The Gospel of Judas and Gnosticism

Pointing out the historical and theological inacurracy of "the Gospel of Judas" and the media manipulation of it's release.

"The Judas Gospel:

Suppose that sometime around the year 3,800 A.D., someone wrote a newspaper that began: 'According to a recently-discovered document, which appears to have been written sometime before 1926, Benedict Arnold did not attempt to betray George Washington and the American cause, as is commonly believed. Rather, Benedict Arnold was acting at the request of George Washington, because Washington wanted Arnold to help him create a dictatorship of the proletariat and the abolition of private property.'

A reader who knew her ancient history would recognize that the newly-discovered 'Arnold document' was almost certainly not a historically accurate account of the relationship between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. The reader would know that the terms 'dictatorship of the proletariat' and 'abolition of private property' come from a political philosophy, Marxism, which was created long after Washington and Arnold were dead. The reader would also know that the most reliable records from the 18th century provided no support for the theory that Washington or Arnold favored a dictatorship of the proletariat or the abolition of private property.

This Friday's coverage of the so-called 'Gospel of Judas' in much of the U.S. media was appallingly stupid. The Judas gospel is interesting in its own right, but the notion that it disproves, or casts into doubt, the traditional orthodox understanding of the betrayal of Jesus is preposterous.

In the March 2 issue of USA Today, ancient Egyptian documents expert James Robinson correctly predicted that the owners of the Judas Gospel manuscript would attempt to release it to coincide with the publicity build-up for 'The DaVinci Code' movie, but explained that the 'gospel' was part of a genre of pseudo-gospels from the second century onward, in which the authors simply made up the stories. In contrast, virtually all serious scholarship about the canonical gospels (Matth"