In the case of The Gospel of the Egyptians, the situation is similar. The actual text of the tractate begins:13 “The holy book of the Egyptians about the great invisible Spirit.” And it concludes with a subscript title:14 “The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit. Amen.” But then the scribe of Nag Hammadi Codex III has inserted a note just before the subscript title, in which he writes:15
The Gospel of the Egyptians. The God-written, holy, secret book. Grace, understanding, perception, prudence be with him who has written it, Eugnostos the beloved in the Spirit—in the flesh my name is Gongessos—and my fellow lights in incorruptibility. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, ICHTHUS. God-written is the holy book of the great, invisible Spirit. Amen.
Codex III was the first codex to reach the Coptic Museum in Cairo. They were delighted to put page 69 on display, with the title The Gospel of the Egyptians clearly legible. So this quite secondary title has stuck with the tractate ever since! But the author of the tractate did not intend to be writing a Gospel, and his text has nothing to do either with the story or with the sayings of Jesus. The text contains the Gnostic myth of a sect that venerated Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve after Cain had killed Abel and had himself been banished (Gen. 4:25–26).
The fourth “Gospel” in the Nag Hammadi Codices is The Gospel of Truth. It is quite well-known, because the Jung Institute of Zürich “baptized” the codex containing it the “Jung Codex,” in honor of their founding hero, the psychologist Karl Jung, who maintained that The Gospel of Truth made sense in the light of his psychology. They gave the tractate, which had no title of its own in the Jung Codex = Nag Hammadi Codex I, the title The Gospel of Truth, on the basis of the opening line:16
The gospel of truth is joy for those who have received from the Father of truth the grace of knowing him.
There is apparently already an allusion to the tractate by Irenaeus. He points out that the reference in the opening of the text to this being the true gospel is a put-down for the true canonical Gospels. “Gospel of Truth” is of course not the title of the tractate, but only the author’s opening blast, to refer to the message of the tractate as being the true gospel, in distinction from the orthodox Gospels that falsely claim to be true.
One may conclude that the title Gospel was not the original title of the four canonical Gospels, nor was it the original title of the four Nag Hammadi “Gospels.” Both the branch of the church that was moving toward what came to be called orthodoxy, and the branch that was moving toward what came to be called heresy, designated their texts as Gospels to accredit them in the ongoing competition.
“GOSPEL”? BY “JUDAS”?
The Gospel of Judas was composed after the canonical Gospels were written, at about the same time as the Nag Hammadi Gospels were written. No doubt, like them, The Gospel of Judas made use of the title Gospel to accredit itself over against the canonical Gospels, which had secondarily popularized the title in their own quest for accreditation. As a result, we assume not only that The Gospel of Judas was not written by Judas—after all, he had been dead for over a century—but may not be what the public assumes a Gospel would be—a collection of the stories and/or sayings of Jesus. The four Gospels among the Nag Hammadi Codices have shown that the honorific title could be ascribed to works that we today would never call gospels, if that title had not been attached to them in the tradition. The Gospel of Judas will in all probability teach us a lot more about the Gnosticism of the second century than about the public ministry of Jesus, or sayings of Jesus, or Holy Week, or the like.
How has Judas been understood down through the centuries, after the New Testament presented him as giving Jesus over to the Jewish authorities, and The Gospel of Judas somehow vindicated him?
In antiquity, to fall on one’s sword when one’s leader is slain is considered a noble death. Should not Judas’s suicide after Jesus’s crucifixion be accorded this distinction of being a noble death? Apparently it was first Saint Augustine who decided that Judas’s suicide was in fact a sin.17 Listen to the way Augustine put it:18
He did not deserve mercy; and that is why no light shone in his heart to make him hurry for pardon from the one he had betrayed.
And so, irrespective of what one might think of Judas giving Jesus over to the Jewish authorities, as implementing God’s plan of salvation, or as a traitor betraying his friend, he cannot be forgiven for his suicide!
The most generous that early Christian monasticism could be to Judas was to suggest that Jesus forgave him, but ordered him to purify himself with “spiritual exercises” in the desert, such as they themselves practiced.
In the seventh century, the Bible commentator Theophylact thought Judas had not expected things to turn bad once he arranged a hearing between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, and in anguish at the outcome killed himself to “get to Hades before Jesus and thus to implore and gain salvation”:19
Some say that Judas, being covetous, supposed that he would make money by betraying Christ, and that Christ would not be killed but would escape from the Jews as many a time he had escaped. But when he saw him condemned, actually already condemned to death, he repented since the affair had turned out so differently from what he had expected. And so he hanged himself to get to Hades before Jesus and thus to implore and gain salvation. Know well, however, that he put his neck into the halter and hanged himself on a certain tree, but the tree bent down and he continued to live, since it was God’s will that he either be preserved for repentance or for public disgrace and shame. For they say that due to dropsy he could not pass where a wagon passed with ease; then he fell on his face and burst asunder, that is, was rent apart, as Luke says in the Acts.
A Dominican preacher, Vinzenz Ferrer, in a sermon in 1391, had a similar explanation for the suicide, that Judas’s “soul rushed to Christ on Calvary’s mount” to ask and receive forgiveness:20
Judas who betrayed and sold the Master after the crucifixion was overwhelmed by a genuine and saving sense of remorse and tried with all his might to draw close to Christ in order to apologize for his betrayal and sale. But since Jesus was accompanied by such a large crowd of people on the way to the mount of Calvary, it was impossible for Judas to come to him and so he said to himself: Since I cannot get to the feet of the master, I will approach him in my spirit at least and humbly ask him for forgiveness. He actually did that and as he took the rope and hanged himself his soul rushed to Christ on Calvary’s mount, asked for forgiveness and received it fully from Christ, went up to heaven with him and so his soul enjoys salvation along with all elect.
Yet the all-too-rampant anti-Semitism of the Middle Ages exploited Judas as the arch-betrayer in order to arouse just such sentiments, by painting him as a caricature of a Jew, with exaggerated features, a large hooked nose, red hair, and of course greed for money.
William Klassen has tracked down the sources primarily responsible for the terrible track record of the Dark Ages regarding Judas.21 First, he lists the Carmen Paschale written by Sedulius shortly before 431:
It is highly likely that Sedulius, more than any other person, is responsible for the negative portrait of Judas so common among the educated, especially the theologians and clergy. “[The Carmen Paschale] was required reading in schools throughout the Middle Ages and a source of inspiration for Latin and the vernacular Biblical epics well into the 17th century…. It was a work which centuries of European readers found of enduring value,” writes a modern student of the epic.
Sedulius shows no moderation in connection with Judas. His longest literary “intrusion” deals with Judas. His imprecation against Judas, for which there is no biblical precedent, sets the standard for later writers.
The other baleful influence listed by Klassen is the Legenda Aurea, the Golden Legends:
The Legenda Aurea, a collection of apocryphal stories first gathered by the Dominican Jacob of Virragio (1230– 1298), was widely circulated from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and beyond. What the Carmen Paschal
e did for the educated, this collection did for the uneducated. It “enveloped the whole intellectual life of the Middle Ages” and, according to one writer, remains the most popular book of edification of the West.
In 1991 Klassen lit upon the sermons of Abraham Santa Clara (actually the Austrian Hans-Ulrich Megerle, 1644–1709), the most eloquent preacher of his day. The title of the work defaming Judas, when first published (1686–1695), was entitled Ertz-Schelm, roughly translated Prime Slime. His complete works were published in twenty-one volumes from 1834 to 1954, as well as in a six-volume abbreviated edition (1904– 1907), and his writings have been translated into many languages. Klassen’s summary:
Virtually every Sunday for an entire decade he preached about him, or, perhaps better said, against him. By way of warning to his faithful, Santa Clara proclaimed that Judas’ mother had talked too much; listeners were urged not to let this happen to them lest they bring forth another Judas!
The concluding sermons in his interminable series consist of cursing all parts of Judas’s anatomy, beginning with his red hair and ending with his toes.
Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), in his Divine Comedy, relegated Judas into his Inferno, the lowest (seventh) pit of Hell, where his head is being gnawed off for all eternity by a three-headed monster. No doubt he is reunited down there for all eternity with the other Cainites: Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, “together with their wives, their children, and their little ones.” Those of you who could not help being a bit sympathetic with these Cainites, will be appalled by the obvious satisfaction Dante and others have taken in all this. But those of you who were even more appalled by the Cainites turning the Bible on its head, in order to make the bad guys into the good guys, cannot help but have a bit of sympathy for Dante’s presentation. And this side of the argument has largely prevailed down until relatively modern times.
Part of the blame/credit for this in more recent times goes to the King James translation of the Bible. King James I of England commissioned a new translation, familiarly known as the “Authorized Version,” which appeared in 1611. It has determined the understanding of the Bible for the English-speaking world ever since. Although the language today sounds quaint, it is perhaps for that very reason still preferred by many who read the Bible. The idea of Judas “betraying” Jesus is deeply imbedded in the King James translation and its successors, and so will be very difficult to eliminate from our cultural tradition. To give you a sense for the language problem, I quote Matthew’s treatment of Judas in the King James translation, complete with all its quaintness of “thee-and-thou” language (“ye,” “verily,” “dippeth,” “goeth,” “spake,” “wherefore,” “art”)—even its pedantic use of italics for words with no equivalent in the Greek original. I reproduce Matthew, since it has probably been the most widely used by average people over the ages (Matt. 26:14–16, 21–25, 47–50):
14 Then one of the twelve, called Judas Iscariot, went unto the chief priests,
15 And said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver.
16 And from that time he sought opportunity to betray him….
21 And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.
22 And they were exceedingly sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto him, Lord, is it I?
23 And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me.
24 The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born.
25 Then Judas, which betrayed him, answered and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast said….
47 And while he yet spake, lo, Judas, one of the twelve, came, and with him a great multitude with swords and staves, from the chief priests and elders of the people.
48 Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast.
49 And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him.
50 And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus, and took him.
In this imprecise translation, for centuries held as the “gospel truth” by English speakers around the world, Judas comes off as unquestionably dishonorable.
In more recent times, especially since the Enlightenment, views somewhat sympathetic to Judas have emerged. Roger Thiede reports:22
Nonetheless the history of the Judas material teaches that the “super-knave,” the alleged greedy forefather of all informers and spies, always also found revisionist defenders: Poets such as Klopstock and Goethe, authors such as Walter Jens, belonged here. Also modern theologians, such as the American William Klassen or the German Hans-Josef Klauck, laid out in voluminous monographs the Judas material of the New Testament they interpreted.
Hence “Judas did not betray Christ” is the inference even of the newspaper Bild. Basis for the acquittal is especially the significance of the ancient Greek verb paradidomi. In most Bible translations the term is translated, in connection with Jesus and Judas, as “betray.” To be sure, if one puts the term on the philological gold scales, it is clear that the word in question would be translated as “hand out” or “give over.”
Yet the traditional repudiation of Judas continues unabated, as Thiede goes on to point out:
Yet such subtleties have thus far changed nothing in this, that the name of the perfidious table-companion of Jesus, on the basis of a barely 2000-year-old tradition, is treated by and large as the sum total of the underhandedly disloyal double-dealer.
If an ungrateful football player who is on the rise changes teams behind the back of the team to which he belongs, disillusioned fans still today bawl the name Judas. Also the member of the Kiel assembly, who last week torpedoed the reelection of the SPD Minister President Simonis by his secret abstention, promptly received the biblical reproach.
Yet Thiede also points to a change in attitude in modern times. He captions a picture of Cain killing Abel:23
Protest against the Good: The murder of a brother by Cain against Abel has provoked readers of the Bible again and again to risk flirting with evil. Distant influences of Gnosticism showed up also in modern literature.
He then quotes two nineteenth-century romanticists on The Gospel of Judas, the German Jewish author Hermann Hesse and the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Following the caption, “Murderers of Brothers and Betrayers,” there is the highlighted preview: “Whether there really was the ‘Cainite’ sect of the church father Irenaeus? In any case it developed literary influence.” He points out that Hesse’s Demian “picked up the theme of Cain”:
Using the name “Emil Sinclair” as the author, there appeared in 1919 the novel Demian. In reality the author was Hermann Hesse. His book told about a High School student who runs across the theory that one could also conceive of Cain quite differently. “What the story took as its point of departure was the sign. There was a man there who had something in his face that aroused fear in others (…) So one explained the sign, not as that which it was, as a distinction, but rather as the opposite. One said that the folk with this sign were weird, and they really were that. People with courage and character are always very weird to the other people. It was very uncomfortable for a race of fearless and weird people to be running around, and so one hung on this race a nickname and a fable, to avenge oneself on it—to hold oneself a bit indemnified for all the fear one endured.
Baudelaire is introduced: “The French lyricist became world famous for his ‘Blossoms of Evil’”:
O, race of Abel, your remains
Rot, wherever the sun burns!
Race of Cain, your works
Are thus not yet at an end;
Race of Abel, in the fray
The lance bored through your flesh!
Race of Cain, go up to heaven,
<
br /> And hurl God down to earth!
Will Baudelaire’s wish come true, thanks to The Gospel of Judas?
In fact, this modern shift in attitude toward Judas is further evidenced by several fictional versions of the long-lost Gospel of Judas that have been published over the past century. The Polish novelist Henryk Panas published The Gospel of Judas in 1973.24 The Irish writer Michael Dickinson wrote The Lost Testament of Judas Iscariot, purporting to be Judas’s self-defense written to Peter, in 1994.25 The best was written in 1929 by Ernest Sutherland Bates, The Gospel of Judas, portraying Judas as an Essene who continued to reject the God of the Hebrew scriptures that had originally been Jesus’s own view.26 Hugh S. Pyper published in 2001 a very critical survey of such literature, as symptomatic of today’s alienation from traditional Christianity and its limitation to the canonical text, now that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Codices have opened up the much broader world of Jewish and Christian texts of the times.27
Secrets of Judas Page 8
