With
great fanfare, National Geographic and CNN teamed
up to publicize and publish the translation of a new text,
The Gospel of Judas. The publicists informed us that
we would get the real story of Judas, and that real story
was now clear: Jesus asked Judas to betray Him so that
He could escape His body and return to God. The academic community
was not smitten with this new discovery, in part because word
had been leaked and in part because the newsy stuff was not
news at all. But, still, many were smitten by this news and
tuned into the National Geographic special or purchased
the translation.
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Why, I continue to ask myself, are
folks so interested in this sort of thing? It is not hard
to connect The Gospel of Judas to The DaVinci Code
and ask one very interesting question: Why do so many seemingly
want to believe what these texts say, even though responsible
thinkers of all persuasions contend that neither is reporting
reliable information either about Jesus or the earliest centuries
of the Christian faith? Before I answer this question, let
me put on the table why we think The Gospel of Judas
does not tell us anything about the historical Judas or the
historical Jesus.
Irenaeus, in A.D. 180, the Bishop
of Lyons, was the most influential Christian thinker of his
day , and it was his Rule of Faith that led eventually to
the classical Christian Creeds, like the Nicene Creed. Irenaeus
faced some Christians who threatened the Rule of Faith because
they were adopting gnostic ideas. His polemical book, filled
with all kinds of heated rhetoric, is called Against Heresies.
It was also called Detection and Overthrow of Falsely-Named
Knowledge (or, Gnosis).
In its basic form, Gnosticism in all
its varieties taught that matter (physical life on earth)
was either evil or miserable or something to be endured. What
really mattered was spiritual release through "saving knowledge"
(gnosis). Now Irenaeus spoke of what may have been
a kind of Gnosticism, called the Cainites, who revered folks
like Cain, Esau, Korah, the Sodomites and others who were
cast as evil characters in the biblical story. The quintessential
character of this tradition, of course, is Judas. So, it is
not surprising that the Cainites were connected to what Irenaeus
calls the "Gospel of Judas." He tells us that they believed
exactly what The Gospel of Judas now tells us: that
he "accomplished the mystery of the betrayal." That mystery,
so it now turns out, is that Jesus asked Judas to betray Him.
Scholars of all stripes agree on this:
the Judas of The Gospel of Judas is contrived; the
theology of the text is second century at the earliest; the
relationship of Jesus to Judas is not as this text says it
is. What they agree on is that this text tells us about a
kind of Gnosticism (or gnostic Christianity) in the second
century. But it does not tell us about Jesus or the real Judas.
That's hype to sell the book.
The Gospel of Judas was discovered
in 1978 but intrigue grasped the tattered manuscript before
we could read its words: its owners changed, one wanted lots
of money for it, no buyers could be found, he shopped it around
even letting a scholar from California take a look—and
he went to the men's room and jotted down notes to preserve
his memory, no buyers could still be found, it was frozen
to preserve it (which damaged it), and then stored in a bank
box, but it had to be shoved into the box and it was damaged
even further, and then finally a purchaser and then a translator
and now a published edition. Intrigue alone will interest
the average Westerner. Add conspiracy to the mix, and you've
got a genuine mystery.
The conspiracy theory, that the Church
suppressed this gospel and we are only now learning about
it, is what leads us to explore our central question: Why
do so many want to believe this report? And, to be
honest, why do they want to believe in spite of the fact that
many know it is not historically reliable information? The
answer to this question is why I think The Gospel of Judas
is relevant to us today: This generation wants to believe
it because they can't believe in the Church, because
they can't believe the Church's story about itself
is reliable and true and trustworthy.
How so? We live in a generation that
learned common human decency from Mr. Rogers and from Sesame
Street and from Barney. These folks were good, they were
kind, they treated people with respect, they were tolerant,
and they were taught by such TV shows that honesty is required.
But this same generation observes, on the same TV, the scandals
of televangelists, the defrocking of pedophile priests, and
the impotence of local churches to make a difference. If Mr.
Rogers is telling the truth, they conclude, then the Church
isn't. So, they are led to think, maybe the Church has not
been telling the truth all along. Maybe, and here they add
to the brew the neo-Marxist suspicion of power, the Church
has used its power to suppress the truth, even the truth about
Jesus Himself, all along. It's a conspiracy, and we've finally
cracked the code.
So, I think The Gospel of Judas
comes at the right time for a generation in search of the
truth: it feeds the fuel of a generation that is wondering
if the Church will step up to the plate, open its books for
public inspection and open its history to genuine revision
so the truth about Jesus and truth about the Creeds can be
known. Personally, I'm not so cynical—and I think the
records for the development of the Church are not so hidden.
But, I will say this: I understand why the present generation
just might want to believe that another story might tell the
truth.
What makes this text relevant to me
is that it makes me realize that the only thing this generation
will believe is a Story that is made true by local churches
that live out that Story in such a way that it becomes a living,
credible Story for a new generation. We should perhaps quit
picking holes in the historical value of these texts and start
seeing the holes in our own image.
Scot McKnight is the Karl
A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies at North Park University
(Chicago, Ill.), where he is also the Department Chair and
the Director of the College of Christian Life and Thought.
Scot is the author of more than 20 books including his latest
Praying
with the Church and Embracing
Grace. |
