Secrets of Judas

by James M. Robinson

  We would have fared like Sodom

  And been made like Gomorrah.

  Their condemnation continued even more explicitly in the post-apostolic age (Jude 7):

  Likewise, Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which in the same manner as they, indulged in sexual immorality and went after other flesh, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.

  Then, in what is probably the last New Testament book to be written, as late as the second century, one gets the fullest formulation of their depravity (2 Pet. 2:4, 6, 9–10):

  For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgment;… and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly;… then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment—especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority.

  This then is the Sodom that Irenaeus puts in association with Cain!

  Two centuries after Irenaeus, Epiphanius also quotes and refutes the Gnostic sect that produced The Gospel of Judas:2

  And others say, “No, he [Judas] betrayed him despite his goodness because of heavenly knowledge. For the [evil] archons knew, they say, “that the weaker power would be drained if Christ were given over to crucifixion.” “And when Judas found this out,” they say, “he was anxious, and did all he could to betray him, and performed a good work for our salvation. And we must commend him and give him the credit, since the salvation of the cross was effected for us through him, and the revelation of the things which that occasioned.”

  Hence Judas did not betray the Savior from knowledge, as these people say; nor will the Jews be rewarded for crucifying the Lord, though we certainly have salvation through the cross. Judas did not betray him to make him the saving of us, but from the ignorance, envy and greed of the denial of God.

  “And therefore,” they say, “Judas has found out all about them [the higher powers].” For they claim him as kin too and consider him particularly knowledgeable, so that they even attribute a short work to him, which they call The Gospel of Judas.

  Here, Epiphanius is relating a very familiar Gnostic dualism about this world being evil and the heavenly world being good, so the death of Christ’s weaker, earthly body could have been seen by Judas as the necessary event to release Christ’s heavenly nature. Epiphanius condemns any notion of Judas as being motivated by anything other than ignorance and greed, but acknowledges that there are some, to the contrary, who commend Judas as “knowledgeable” (the Gnostic’s essential theme), give him some credit for Christ’s salvific act, and attribute a gospel to him.

  WHAT SCHOLARS ALREADY KNOW ABOUT THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS

  There is a standard scholarly reference work about such Gospels that were not accepted into the canon of the New Testament. It reports, in all too academic a way, but nonetheless succinctly and exhaustively, all that has been known thus far about the Cainites and their Gospel of Judas. Let me quote this reference work, with all due apologies for its pedantry:3

  · 1. Attestation: the most important and oldest source here is Irenaeus (adv. Haer. I 31.1 = Theodoret of Cyrus, Haereticorum fabularum compendium I 15, PG LXXXIII 368 B): certain gnostic sectaries possessed in addition to other works of their own composition, a ‘gospel’ under the name of the traitor Judas (Judae euangelium,…); these sectaries are elsewhere identified with the Cainites, and reckoned among the ‘Gnostics’ of Epiphanius, the Nicolaitans, Ophites, Sethians, or Carpocratians. The existence and title of the document… are also attested by Epiphanius (Pan. 38.1.5; II, 63.13f. Holl.)

  · 2. Content: it would be rash to ascribe to the Gospel of Judas a quotation derived by Epiphanius from a Cainite book (Pan. 38.2.4; II, 64.17–19 Holl. ‘This is the angel who blinded Moses, and these are the angels who hid the people about Korah and Dathan and Abiram, and carried them off’). Still less reason is there for ascribing to this gospel a formula reproduced by Irenaeus (I 31.2 and Epiphanius 38.2.2), which accompanied the sexual rite practiced by the sect for the attainment of the ‘perfect gnosis.’ As to the subject and content of the apocryphon, we are reduced to simple conjecture, supported at best by some characteristics of Cainite doctrine as it is known from the notices of the heresiologues. It is possible, but far from certain, that this ‘gospel’ contained a passion story setting forth the ‘mystery of the betrayal’ (proditionis mysterium,…) and explaining how Judas by his treachery made possible the salvation of all mankind: either he forestalled the destruction of the truth proclaimed by Christ, or he thwarted the designs of the evil powers, the archons, who wished to prevent the crucifixion since they knew that it would deprive them of their feeble power and bring salvation to men (ps.-Tertullian, adv. Omn. Haer. 2; Epiphanius, Pan. 38.3.3–5; Filastrius, Haer. 34; Augustine, de Haer. 18; ps.-Jerome, Indiculus de haer. 8; cf. Bauer, Leben Jesu, p. 176). However that may be, the work was probably in substance an exposition of the secret doctrine (licentious and violently antinomian in character) ostensibly revealed by Judas, a summary of the Truth or of the superior and perfect Gnosis which he was supposed to possess by virtue of a revelation (Irenaeus, I 31.1; Epiph. Pan. 38.1.5; Filastrius, Haer. 34).

  · 3. Dating: The Gospel of Judas was of course composed before 180, the date at which it is mentioned for the first time by Irenaeus in adv. Haer. If it is in fact a Cainite work, and if this sect—assuming that it was an independent Gnostic group—was constituted in part, as has sometimes been asserted, in dependence on the doctrine of Marcion, the apocryphon can scarcely have been composed before the middle of the 2nd century. This would, however, be to build on weak arguments. At most we may be inclined to suspect a date between 130 and 170 or thereabouts.

  Very little is actually known about The Gospel of Judas. But more can be known about the sect that is said to have produced the text, the Cainites. Irenaeus classified them as Gnostics, and Epiphanius associated them with “the people about Korah and Dathan and Abiram.” This is of course guilt by association. But at least it shows how they were seen by the early church fathers.

  What had Dathan and Abiram done that was so terrible? The Hebrew scriptures tell the story in all its gory details (Num. 16:27–33):

  Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the entrance of their tents, together with their wives, their children, and their little ones. And Moses said, This is how you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works; it has not been of my own accord: If these people die a natural death, or if a natural fate comes on them, then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates something new, and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up, with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised the Lord. As soon as he finished speaking all these words, the ground under them was split apart. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households—everyone who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they with all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol; the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.

  The story is told again in a simple listing of the Israelites who came out of Egypt with Moses (Num. 26:9–11):

  The descendants of Eliab: Nemuel, Dathan, and Abiram. These are the same Dathan and Abiram, chosen from the congregation, who rebelled against Moses and Aaron in the company of Korah, when they rebelled against the Lord, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up along with Korah, when that company died, when the fire devoured two hundred fifty men; and they became a warning. Notwithstanding, the sons of Korah did not die.

  Even when Deuteronomy summarizes what God had done for the chosen people, this has to be repeated (Deut. 11:2, 6–7):

  Remember today that… it is you who must acknowledge his greatness, his mighty hand and his outstretched arm
,… what he did to Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab son of Reuben, how in the midst of all Israel the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, along with their households, their tents, and every living being in their company.

  A psalm recalls (Ps. 106:7, 16–18):

  Our ancestors, when they were in Egypt, did not consider your wonderful works; they did not remember the abundance of your steadfast love, but rebelled against the Most High at the Red Sea…. They were jealous of Moses in the camp, and of Aaron, the holy one of the Lord. The earth opened and swallowed up Dathan, and covered the faction of Abiram. Fire also broke out in their company; the flame burned up the wicked.

  What these terrible people did was to seek to share with the family of Aaron the priestly function in the tabernacle. Terrible? Is it just our modern sensitivities that takes offense when God takes credit that 250 Israelites “go down alive into Hell,” “together with their wives, their children, and their little ones”? Is that also something that could have offended readers at an earlier time, making them even wonder just how good and loving their God really was? But watch out—I may have just about talked you into becoming a Gnostic, even a Cainite!

  All one has to do, or had to do back then, is to be very painfully aware of just how terrible the world really is, so terrible in many ways to be unconvinced that poor old Adam and Eve could take the blame for all of it. God must have made it that way—if not before Adam and Eve, then in any case as terrible punishment after Adam and Eve.

  A GNOSTIC CREATION STORY

  Is what Adam and Eve wanted to do really so terrible as to get the blame for all the evil that is in the world? A thinking person (their term: a Gnostic) could give a literal interpretation of the creation story of Genesis 3 that turns it upside down:4

  It is written in the Law about this: God commanded Adam, “From every tree you may eat, but from the tree that is in the middle of paradise do not eat, for on the day that you eat from it, you will certainly die.” But the snake was wiser than all the other animals in paradise, and he persuaded Eve by saying, “On the day that you eat from the tree that is in the middle of paradise, the eyes of your mind will be opened.” Eve obeyed; she stretched out her hand, took from the tree, and ate. She also gave some fruit to her husband who was with her. Immediately they realized that they were naked. They took some fig leaves and put them on as aprons.

  But at evening time God came along, walking in the middle of paradise. When Adam saw him, he went into hiding. And God said, “Adam, where are you?” He answered, “I have come under the fig tree.” At that very moment God realized that he had eaten from the tree about which he had commanded him, “Don’t eat from it.”

  And God said, “Who is it who instructed you?” Adam answered, “The woman you gave me.” And the woman said, “It is the snake who instructed me.” He cursed the snake and called him Devil. And God said, “Look, Adam has become like one of us now that he knows evil and good.” Then he said, “Let’s throw him out of paradise so he doesn’t take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.”

  What kind of a God is this? First, he begrudged Adam’s eating from the tree of knowledge. Second, he said, “Adam, where are you?” God does not have foreknowledge; otherwise, wouldn’t he have known from the beginning? He has certainly shown himself to be a malicious grudger. And what kind of a god is this?

  Great is the blindness of those who read such things, and they don’t know him. He said, “I am the jealous God; I will bring the sins of the fathers upon the children up to three and four generations.” He also said, “I will make their heart thick, and I will cause their minds to become blind, that they might not understand nor comprehend the things that are said.” But these are things he says to those who believe in him and worship him!

  The Gnostic would ask of us, Are you also the victim of blindness, not knowing that God is a jealous God, making your heart thick, your mind blind, so that you will not understand? Don’t you realize that God himself is not all that smart, not even knowing where Adam is? What’s wrong with the eyes of your mind being opened? What’s wrong with Adam becoming like “one of us,” like a divine being, godlike? What’s so wrong with eating from the tree of life and living forever? Are you really against the immortality of the soul? What kind of God is this, after all—“a malicious grudger”? A malevolent God like that would surely explain how the world he created is so terrible.

  Is that really the last word? Isn’t there some hope somewhere? Maybe high above the heavens—the same evil God who made the earth also made the heavens—and so, beyond the heavens? Some really decent, good, loving God that the Hebrew scriptures don’t know about, a hidden God? Yet a hidden God who did reveal himself, on rare occasions, to persons who resisted the evil God, and hence got punished by the evil God, and got a terrible reputation in the scriptures dictated by the evil God?

  THE MALIGNED CAIN

  Who got worse notoriety in the scriptures than Cain? Just listen (Gen. 4:1–15):

  Now the man knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord.” Next she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”

  Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen, your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

  Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.” Then the Lord said to him, “Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance. And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who came upon him would kill him.”

  What kind of a God is that, who even back at the beginning of the story rejects the farmer’s offering, even though it is all the farmer has produced that he could offer? Cain may have overreacted, but did not God also overreact—condemning Cain to be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth, no longer able to make a livelihood out of farming? And, would you like to walk around the rest of your life with the “mark of Cain” on you, whatever that was?

  Cain, who gets overly punished by a vengeful God, is a precurser of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, who suffered such a terrible fate along with their families, simply because they wanted a more important role in worshiping God in the temple. They get the bad press, whereas their opponents, Moses and his brother Aaron, stay in power. But is that then really the last word? The Cainites might well have taken hope for, after all: “The sons of Korah did not die!”

  The Gnostics might well have said: We who are in the know, who think for ourselves and see through the sham, have been enlightened by a hidden God far above, who is free of all this impossible system under which the world suffers. This hidden God frees us, he does not enslave us!

  And if you read not only the Hebrew scriptures with these glasses on, but also read the Christian scriptures this way, whom do you light upon as the defamed hero that is damned for doing the only decent thing, namely seeing to it that prophe
cy is fulfilled, God’s will done, Jesus obeyed, and thus humanity saved? Well, Judas, of course! Maybe the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John need to be replaced by—The Gospel of Judas?

  We will see…

  HOW TO MAKE A PAPYRUS BOOK

  We know that The Gospel of Judas is from an early papyrus codex. The Nag Hammadi Codices are in this regard very similar—both discoveries in Middle and Upper Egypt are of third- and fourth-century papyrus codices with Coptic translations of Gnostic tractates originally composed in Greek. Since I worked intensively for years restoring and publishing for UNESCO the Nag Hammadi Codices,5 I do know a lot about the kind of book that contains The Gospel of Judas.6 So let me tell you about how papyrus books were made in antiquity, both the original second-century Greek book containing The Gospel of Judas and the third- or fourth-century Coptic copy that has now surfaced.

  Papyrus is a plant that grew in antiquity in the shallow waters of the Nile River. It produced a long stalk that was cut and peeled, and then its pith cut into thin strips. These strips were laid vertically side by side on a flat surface, and then a second layer of strips was rowed up on top horizontally. This was then pressed together, indeed pounded, until the juice in the pith formed a kind of glue that held both layers together as a flat surface on which one could write. One such writing surface could be as long as six feet, to judge by those whose length I calculated in the process of conserving the Nag Hammadi Codices. At the end of such a piece of papyrus, one could paste another, with an overlap of about half an inch where they were pasted together. One could proceed in this way, piece after piece, to produce as long a writing surface as one wished.