical perspective, every scholar who has seen the Gospel of Judas agrees it is of the same manuscript family as the Egyptian Nag Hammadi texts and not of the same Greco-Judaic family as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Unless the find is being sensationalized out of proportion to what it actually is and an ethically questionable money game is being played as the press suggests and some scholars insist, why all the fanfare?

Indeed, logic & common sense, serious and objective comparative document scholarship, and academic integrity are quickly thrown out the window in favor of sensationalism, an unsubstantiated and academically abject attack on Judeo-Christian orthodoxy, and an abandonment of factual reality in a world that as Jesus said is a world that is truly “in the power of the wicked one “. This is particularly true in cases where there is a quick buck to me made even at the expense of reality.

J. Jacob Prasch

http://www.moriel.org/articles/discernment/church_issues/gospel_of_judas.htm