Orthodoxy didn't burn them all. Recently restored Judas Gospel a National Geographic special and three books coming out.
A restored text of most of the Judas Gospel is ready for presentation. Until now it was mainly known about from excerpts by critics. The old text found in a cave is one of the oldest Bible related materials in existence.
"From a historian's point of view, just because what you are looking at in the Nag Hammadi texts, early Christianity was far more diverse and perhaps contentious than people realize," - Jeffrey Kripal, chairman of Rice University's religious studies department.Pagels: Those of us who go to church may find our Easter reflections more mysterious than ever.
In other news an experiment hammers another nail into Intelligent Design's coffin. Evolution of 'irreducible complexity' explained in DNA computer simulation. Oregon researchers prove system reducibility occurs in a Darwinian evolutionary fashion.
2 comments:
Anti-Semitism's Muse
Boy, am I glad that somebody found another story about Judas to patch
up differences among Christians and Jews. In my own opinion, I am sick
and tired of hearing how Judas (the Jew!) finked on Jesus. All my
life, both childhood and adulthood, I have had to listen to this crap
about Judas denying Jesus, fingering him and turning him in.
Aha, now, thanks to National Geographic, which I always remember for
showing me naked breasts in my teenage years (in living color), Judas
is not a bad guy at all, and guess what that means?
It means that the Jews are not bad people after all. They didn't
collectively turn Jesus in to the Romans, they didn't turn their
collective backs on him after all. Long live Judas, the new Good Guy
of the Jews. Maybe now my Christian friends will go one step further
and admit that maybe, yes, just maybe, the Jews didn't reject Jesus at
all, as the old Gospels say, but just had a little difference of
opinion over who he really was.
No more, in churches around the world during Holy Week, will
Christians will hear the familiar story of Christ's Passion: the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the betrayal at the hands of Judas
(the Jew!) Iscariot, well, you know the story well.
Now, thanks to National Geographic, Judas the Jew is portrayed not as
the treacherous Jewish apostle but rather as a new Jewish hero of the
Easter story who helps fulfill Christian history by doing Jesus' own
bidding. I love it. Long live the Jews!
After centuries of Christian rancor and persecution directed at Jews,
much of it magnified through the lens of a caricatured Judas, it's
nice to know that Judas was not a traitor after all. Thank God. Thank
you, National Geographic.
"Every great Christian hero story needs a great Jewish villain, and
Judas serves that literary purpose well," according to some Christian
pundits in the past.
In the second century, a bishop, Papias, was already relating a legend
that Judas (the damned Jew!) ended his days so bloated he could not
see out of his swollen eyes and could not walk down a wide road. Spit
on that Jew!
Papias also wrote that Judas stank and urinated pus and worms, and was
so immobile he was crushed by a chariot. And it gets worse, my dear
Christian and Jewish readers: by the Middle Ages, the ugly archetype
of Judas the Jew as the personification of Judaism began to take hold:
a hunched figure with a large nose and red hair who would do anything
for money, including betray Christians. I kid you not: this is the
gospel truth of Middle Ages stereotypes. Deal with it.
Hey, even Dante cast Judas the Jew into the lowest ring of his
"Inferno," and the Passion plays that became part of the Holy Week
traditions often showed Judas (always the Jew!) being tormented in
hell by demons. (But you know what? The Roman Catholic Church never
officially pronounced on the eternal fate of Judas. Thank you. Thank
you.)
However, I have on good authority that some scholars still suspect
that if the anti-Semitic slur of Judas as the great Jewish traitor
hadn't existed, Christians would probably have invented someone like
him to keep anti-Semitism alive. The Church, one must admit, no matter
which side of the aisle you sit on, invented anti-Semitism and turned
it into an art.
But now, Christian-Jewish relations can become warm and friendly again.
With Judas 'rehabilitated,' all things are possible. Long live the
National Geographic enterprise!
"If you take away Judas as the bad guy, it is one step back from
blaming all the Jews," my spiritual advisor says. "It will lead to
less anti-Semitism in the church."
I'm glad. It's as simple as that. Another piece of old religious
propaganda bites the bullet. I'm so glad.
Jesus was Jew.
Only ignorant people call Judas the only Jew in Israel at that time.
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