JBL: It’s always interesting that controversial Christian historical topics are released at Easter (or Christmas).
San Francisco Chronicle John Noble Wilford, Laurie Goodstein April 7, 2006
An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years, and it portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple and willing collaborator.
In this text, scholars reported Thursday, the account of events leading to the Crucifixion differs sharply from the four Gospels in the New Testament.
Here Jesus was said to entrust Judas with special knowledge and ask him to betray him to the Roman authorities. By doing so, he tells Judas, “you will exceed” the other disciples.
“You will be cursed by the other generations, and you will come to rule over them,” Jesus confides to Judas in the document, which was made public at a news conference at the National Geographic Society in Washington.
Though some theologians have hypothesized the “good Judas” before, scholars who have translated and studied the text said this was the first time an ancient document lent support to a revised image of the man whose name in history has been synonymous with treachery.
Scholars say the release of the document will set off years of study and debate. . . . more
been there, done that, bought a shirt covering the debate
the collaboration idea doesn’t really make sense given that st. matthew’s gospel has him expressing remorse and rejecting the ransom in front of the elders. plus if he knew, he wouldn’t have given into despair in the matter he did (again rejecting the ransom and then hanging himself).
in addition, i can’t imagine CHRIST being so secretive in the way the gospel of judas sets it up. if you think about it, CHRIST’s declaration of “woe onto that one who will betray me”, it would be deceiving the rest of the apostles and only one knowing the truth. true that GOD has “kept secrets” but not to deceive, but to protect and maintain the integrity (in other words, “don’t talk about it yet”).
the collaboration theory also reeks of “apostolic secrets”, much like the sayings gospel of thomas. in that one, thomas is “given” some more information and insight that the rest of the apostles aren’t entitled for whatever reason. it does two things: first, it creates a sense of apostolic elitism where one is better than the other (the CHURCH maintains that all the apostles share in the labour, not just one). second, those secrets lead into gnosticism.
and remember why he’s “vilified.” after all, (st.) peter performed another form of betrayal through denying Him. the difference was he was able to repent fully. judas iscariot didn’t.
also… people just need to remember that nikos kazantakis talked about this stuff before, long before recent memory. and it’s still heretical =]
Why are the ‘long lost’ or ‘long suppressed’ or ‘unknown’ texts always the ones that get the academic elite’s blood flowing?
Oh, never mind. I know why, because anything that contradicts the received traditions of the Church is big news if you consider the Christian religion to be your biggest enemy.
Somethings that were lost were lost for a good reason. This ‘gospel’ will turn out to be a Gnostic text that was written under Judas’ name by someone hoping to influence the Christian religion.
It didn’t work then. It won’t work now. Anyone buying into this thing couldn’t be counted on as a true believer anyway.
Father: I would be interested in any comments you could provide on this subject, as well as the other so-called Gnostic Gospels such as the Gospels of James and Thomas. I’ve tended to stay away from them, believing that all the essential information I need about my faith can be found in Mark, Matthew, Luke and John.
Does our Church believe that the “gnostic gospels” offer authentic descriptions of the life and teachings of Christ, or do we see them as a divergent product of a Gnostic movement that was beginning to move away from the Christianity that evolved into the Church we belong to today?
I would like to be better informed.
Dean I would think the Church Fathers’ writings against the Gnostics would be the official standing.
I have been a christian for most of my life and i admit that the “Gospel of Judas” striked an interest to me as to what it would say about things.
After reading it, It literally made me angry at the fact that so many scholars used it to propigate the bible when in reality, with its release, it did nothing to deny the canonical gospels of thier authority.
The gospel of judas, in lighter words, is pathetic if i might say so.
They declare it is the most profound find in 2000 years and it will change the way people read the bible, well im sorry to say that it did just the opposite.
It’s poor languistics and dull story-line have done nothing for me but strengthen my beliefs and faith in Christ and in the bible. I denounce it as authoratative in any way and am proud to say that it is a pathetic gnostic text even in comparison to gnostic texts of that time.
It has been the idea of many people to just make income from this bogus gospel in any way they can and i have no doubt that a year from now, noone will even care what these crazy heretics thought, especially from reading this one. Gnosticism proves nothing by its texts. It denies the basic doctrines of the gospel and searches to confuse, what is already a confusing place for christians today.
Note 3. Dean, one important point never mentioned in the reports is that literary conventions were different 2000 years ago then they are today. For example, when an author writes a book today, he puts his name on the cover. It’s unthinkable to attribute a work you wrote to another person. The opposite works in the same way; we call it plagiarism.
In times past however, works were attributed to significant people to show that the thought expressed in a book or essay conincided with this or that particular school of ideas. For us, a book titled “The Gospel of Thomas” asserts that the Apostle Thomas was the author. Readers two thousand years ago may not have made this logical jump as quickly. Again, it is a matter of prevailing conventions.
We see this carried forward in the canonical tradition as well. The Torah, or Pentateuch, is commonly called the “first five books of Moses.” Did Moses really write them? This strikes us moderns as a very important question, and any evidence that the author was someone other than Moses casts doubt on any authoritative claims the books might make — in our mind anyway. In earlier times however, the claim meant nothing more than these five books were unified in content, theme, thinking, etc. They spoke in a similar voice in other words.
We see it too in the book of Matthew when Matthews says “as Jeremiah wrote” in reference to some verses ostensibly in the Old Testament. The trouble is, you can’t find the verses in the book of Jeremiah. So what gives? Well, the term “Jeremiah” funtions not only as a formal noun, but also as a generic noun that means something along the line of “the true prophet of God.” Again, we moderns have trouble with this. The ancients did not.
Further, there were all sorts of manuscripts floating around at the time, all claiming apostolic authorship. We forget this because most of them fell into disuse. In fact, looking at the texts that remained in use became one of the criteria determining their canonicity. Critics respond that this process was inherently biased because of (name your reason) patriarchy, politcs, whatever, and herald every discovery of the disused manuscripts as further evidence that the original process of canoncity was inherently flawed.
This presumes however that those who canonized the scriptures were conspiriatorialists, naive as best, cunning at worst. In fact, they were probably well read in all the documents in existence at the time. St. Paul certainly mentioned this, in Galatians in particular, where he warned his fledgling Church of the false gospels in existence at the time.
My sense is that St. Paul’s time is not that much different than ours. Christianity, indeed all things religious, is experiencing a cultural upsurge. (Barnes and Noble had only a handful of titles on Christianity 15 years ago. Now they have three double racks and end caps.) Anyone and his brother can write a book and get it marketed. Much of it is fluff, some of it is another gospel. But the books keep coming.
The answer to all of this is to do what the early Christians did, ie: understand the challenge and offer a critique in light of the Gospel (Fedya in note 1 is definitely on the right track). One advantage we have that they didn’t is a canonical text. This makes the endeavor a bit easier, but it really doesn’t change how the critique is delivered. We see that happening with “The DaVinci Code” for example. The holes are starting to show, and soon that ship will sink.
The same has been done with the “Gospel of Thomas,” although on different grounds because the text was hailed by the academy as proof that the liberal historical critique was accurate. (Elaine Pagels led the charge and it has become her project ever since. I noticed that she was front and center on the interview shows concerning the “Gospel of Judas” as well.) The most effective critiques compared the gnostics sects against the movement that became traditional Christianity. There was no need to dispute the historicity of the “Gospel of Thomas,” in other words because most likely it did indeed exist in the early centuries. Rather, the book was critiqued by its content.
From a historical perspective, the discovery of these manuscripts is very interesting. It reveals more about the culture of the early centuries of Christianity and, for me anyway, provides more historical context for the canonical writings, that I find beneficial.
So what I will wait for is credible scholars coming forward with their analyses. This will take some time since they have to read the book (or at least the fragments if that is all we have) first. It will reveal, I’m reasonably sure, the existence of a group who held a narrative of Jesus of Nazareth that differed substantially from the narrative that became the canon of scripture, not because of politcs, cultural bias, whatever, but because it contains ideas that ultimately are not sustainable.
This leaves open the question of course what constitutes “sustainability,” but that’s a question for another time.
Note 2. Glen, the reason it gets their blood flowing because it serves as ostensible proof that their historical revisionism is legitimate. This is not so much about the discovery of an extant manuscript, as it is about crafting a new historical narrative shorn of the traditional values that guided Western civilization for two millenia.
Remember, historians know history is narrative. History functions like literature does although with different rules, and not, like so many historically naive people think, as a videotape.
(I’m not implying you hold this view. I know you don’t. I offer it only for the benefit of other readers.)
In almost any big chain bookstore one can find the remainder table. It is laden with encyclopedias of doll or gun collecting, diet books, last year’s calendars. Usually you will find “The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden”. Gnostic or just apocryphal stuff known for a long, long time. It’s always surprising to see that people with academic qualifications can’t tell gibberish when they see it. The “gospel” of Judas and many others aren’t “lost” or suppressed, just thrown away. Forgotten, yes. Like any other wrong answer. It’s surprising that there were people even in the time of the Apostles who were eyewitnesses of Christ himself who didn’t trust what the Apostles taught and wrote. It shouldn’t surprise us; we see it around today. The Episcopal Church, to name one, openly does same-sex marriages, drops the Creed and references to the Trinity from it’s eucharist. It too thinks it has the Christian faith understood better than the Church of 1800 years ago or of today. Gnostics are a part of the scenery and always have been, it seems, operating alongside and in opposition to the Church. And still competing to have themselves taken seriously as part of the same organization. That is the really maddening thing in reports about this Judas text. The demand that it, it’s author and it’s 21st century enthusiasts be taken seriously as some downtrodden “christian” minority.
In fairness to the revisionists, liberals, and elites regularly denounced in these pages, I would only note that the scholarly view of the gospels has changed tremendously in the last couple of centuries. For generations, Christians believed that the gospels were written by single authors who were eyewitnesses of the events contained therein. I don’t know of any serious scholar today, liberal or conservative, who believes that.
Fr. Hans writes: “This is not so much about the discovery of an extant manuscript, as it is about crafting a new historical narrative shorn of the traditional values that guided Western civilization for two millenia.”
I think the first historical narrative we have to consider is the narrative of the gospels. This narrative has undergone dramatic changes.
The old historical narrative was that the gospels were written by eyewitnesses. The writers were granted artistic license to shape the gospels as they saw fit — to rearrange, to emphasize, and so on, but what they were rearranging and emphasizing was history, not literature.
The new historical narrative is that the gospels are compilations of other sources, in which the other sources did not agree on all the points, and that the editors of the gospels actively changed things so as to emphasize their own veiwpoint or to cover up or downplay difficulties in the text.
That new historical narrative already exists, and it is the dominant narrative, even in many conservative (though not fundamentalist) churches. You perceive a threat from the enemy, so to speak, but the enemy has already conquered your nation, and his flag waves over your capital. When someone such as Fr. Paul Tarazi holds that Mark is basically about the Apostle Paul, well, you’ve entered a different intellectual zone.
The new understanding of the gospels has tremendous implications for theology. In the old view, you could pretty much get the historical Jesus right off the surface of the gospel pages, within the limits of the gospel writers’ artistic license. Under the new understanding of the gospels, the historical Jesus is something that has to be discovered or uncovered through research. This research involves the canonical gospels, non-Christian sources (e.g. Josephus, Celsus), archeology, sociology, anthropology, and yes, the study of non-canonical gospels. In other words, under the new paradigm, there is nothing that automatically rules out the possibility that a new gospel might contain new insights into Jesus or the early church. Whether that is the case is something that is determined upon investigation.
All of this comes as some surprise to many Christians, because the findings of the last two hundreds years have not penetrated very deeply into the consciousness of the ordinary Christian. After the reading of the gospel, the priest never says “by the way, that passage I just read is not found in the oldest manuscripts.” He never says “compare the passage we just read in Mark with Matthew, and you’ll see imiportant differences between the two accounts.”
Jim, this is such a good point. Certainly the serminary-trained Orthodox priests I know are conversant with modern scholarship, and that knowledge does influence their preaching.
For many that view Scripture as infallible and inerrant and not just inspired, I doubt it matters much whether Scripture was written as an eyewitness account or whether it was written 20 or even 200 years after the fact.
I’m not suggesting that the Gospel of Judas has any authenticity whatsoever (I don’t know). However, we should expect some stiff resistance to any potentially new Scriptural records whether they confirm existing doctrines and theology or not. For those who have spoken with Biblical literalists before (note: I did not say fundamentalists), you know how easily they gloss over some of the apparent contradictions and intellectual problems found in Scripture. If one passage says 2 + 2 = 7 and another says it’s 4, well, that’s not a contradiction, you’re just not reading it correctly and you’re also a fool for even talking about it (compare Acts 9:7 with Acts 22:9, for example). For many, all of their faith hinges on Scriptural accuracy and completeness (whether it is or not). To suggest that there is another chapter would be to suggest that there is a piece of the puzzle missing and would imply that their faith up until then had been a sham.
For those who view it as inspired but not necessarily inerrant, these things are less of a problem, since we know that even the best people error in recollection. We also see no reason why inspiration should have ended with the apostles. Any new revelation would probably not be that earth shattering, since faith for many more liberal-minded people is not based on a very narrow set of beliefs about the tenets of Scripture.
This is why I feel that literalists are often boxing themselves into a very uncomfortable corner. When confronted with knowledge and intellectual inquiry, their faith often crumbles, unfortunately, as it did for Bart Ehrman who had previously believed that the Bible “is a divine revelation, the original autographs of which were verbally inspired by the Holy Spirit”.
IOW, the stakes are higher for more conservative believers when it comes to disputing any new texts in regards to their faith, and I don’t think it’s simply because of the controversial nature of the texts involved.
“In fairness to the revisionists, liberals, and elites regularly denounced in these pages, I would only note that the scholarly view of the gospels has changed tremendously in the last couple of centuries. For generations, Christians believed that the gospels were written by single authors who were eyewitnesses of the events contained therein. I don’t know of any serious scholar today, liberal or conservative, who believes that.
Jim, this is such a good point. Certainly the seminary-trained Orthodox priests I know are conversant with modern scholarship, and that knowledge does influence their preaching. ”
This is not a good point, is a hopelessly deceptive point. Orthodox believe the traditional accounts, and they cite modern “research” as to make this point. Juli, perhaps you were thinking of the “orthodox Presbyterian” church…;)
Christopher I believe Machen is rolling in his grave with the OPC comment.
Christopher writes: “This is not a good point, is a hopelessly deceptive point. Orthodox believe the traditional accounts, and they cite modern ‘research’ as to make this point.”
People have all sorts of different beliefs for all sorts of reasons. But no one who is taken seriously in biblical scholarship believes, for example, that the Matthew of the gospels actually wrote the gospel of Matthew. Call it whatever you will, but that view of the gospels is all but dead, except in the fundamentalist churches.
Nope, I’m thinking of the best preachers I’ve heard w/in the OCA – which is to say the best preachers I’ve heard, period – who have come out of St Vladimir’s.
PS. What’s with all the spam?
Holy Scripture in the Orthodox Church:
Holy Scripture is not the Church, it is part of the revealed deposit of the Holy Spirit in the Church, a particularly authoritative gift and the foundation of our theology and praxsis. The Holy Scripture is organically connected to the Church. Those who study it from a purely academic stand point are doomed never to understand it. It can only be understood by living the life of the Church, in the Church, as an essential element of Theosis.
To take the Holy Scripture out of the Church(which all academicians do even the Orthodox ones) and disect it is quite akin to taking the heart out of a man and disecting it. The physical structure of the heart is revealed, but that is all. There is no life left in the heart and so what is really essential to the heart and its function in the body is missed.
The “historical Jesus” as that term has come to be used is merely another attempt to blast the revealed Truth and denigrate those who seek His face in prayer, repentence, worship and almsgiving. It is those who know Him through love and submit to that love who are the real theologians. The rest of us can only muck things up if we attempt to improve upon what the Church teaches. As has often been noted on the blog, history is a narrative composed of fact, conjecture, assumptions and belief. While it can be quite useful in shedding light on many struggles we fallen humans have, history has ultimately to be discarded if one seeks to know the Truth. If one is unable to do that, then never will Jesus knocking on the door of the heart be answered. Never will He enter, and His Kingdom will always be an alluring fantasy leading to perdition rather than a living reality in which to experience salvation. To paraphrase the playwrite, Christopher Fry: In the end they walk in (history) like the densest night…Still deeper into the calculating twilight…till Truth (becomes) the sum of sums and Death the long division.
Fr. Hans and others who know a lot more than I please provide any corrective that is needed. A blessed Holy Week to all!
Juli,
I would be most interested in you citing some published sermons, essays, etc. by any priest, seminary professional, etc. in the OCA that explicitly rejects the traditional authorship of the Gospels, or accepts any other modern deconstructionist account of the Gospels. My guess is that you are confusing historical and textual research with modernist deconstruction of the Gospels. On this point, Orthodoxy has much more in common with other Traditional Christians. Materialists, modernists, and pagans don’t understand the difference between the Fathers and “biblical literalists” and other rather insignificant protestant groups. In any case, I can cite you Fathers, prayers, services, and modern Orthodox writers who explicitly accept the traditional authorships ad nauseum…
Michael writes: “As has often been noted on the blog, history is a narrative composed of fact, conjecture, assumptions and belief. While it can be quite useful in shedding light on many struggles we fallen humans have, history has ultimately to be discarded if one seeks to know the Truth.”
But at the point that history has been discarded, it seems to me that you don’t have, in any real sense, historical beliefs. You could talk about this or that being historical, but it would be a belief not based on historical method. You would have literature or myth or metaphor, but not history.
Christopher writes: “I would be most interested in you citing some published sermons, essays, etc. by any priest, seminary professional, etc. in the OCA that explicitly rejects the traditional authorship of the Gospels, or accepts any other modern deconstructionist account of the Gospels.”
For anyone who accepts the traditional authorship of the gospels, it would be interesting to know the reasons for doing so, and how they would respond to alternative theories, such as the four-source hypothesis.
Jim, your post shows exactly why you don’t get it. The revealed Truth, given substance by both the actuality of the Incarnation and one’s own faith is neither, history, literature, myth, or metaphor as those are materialistic attempts to describe the truth without ever experiencing it and living it, just as is much of what is called fundamentalism.
The One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church is a living, Incarnational reality connecting the Kingdom of God with the fallen world in which we exist. It is fully human and fully divine, both transcendent and imminent. We are called to be in the world, but not of it. Holy Scripture partakes of that same Incarnational reality that allows it to be truly iconographic, i.e., made of the matter and substance of this world while at the same time being a window into the world of God, encouraging, even instigating the transformation of the Holy Spirit without which we remain lifeless. We Orthodox venerate the Holy Scripture, bowing and crossing ourselves when the Priest holds it aloft precisely because it is alive with Holy Spirit not because it was written by the Apostle’s hands. It is, nevertheless, Apostolic Truth.
It is upon such a foundation that St. John Chrysostom issued his famous, still living invitation which we hear every Pascha, that no matter what we have done or not done during Lent, fasted or ignored the fast, we are able to enter into the Joy of our Lord.
There is more, so much more, in Heaven and Earth, Jim than is dreamed of in your philosophy. We have our choice of struggles: we can either struggle against the world and all of its deceit and passions or struggle against God who calls us out of that world and gives us the Victory, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tomb bestowing life.
Judas chose the way of the world and death, any writings from his point of view share the same death and reveal nothing about our Lord and the Church. It is in the service of such death that much “historical” scholarship is practiced today. It need not be that way as it too can be illumined by the Holy Spirit.
Because God chose to Incarnate at a specific place in a specific time, His Incarnation will always be historical, that is part of being fully human–seemingly bound by the material realities of place and time, but to believe that He actually exists solely there and can be adequately described by that existence is foolish at best, blasphemous at worst.
JimH
No Jim they’re only dead to you and liberal scholars. There are still a number of reputable scholars around the world that hold to traditional views. And they are not all fundamentalists, unless of course you consider historic Protestants and Roman Catholics American style fundamentalists?
Note, Michael, Jim Holman should reveal his posture versus religion
My conclusion is that Jim Holman is a confirmed atheist, period. Fine, free country, free will, his choice not mine. However, he doesn’t directly reveal his posture. His conclusions are determined in advance of facts, arguments and logic.
My question for Jim would be why so many truly great minds have believed in God and continue to believe in God if there was nothing whatsoever but superstition to support it? Pascal comes to mind. One of the greatest mathematicians the world has known converted to Christianity in mid-life.
Any question for Jim is why have so many people abandoned comfortable secular lives and embraced different religious lives? Why did Albert Sweitzer to go Africa to practice medicine? He could have lived quite comfortably in Europe?
My favorite atheist position is that “you don’t have to be religious” to be moral, or to be kind or to “care about people.” However, I am unable to find an Atheist Hospital in my town. I can readily find a St. Luke’s hospital, Baptist Hospital, a Menorah Medical Center, all of which provide for indigent medical care? Where is the Atheist Food Pantry? Where is the Atheist Home for the Needy? Big government didn’t come into play until the 20th century, however, religious people have build charitable institutions for millenia.
Jim can (and I’m sure will) speak for himself, but from other things he’s said (about the eucharist, etc), he’s no atheist. Acknowledging the influence of form criticism hardly makes someone an atheist.
Tangentially, of course there are hospitals (and schools and homeless shelters) without any religious affiliation, and there atheists who perform charitable works. It would seem odd to dedicate a hospital to atheism, though, since most of us focus more on what we do believe in than on what we don’t believe in. An atheist who wanted to start a hospital (or a school or whatever) would start it as a secular institution (like a number of hospitals I can think of here in the Twin Cities, including but not limited to public hospitals).
Michael writes: “There is more, so much more, in Heaven and Earth, Jim than is dreamed of in your philosophy.”
I’m sure that’s true of me — and of everyone else as well. But right now I’m trying to understand what your philosophy is.
Let’s say that a reader of the synoptic gospels notices certain interesting and unusual agreements of language; that a couple of gospel writers use identical language where we wouldn’t expect it; that Matthew and Luke almost always follow Marks order of events; that even parenthetical or explanatory comments are identical. Let’s also say that one notices certain interesting differences between the gospels; that, for example Matthew and Luke seem to quote Mark but then clean up some of his terminology and grammar. Our reader also notices that when Matthew and Luke are not dealing with material that is in Mark, that other material is largely sayings of Jesus that appear in a different order and in different context in Matthew and Luke. And so on.
In other words, let’s say that our hypothetical gospel reader notices the same kinds of things that were the impetus for the development of the modern four-source hypothesis of the origins of the gospels, and that the this theory makes sense to this person.
Are you saying that such a theory is incompatible with Chrisitanity? That even attempting to account for these differences and similarities is wrong? That one’s view of gospel authorship cannot vary in the least from the traditional view? That perhaps one can believe that the synoptic gospels were compiled from different sources, but that it is wrong to draw any further conclusions from that?
I’m not sure what it is that you are asserting here. It seems to me that the traditional view of gospel authorship simply does not account for these differences and similarities between the gospels. If you want to credit “inspiration” for the similarities, how then does one account for the differences?
If you could clarify your position, I would appreciate it. I’m not trying to pick a fight here, just trying to understand what it is that you are asserting.
Missourian writes: “My conclusion is that Jim Holman is a confirmed atheist, period. Fine, free country, free will, his choice not mine. However, he doesn’t directly reveal his posture.”
I have spoken in the past about many of my views. I try not to belabor the point, first, because my religious stance doesn’t have much relevance to most of the discussions, and second, because in all honesty I don’t think that my personal beliefs or religious orientation is all that interesting.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a theist, but not a traditional theist. I think that God is basically incomprehensible, and that to the extent that we can understand God it is only through symbols and metaphors. We use human metaphors to describe God, because that is the only way that we can understand God. If fish think about God, it is no doubt in terms of piscine metaphors.
What I don’t try to do is to put a label on myself. I just don’t find labels to be very helpful. My father-in-law, a card-carrying atheist, is rather horrified by what he perceives as my theism. You are convinced that I’m an atheist. So some day I want to get the both of you in the same room, and you two can battle it out and let me know what the corrrect label is.
Missourian: “His conclusions are determined in advance of facts, arguments and logic.”
Not at all. For ten years I was a dedicated fundamentalist Christian. For six of those years I lived in Christian communes that provided food and shelter to “hippies” and “trippers” and “druggies.” I had no income during that time, and lived a kind of monastic existence. During that time I read nothing but the Bible and the occasional newspaper.
Over time I became disenchanted with fundamentalism, and eventually rejected those beliefs. Since then I have spent 25 years reading and studying and thinking about things religious. So it is wrong to say that I approach all these issues with my mind already made up. Many of the arguments that I now reject on the basis of years of study are the very arguments that I myself used to make. I see that as a sign of personal growth, not a sign of a closed mind.
But having through the use of reason and the intellect escaped one religious ideology that I think is very wrong and potentially destructive , it is rather difficult for me to accept the idea that I now need to turn off the intellect so as to become susceptible to a different religious worldview. At the same time I understand that many of the most important things in life cannot be intellectually grasped. So what I try to do is to strike a balance between intellect and faith, though with my background certainly I place a very heavy emphasis on intellect. Well, enough about me.
Juli,
Can you point to an essay, book, or published quote by an OCA priest who rejects the authorship of the Gospels by St. Mathew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John? How about bishop, priest, or seminary professional in another jurisdiction? How about a quote from a Father, or perhaps a prayer or service?
Christopher writes: “Can you point to an essay, book, or published quote by an OCA priest who rejects the authorship of the Gospels by St. Mathew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John? How about bishop, priest, or seminary professional in another jurisdiction?”
“The fact that Mark was the bridge to the Petrine following must have sealed the tradition that the gospel was named after him; and he may well have actually been the author. However, the gospel text seems to allude to Mark as part of the gospel story. Another candidate would be the author of Luke-Acts [note “the author of,” not just “Luke”], who shows a mastery of the Greek language essential for anyone contemplating an undertaking of thos sort.”
The New Testament Introduction: Paul and Mark, p. 121, byThe Rev. Dr. Paul Nadim Tarazi of SVOTS.
Jim I would have to read the whole section, before I could accept your interpretation of Dr. Tarazi’s work. You choice appears only to portray an incomplete development of thought by him.
Thanks, Jim; I was also thinking of Tarazi as a published example. The quotation is on line here:
http://www.svots.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=240&Itemid=116
More:
Since the appeal to Peter was either written by Mark himself or used Mark as an example, or both, this book is in a sense a “Markan” message to the Petrine following, and since Luke’s name brings to mind Luke-Acts, I shall henceforth refer to this gospel and its author as simply “Mark.”
Note 16. Michael, we need to unpack this:
I think you have the process reversed. The authority of scripture is not derived from the Church but from the Gospel contained within it. That Gospel proceeded from the apostle (and before him, the prophet). The apostle differs from all others in that his word came directly from God while everyone else — you, me, the Church Fathers, everyone — reference the apostle, which is to say scripture because the scripture are the written record of the apostolic word.
The preaching of the Gospel constituted the Church (“Peter preached and then the Lord added to Church those who would be saved…”), and, I would argue, must reconstitute it in every generation.
To argue, then, that we venerate the Gospel because it is “alive with the Holy Spirit” and not because it was written by the apostle’s hand” isn’t really accurate. Rather, because the words of scripture are indeed apostolic, that is, they are the Gospel received from God given to us through the mouth (and mind) of the apostle, they give life to the hearer because, when when the Gospel is preached, Christ is revealed. The “enlivening” so to speak, occurs when (and if) the Gospel is heard when it is preached.
Note 9. Jim writes:
Yes, but…
This process already occured in the first through third centuries, and with a greater urgency than a later millenium could ever experience it. So, ironically, as these things often seem to be, we go back to history to resolve the paradigmatic historiographical shift you (correctly, IMO) outline. Specifically we look to the criteria of canonization, something I don’t want to do here right now. IOW, how did an earlier generation decide which gospels were indeed apostolic?
I don’t think this will be a huge issue for Orthodox, Catholics, and traditional Protestants simply because the traditions have historical specificity. It’s not a new issue for them. It will be wrenching for fundamentalists however, because their assumptions about the nature of truth are bound to modernist notions, ie: infallibility, etc.
Juli,
Having read your link, I see nothing there that suggests Fr. Paul does not accept the traditional accounts. Indeed, he depends on it for his account, (limited) speculations, and exposition. Got anything else? By the way, Fr. Paul spends some time on the ‘lecture circuit’ so to speak. He was at my parish for a Saturday last month. If you ever get a chance to here one of his lectures I would recommend him – he has a certain charismatic style that is not too subtle, yet appealing. I particularly like the way he emphasizes the continuity between the old and new covenant, something that many Orthodox (and other traditional Christians) sometimes forget even if the services do their best to remind us.
In any case, I would be interested in your thinking here. If the Church falsely accepted some Scripture, or falsely rejected other Scripture from the cannon, what’s your basis for accepting the creed, the Faith, and the Cup? Why are you Orthodox? Sounds like to me a congregational “priesthood of all believers” faith would be more true to your true beliefs
To argue, then, that we venerate the Gospel because it is “alive with the Holy Spirit” and not because it was written by the apostle’s hand” isn’t really accurate. Rather, because the words of scripture are indeed apostolic, that is, they are the Gospel received from God given to us through the mouth (and mind) of the apostle, they give life to the hearer because, when when the Gospel is preached, Christ is revealed. The “enlivening” so to speak, occurs when (and if) the Gospel is heard when it is preached.
Fr. Jacobse,
I would ask then in a rather blunt way: why should I not take the Gospel, the scripture, and go home – or perhaps form a separate church that better suits the why I, or my preferred group understands and reads scripture? Or, why not mix and match what ever “inspires” me, say the Gospel with the latest historical theory and a heavy dose of materialistic psychology? You say The authority of scripture is not derived from the Church but from the Gospel contained within it. but does this not in some important way place scripture above and beyond the Church? For the Gospel can be spoken, read, and meditated on away from the Church. Also, in our fallen state we are all tempted to a real nominalism and introverted way of interpreting and judging everything around us, including mere words. From scripture itself we have the example of the Ethiopian. Why would the Ethiopian need to be told how to read it if it contains it’s own authority and that authority can be grasped by merely “reading” it? Also, does not scripture itself contain all sorts of references to authority outside itself, like to take just one example the Body of Christ (i.e. the Church)? Is the Body dependent upon this particular collection called scripture, or does it also have the power of God sustaining it? To put it another way, if all scripture were burned and forgotten tomorrow would the Body of Christ cease to be a reality?
Note 31.
It places scripture, that is, the apostolic word, as the touchstone, the final ground, of all authority in the Church. Bishops and patriarchs are subject to it.
Your question is really one of prevailing authorities. If the scripture is preeminent (because of the Gospel contained within it) as I argue, it doesn’t follow that no other authority exists. Rather, the existing authorities are derivative, that is, they draw from and are confirmed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ that, when preached, reveals Christ. So, yes, the body is dependent upon scripture since it is the written record of that apostolic word that constitutes the Gospel. This point is confirmed by the Church itself in its liturgical practice, ie: placement of the Gospel on the Holy Table (even on top of the antimension), the Gospel is carried out first in procession, veneration of the Gospel during Orthros, all icons of Christ showing Him holding the Gospel (often open), etc.
If scripture were burned, etc?… Chrysostom answers (going by recall here) that if our hearts were purer, the scripture would not be necessary. But since they aren’t, it is necessary that word of God be preached.
I would never argue such a thing. I don’t think speculation about authorship amounts to that. I trust the canon, and I’m not a fundamentalist.
The passage Jim and I quoted simply demonstrates the writer’s willingness to engage the question of who wrote the Gospel of Mark (for example). He allows the possibility that someone other than St Mark was the author, and he treats it as an open, reasonable question. I don’t think it’s a question that diminishes the authority of the text.
You’re correct that it’s not an example of rejecting the traditional authorship – but it allows the possibility.
I have heard Fr Paul and hope to hear him again in a few weeks.
To Fr Hans’ comments on the centrality of Scripture I say “Amen.” I recently referred someone to a piece by Fr John Behr making just that point. Sometimes Orthodox Christians want to give Scripture a back seat to Tradition, when in fact it is the source of Tradition, and the touchstone.
Juli,
I see, you were not really speaking to the original article. I believe there is a bit of a slippery slope here. If we “allow the possibility” of “different authorship”, then what other part of Tradition are we going to reject, and on what basis? Perhaps just as importantly, what does Fr. Paul’s speculations really add (e.g. his suppositions of St. Mark creating a gospel to support Paul’s ‘gospel’ as opposed to James and Peter’s ‘gospel’) other than a point on which to make a scholarly career? I don’t see any value in it and it is pure speculation. As to not being a “fundamentalist” I have to admit I am a bit suspicious of people who are quick to distinguish themselves from them (as if there is a real and imminent crises of “fundamentalism” within Orthodoxy or the religious culture in general), particularly when the point seems be based on an effort to find some sort of agreement and common ground with a non-Christian such as Mr. Holman. It strikes me as transparent attempt at condescension…
Fr. Jacobse,
Yes, I think I am following what you are saying here. Would you say then that the heterodox (I am thinking here mostly of traditional – not liberal – protestant groups) then fail in that they don’t correctly derive these other authorities and traditions? Assuming that this failure is not merely a historical accident and based purely on ignorance that is. I ask because for them scripture is preeminant to the point of rejection of the Church itself, at least the Church as the Church (i.e. Orthodoxy) knows and defines itself.
Perhaps I am a nominalist after all, because I have to admit I tend toward what Michael originally said: bowing and crossing ourselves when the Priest holds it aloft precisely because it is alive with Holy Spirit not because it was written by the Apostle’s hands. If I thought I could ‘derive’ the Gospel (the truth of Christ) from scripture itself I would side with the heterodox and take my scripture home with me and meditate. Fact is, do to my fallen nature, I don’t think I can really hear the Gospel without the power of the Spirit in Christ’s Church. Also, I would not say I am overly impressed with the whole set of customs, ecclesiology, and traditions of the Church. No doubt the current financial/management/consensual crises in my current ‘jurisdiction’ (OCA) ought to remind anyone of the “human” nature of the Bishops and church ecclesiology. Perhaps what I am really questioning is why not a diverse (and thus the heterodox of the kind I referred to earlier are not heterodox after all) set of ‘derivative authorities’…
Christopher writes: “I believe there is a bit of a slippery slope here. If we ‘allow the possibility’ of ‘different authorship’, then what other part of Tradition are we going to reject, and on what basis?”
I don’t think you’re a fundamentalist, but this kind of reasoning is very similar to fundamentalist reasoning, though from a different basis. The fundamentalist argument is that if you admit that the Bible has a single error of fact of any kind, then where does it stop? If the Bible can be mistaken about one thing, then it can be mistaken about many things. If the Bible got the authorship of Matthew wrong, then maybe it got the resurrection wrong. And so on.
So whether one is defending church tradition or Biblical inerrancy, the argument is basically the same. I call it an “argument,” but of course it really isn’t an argument. It is a refusal to address the question through warning of the possible consequences of asking the question.
Christopher: “Perhaps just as importantly, what does Fr. Paul’s speculations really add (e.g. his suppositions of St. Mark creating a gospel to support Paul’s ‘gospel’ as opposed to James and Peter’s ‘gospel’) other than a point on which to make a scholarly career? I don’t see any value in it and it is pure speculation.”
Most people who actually study the issue of gospel authorship by looking at the details of the texts come to see that there is convincing evidence that the gospels were complied from a number of different sources. (Exactly what those sources were, and how they were used is open to question; thus the role of theory and speculation. That there were different sources is an established fact, at least as much as anything in the study of ancient texts could be established.)
A scholar such as Fr. Tarazi knows this. So it’s going to be pretty hard for someone such as Tarazi to talk about the authorship of the gospels. Tarazi speculates about gospel authorship in the same way that a physician speculates about what might cause certain symptoms in a patient. Such speculation simply comes with the profession.
My point is that a person who is serious about the study of the gospels has to ask the uncomfortable questions, and that nothing is solved by refusing to ask the questions. It seems to me that there is something profoundly wrong with a faith that must be protected from such questions, in the same way that there is something profoundly wrong with a faith that requires a literal 6,000 year old earth in order to survive.
There is also a kind of ad hominem subtext here, in which asking questions is discouraged for fear of someone ending up like Holman the atheist or Holman the non-Christian. The beliefs that I have (or don’t have) are the result of my own personal experience, reflection, and study. Others who have asked the same questions have come to different conclusions, and that’s fine with me. But the point is that you take the hard questions head-on, even if they take you out of the comfort zone and make your personal and spiritual life difficult.
Note 35. Christopher writes:
I don’t think traditional Protestants reject the Church, although I would grant there is great internal conflict on what Church is within most Protestant bodies. Fundamentalist Protestant certainly do and perhaps some Evangelicals, but solid traditional Protestants don’t. The dividing line seems to be if they have a proper sacramental understanding of the eucharist (the old battle between Luther and Zingli actually).
But to say that the other authorities are deriviative means only that that the Tradition derives its authority from the Gospel. I don’t agree with the recent apologetic that places scripture on the same authoritative plane as tradition. Tradition is derived from the Gospel through the words and actions of those who comprehended and lived in the Gospel of Christ. We can say that their work is “apostolic” only to the measure their work partakes of the Gospel and, as such, their work becomes a reference in the Christian life as well — often a very important reference given the quality and clarity of truth their works reveal. But even these works must conform to the touchstone, which is scripture since scripture is the written record of the apostolic word.
As far as authorship of the biblical texts, it doesn’t really matter to me if Mark, or the school of Mark, or the disciples of Mark, wrote Mark. I’m not so sure this was important in the earlier centuries either. Put another way, the text, on a purely practical plane functions as literature, not history. It took me a long time to see this because history is my focus. I majored in it in college, it is mostly what I read, etc. Not until I realized that history itself is narrative however, did it make sense to me that history too, is a literary genre. IOW, what we know of history is not the event itself, but the record of the event as preserved and recorded in the history book. When you read different historians and discern their biases, this conclusion becomes unavoidable. (A historian’s values are central to his historicity — how he “does” history.” It is impossible to separate them.)
Now I know the alarm bells are ringing, especially when I wrote that the scripture is literature. It works, though, if you realize what literature really is. Upstream you said:
But the fact is the scriptures are replete with these elements. Thus I come to the question about how truth is appropriated from the other direction: metaphor, poetry, prose, analogy, literalism, yes, even myth if applicable, are necessary constituents in comprehending the Truth since Truth comes to us through words.
We see this in the hymns of the Tradition all the time. Take the Salutations to the Theotokos for example. It is poetry of the highest order. Why poetry and not, say, prose? Because only poetry is capable of exceeding the conceptual boundaries of prose to reveal a deeper recess of reality. Poetry directs us into the contemplation of things otherwise not seen. Poetry does what an essay cannot do. And, if these words are indeed grounded in the Gospel (remember St. Paul here, when the Gospel is preached, Christ is revealed), then the knowledge conferred is transformative, since any encounter with Christ transforms the hearer. What kind of knowledge in this case? A deeper comprehension of the Incarnation since, as we know, all proper statements about the Theotokos are ultimately Christological.
The authority of scripture then, rests not in its historical verifiability, or infallibility, or in a doctrine of inspiration, or whatever criteria we create to ostensibly prove its veracity. The authority rests in the fact that the words it contains give life to the hearer, and they give life because they are the words of Christ that are “spirit and life.” Remember here what I said about the apostle earlier (applies to the prophet too): only the apostle claims he received his words directly from God.
How do I know this? I see the effects of the gospel when it is preached. If what I write is true, then the preaching (and by “preaching” I mean speaking the truth in the context and framework of scripture alone), brings Christ into a situation or event that requires Him. It really is a “Markan” view (since we are speaking of Mark), where situations and events are framed as a struggle between that which is true and that which is a lie — many of different intensities of course but nevertheless containing spiritual conflict.
The older I get, and the more versed I get in ministering the Gospel (and I’m only a beginner but still farther along than I was fifteen years ago), the more I see the sheer penetrating brilliance of scripture to cut through the clutter. The Gospel brings either healing or judgement (depending on how the hearer receives it) because it brings forward Christ. Put another way, by preaching the Gospel (and again, by this I mean that preaching the Gospel can be something like, say, reading the prescribed prayers in a hospital room — see the point about the apostolicity of the tradition above) clarity is restored because Christ is revealed. Of course, if the hearer rejects Truth he rejects Christ, and thus the Gospel is heard as a condemnation (which sometimes draws the ire of the hearer who resents the preacher in place of Christ).
I wrote about this in a bit more detail but less analytically in my article Casualties of the Culture War: Orthodoxy and Morality in the Public Arena. Scroll down to: A Personal Example.
Note 35. Christopher wrote:
A clarification and a few comments. We venerate the Gospel because within it are the words of life — not because it is “alive with the Holy Spirit” (it isn’t) or because it was “written by the Apostle’s hand” (it probably was written by scribes, a school, whatever). Remember that the scriptures are the written record of the apostolic word, that is, the Gospel. We venerate the Gospel because the scriptures are the material locus of the words that give “spirit and life.” What “enlivens” those words — what brings them off the page — is preaching. What enlivens our hearts upon hearing those words is the Holy Spirit who reveals Christ through that preaching.
This doesn’t undermine the authority of the Church (which is what you fear, I think). Rather, it sets the ground of that authority and defines what is meant by the scriptural term “body of Christ.” Authority, in other words, rests in servanthood (“Let this mind be in you…”), and not in any triumphalistic (imperialistic?) assertion no matter how kindly put.
You rightly point out the contradictory evidence, ie: Orthodoxy has some huge, even grave, problems. My view is that these will continue until there is a restoration of the gospel within her.
Fr. Hans, what I was trying to articulate was that it really does not make a difference whether a particular Gospel was acutally written by the person to whom authorship is ascribed. What matters is that it is true to the apostolic witness. The early Church was far better able to determine that that are we. Also it is quite possible that the actual written account is from an oral tradition derived directly from the teaching of the Apostles to whom authorship is ascribed. Oral tradition is quite reliable because great care is taken to make sure that the tradition is passed down correctly. So to say that this is the Gospel according to Mark may not be literally true in a specific sense, yet quite true in the general sense. My understanding of how the cannon of Scripture was selected was that it had to reveal the truth that had always been believed every where by all. Does the Holy Spirit create right belief or does right belief allow the Holy Spirit to act? IMO it is one of those antinomies with which the Church is full.
I fully agree with you that the preaching of the Scripture is what brings it alive, but is that not a product of the Holy Spirit acting through the specific form of the Church? There is so much Scripture that became intelligble to me after hearing it preached in the Church that was not understandable to me prior to hearing it from and within the Church.
The real starting point, however, IMO is the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit re-vivifying God’s creation. The written Gospel is both the source of Tradition and a product of that Tradition. It is critical to the well being of the Church and at the same time cannot be properly interpreted outside of the Church, but who actually wrote the words is of secondary importance. I felt that Jim Holman’s statement the preceeded my post was making the point that once the specific authorship of Holy Scripture was called into question, the whole faith was also in question. Such a belief is simply untenable from an Orthodox perspective. I apparently over emphasised one aspect in an inappropriate way.
What I do know is that to approach The Church, Tradition, and Holy Scripture form an essentially linear cause and effect, materialistic way of thought misses the entire point. Whatever criteria or method the Church used to decide the Cannon of Scripture, it was far more trustworthy than any method used today to criticize the selection. Nevertheless, we can acknowledge the veracity of certain acedemic findings today without in anyway distrubing the Church or our faith.
I hope this is clearer.
Michael writes: “I felt that Jim Holman’s statement the preceeded my post was making the point that once the specific authorship of Holy Scripture was called into question, the whole faith was also in question. Such a belief is simply untenable from an Orthodox perspective.”
In the minds of many Christians the gospels were eyewitness accounts of actual events written by the very persons to whom the gospels were attributed. The gospels are seen as literal history, or virtually that minus the legitimate artistic license of the authors.
What modern scholarship has shown, definitively in my opinion, is that the gospels were not eyewitness accounts written by the persons to whom authorship was traditionally ascribed. Rather, they were compilations of material from a number of sources. In particular, one common source was the gospel of Mark, virtually all of which was utilized in Matthew and Luke. But there are important differences between Matthew and Luke when Mark’s material is used. His grammar and terminology is improved. But more importantly, you can see how the gospel editors made certain changes in the material so as to theologically “improve” Mark’s material. Between the gospels, real differences of opinion begin to emerge.
I could go on, but you get the picture. As you study the details of the gospels, the human hand of the editors and their theological viewpoints become very evident. Question: does this “bring the whole faith into question?” The answer is that it depends what the content of “the whole faith” is. But at a minimum, I believe it requires a rethinking of what the content of faith actually is. It is no longer enough to believe that one reads the pure history of Jesus off the surface of the pages. Rather, you have to start looking at what the sources were, how that source material was changed, and what the motivation for the changes might have been.
As I read Fr. Hans, he is well aware of these issues, and has developed a view of the gospels that takes this into account. As I read Fr. Hans, his approach is to focus on the gospels, not as literal history, but as literary creations designed to reveal the essence of Jesus in a way that a literal history never could.
And I think there is some merit to this approach. For example, there is a famous portrait of George Washington. The historical George Washington apparently had smallpox, and his face was very scarred by that disease. But in the portrait there are no smallpox scars. In one sense you could say that the portrait of Washington was false. But I think it would be a fair argument to say that whether Washington had a scarred face was not relevant to our understanding of his essence as a person. In other words, the artist has to try to communicate the essence of Washington as a person through the medium of a timeless, unchanging painting on a small canvas. In that sense, the scars, though “historical,” would actually defeat the larger, more significant purpose. The paradox here is that through falsehood, truth is ultimately revealed.
I think this is the kind of argument that Fr. Hans would make for the gospels. But that argument comes at a price. And the price is that you can no longer speak with certainty about what is and is not historical in the gospels. You enter what Christopher rightly calls “the slippery slope.” But when you depart from history and enter the realm of literature it is entirely reasonable to ask what is historical and what is not; the slippery slope is a natural consequence of the methodology.
Fr. Hans has a reply to this. He says that he sees “the effects of the gospel when it is preached.” The gospel transforms. It uplifts. It revives. It gives life. The problem is that this is what all great literature does. When humans try to express something really important, they tell stories. But the power is in the story, not in the historicity of the story. The fact that the gospels have all these positive effects does not validate their historicity. You can’t jettison the historicity of the gospels at the front door, and then try to retrieve it at the back door of personal experience.
The problem is that traditional Christianity is supposed to be historical, not just transformative literature. But once you make the move into literature to some extent you lose the warrant for claiming that it is historical. In a sense it’s actually more of a cliff than a slippery slope.
The problem in traditional Christianity is that believers want to claim that certain things in the gospels really did happen — Jesus really did walk on water, was born of a Virgin, rose from the dead, and so on — that these things are not just inspired literature but real historical events. I just don’t see, from a historical perspective, what the justification of that belief is.
So I like the solution that Fr. Hans proposes, but ultimately I think it causes more problems for him than what it resolves.
Fr. Jacobse (and Michael)
Thanks for the detailed response. Much to think on. Probably, I guess I would ask you to say more on how scripture relates to the Church as Body, how the Spirit acts in and through the Church, etc. What makes me hesitate is that I am still not sure why I should not take my scripture home with me, or what makes the Orthodox Church different from any other traditional church. The simple fact is the Heterodox often preach just as you describe, and I am sure it does good and is true “servanthood”. I suspect you are worried that too often the Church reverts to simple triumphalism…
Christopher, as Christians we are called to community and beyond that, Sacramental community. Scripture repeatedly testifies to the fact that we cannot be Christians in isolation. John 6:48-57, especially verse 53:
We are not just saved by ourselves, for ourselves. Just as the fall of man had consequences for the entire creation, so too does salvation. The Kingdom of Heaven is a communal feast, not individual spiritial bliss. Jesus gave himself up for the life of the world (in John 6:51). Just as God is community, so too is His Church and the process of salvation. That is the essential part of the Scripture being in and of the Church, not subject to private interpretation. That is part of what Fr. Han’s was getting at (I think). The Word is preached and heard. The Gospel is proclaimed out loud for all to hear. The Psalms are sung. The whole Divine Liturgy (the work of the people) is a continual calling out from the altar to come and worship, taste and see. If no one is there to hear and no one responds to the call, what is the point? Orthodox priests cannot celebrate the Liturgy by themselves, others have to be present.
“Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them”
Private study and contemplation of the Holy Scripture can be beneficial, but IMO it will not have the same transformative effect as joyfully receving it with others in worship and acting on it together.
Even the ascetics who went out into the desert were usually followed and communities formed around them. St. Mary of Egypt’s repentence was not complete until it was made known to the Church for the benefit of all–only then could she pass on in repose.
One of the central work that we Christians are called to do for each other is to bear one another’s burdens. If we just take our Bible and go home, that does not happen, yet in a healthy, sacramental community, it is impossible for it not to happen. We are distinct persons in God, but we are not individuals in the modern sense nor are we autonomous. As we share in His Body and Blood we are not only drawn closer to Him, but to each other.
As Judas is described in the Scriptures, he has isolated himself from the other disciples, which is why when he betrayed Our Lord, he was unable to ask for or accept mercy and so sank into despair.
The New Yorker magazine last week had a very good review of the so-called Gospel of Judas, that make it clear that this presentation of Christ is totally alien to and incompatible with the four canonical Gospels. The underlying philosophy is clearly that of the heretical Gnostic movement, and today would probably have more in common with the mystical Jewish Kaballah sect than traditional Christianity. Judas is is the main character of this new Gospel, not Christ, whose ethical teachings have been replaced by cryptic comsic sayings.
see http://www.newyorker.com/printables/critics/060417crbo_books
Reviewer Adam Gopnik writes:
Judas Gospel Figure Has Tainted Past
A dealer credited with ‘rescuing’ the document allegedly played a major role in the looting of antiquities. She received a suspended sentence.
By Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino, Times Staff Writer
April 13, 2006
In its unveiling of the Gospel of Judas last week, the National Geographic Society credited Swiss antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger Tchacos with “rescuing” the ancient manuscript, described as one of the most important archeological finds of the last century.
But National Geographic made no mention of a suspended sentence Tchacos received in Italy four years ago for possession of looted antiquities, nor her alleged involvement for years in antiquities trafficking.
…more