for centuries scholars knew that there
once was a Gospel of Judas a gospel that
portrays Judas the famous betrayer of
Jesus in the New Testament as somehow
having secret knowledge about who Jesus
really was IRA Gnaeus the Christian
Church Father in heresy ologists wrote
about this long lost gospel in the 180c
ii while criticizing a particular
Christian sect they say that Judas the
traitor was thoroughly acquainted with
these things and that he alone knowing
the truth as no others did accomplish
the mystery of the betrayal by him all
things both earthly and heavenly were
thus dissolved they produce a fictitious
history of this kind which they call the
Gospel of Judas almost 2,000 years later
we probably have the text that ironies
talks about in 2006 National Geographic
released the details of a so-called
Gnostic Gospel of Judas now there is no
guarantee that this gospel is the same
gospel that irony's talks about but it
does portray Jesus and Judas having some
sort of secret conversation however
except for a few sound bites from the
media most people still don't really
know much about this text or its
significance so what do we know about
this gospel and what does it really say
the discovery of the Gospel of Judas is
a long and convoluted story and it's not
really well documented what we do know
is that an Egyptian treasure hunter
discovered the Codex and the Mini of
province of Egypt about 120 miles south
of Cairo sometime in the 1970s in a cave
the treasure hunter supposedly found a
limestone box containing several ancient
documents including the Codex that
contains the Gospel of Judas these texts
were eventually sold to an antiquities
dealer in Cairo who goes by the name of
Hana ossible he then turned around and
tried to sell the text or the
astronomical price of three million
dollars however after several years he
was not able to find a buyer so in 1984
he smuggled the Codex into the United
States and he stored it in all places in
a safe deposit box in Long Island now
this proved to be a huge mistake for
anyone that knows the New York climate
it's not exactly the dry sands of Egypt
so after 16 years of being in the safe
deposit box the Codex slowly started to
disintegrate in the humidity of New York
finally another antiquities dealer Freda
a nutburger chako's bought the text in
September 2000 who
to get it to some real manuscript
conservators but by then the gospel had
sustained heavy damage scholars estimate
that at least ten or fifteen percent of
the gospel had been lost because of this
mishandling so after 30 years of
bouncing between antiquities dealers and
art conservators finally National
Geographic gained the rights to publish
the Codex and in April 2006 they
published a translation and photographs
of the gospel for the whole world to see
and finally scholars could start
analyzing one of the most important
discoveries of early Christian history
from the past century codex tchacos is
about 16 by 29 centimeters and
originally included four texts the
letter of Peter to Philip the first
apocalypse of James The Book of Allah
journeys and the Gospel of Judas it is
written in sahih Coptic an ancient
Egyptian language that was spoken in the
late Roman province of Egypt many of our
other ancient Christian texts are
written in Coptic to radiocarbon dating
places the Codex in the 3rd or 4th
century but if this gospel is the same
gospel that irony is talks about then we
might be dealing with a third century
copy of a second century text maybe one
that dates back to 150 C II which makes
it surprisingly early for a non
canonical gospel now it's important to
lay down some fundamental assumptions
that may seem way too obvious to some of
you Judas Iscariot the disciple of Jesus
and the betrayer of Jesus according to
the New Testament did not write this
text remember it dates to at least 150 C
E which is a century after Jesus and His
disciples would have lived nor does this
gospel tell us anything about the
historical Jesus remember as a 2nd or
3rd century text it tells us a lot about
what 2nd and 3rd century Christians were
thinking about but doesn't tell us much
at all about a first century rabbi
living in the Roman province of
Palestine I would summarize the Gospel
of Judas as a series of discussions
between Jesus and His disciples
interspersed with more personal
conversations between Judas and Jesus
about cosmology or the creation of the
universe pay attention to three things
how the gospel portrays the 12 disciples
the Gospels mythology and theology which
is very different from Nicene
Christianity and how the gospel portrays
Judas himself the gospel begins with the
discussion between Jesus and His
disciples that portrays the twelve
disciples in a very unfavorable light
the disciples are there
worshiping together it's implied they
might be practicing the Eucharist
together and then Jesus walks over and
starts laughing at them and the
disciples are confused they're like why
is Jesus laughing at us we're doing the
right thing with our Eucharistic prayer
and Jesus responds I am NOT laughing at
you you do not do this by your own will
but by this your God will be worshipped
your God wait is Jesus implying that the
12 disciples are worshipping the wrong
God well naturally the 12 disciples are
very confused by Jesus's comment teacher
are you not the son of our God to which
he responds truly I tell you no
generation will know me from the people
who are among you pretty harsh words for
supposedly the 12 most important men in
early Christianity throughout the Gospel
of Judas the 12 disciples are portrayed
as angry ignorant confused men who are
blasphemous towards Jesus himself
remember we're talking about the second
and third century here Christianity was
not yet a well-organized institution
Nicene orthodoxy didn't yet exist in the
form that we know it and a lot of church
leaders were claiming their authority
stems from the Twelve Apostles
themselves certain Christian groups
might have had a lot to gain by
attacking this authority but Judas is
different here among the disciples only
he knows the true nature of Jesus none
of the other disciples could stand
before Jesus but Judas was able to stand
before him Judas said to him I know who
you are and whence you have come you
have come from the immortal realm of bar
below and he who sent you I am not
worthy to proclaim his name okay okay
this is where things get really
confusing so a little bit of background
in Sethi and Gnostic theology will help
a lot
you see many scholars classify the
Gospel of Judas as a Sethi on text or
sometimes a Sethi and Gnostic texts now
it's important to say that these
categories Seth Ian and Gnosticism are
extremely complicated and contested
categories among academics as I talked
about in another video Gnosticism is a
modern category that scholars have used
to try to classify certain Christian
texts we shouldn't think of Gnosticism
and Sathya nism as clearly defined
religions in antiquity no one in
antiquity ever uses the word Gnosticism
no one in antiquity ever says I am part
of a religion called Gnosticism but I'm
using the terms here to help draw out
similarities between the Gospel of Judas
and some other texts that scholars have
classified as Gnostic or sofyan such as
the apocalypse of Adam the apocryphon of
John the Coptic gospel of the Egyptians
Allah Genizah and Zoe's Triano's the
Sethi and mythology in these texts is
essentially a prologue to the book of
Genesis while Genesis says that one
supreme god created the universe
the Gnostics say that this being was
merely an evil lesser being named
yaldabaoth or sockless which means fool
the truly supreme God is an unknown
unnameable God who through a series of
emanations or spontaneously expanding
his essence
created a series of celestial beings
called eons and archons one of which
being sockless the evil creator God this
is why Judas says you have come from the
immortal realm of bar below and he who
sent you I am not worthy to proclaim his
name Judas here is talking about the
Supreme God the unknown God who he can't
even name and bar below is one of the
first celestial beings that emanated
from the Supreme God so in the Gospel of
Judas the twelve disciples are
worshiping sockless the evil creator of
the world and they mistaken Jesus to be
from sockless when in actuality he is
one of the heavenly beings like bar
below later in the gospel Jesus
describes this creation myth to Judas
next sockless said to his angels let us
create a human being according to the
likeness and according to the image then
they formed Adam and his wife Eve so
this closely mirrors a verse from
Genesis where God says let us make man
in our own image but in the Gnostic
version this story is flipped on its
head with the world being created by an
evil lesser God's aquas so Judas is
special here because only he recognizes
where Jesus truly comes from and because
of the secret knowledge that Judas has
many scholars assumed that the gospel is
portraying Judas in a very favorable
light as opposed to the other disciples
who are being portrayed as idiots when
National Geographic first published this
translation they said that Judas is
portrayed as Jesus's most loyal disciple
and his best friend but many scholars
have later disputed this one reason
being Jesus refers to Jude
as a demon Judith said teacher listen to
me now just as he listened to all of
them for I have a great vision but when
Jesus heard this he laughed he said to
him why are you getting worked up 13th
demon speak now and I shall bear with
you both in Greek and Coptic the word
diamond can mean either an evil demon or
a neutral spirit in the National
Geographic version they translated this
verse as Jesus laughed and said to him
you thirteenth spirit why do you try so
hard the scholar April to Connick an
expert on Gnosticism argues that the
thirteenth demon is a title given to
sockless who dwells in the thirteenth
realm so to call Judas the thirteenth
demon is to call him the earthly double
to the evil creator God himself but
there's a lot of debate over whether
Judas is portrayed in a favorable light
or an unfavorable light but I'll include
an entire bibliography on my website if
you really want to delve into this
yourself but at the very least we should
be very hesitant to say that the Gospel
of Judas portrays Judas as some best
friend and confidant to Jesus the text
just doesn't seem to bear that out over
all the Gospel of Judas is a fascinating
text and has greatly contributed to our
understanding of Christianity in the 2nd
and 3rd century a time when even the
theology of creation and God himself was
still in flux as always thanks for
watching and subscribing and I'll see
you next time