Alas, this whole Jeezus - Judas thing is really only an argument about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, except, of course, that pins actually do exist. Just because we found more documents about a fictional character means nothing more than that.

Enough with the fairy tales, already.

The MP3 of the talk can be pulled here.

Keep up the good work.

That video was really interesting. I learned alot. Norm, you simply have a great blog.

I really enjoyed the ken miller speech. He so clearly showed why evolution belongs in science class and why ID has no place at all. I think anyone with a open mind to the topic should be able to see the fallacy in how ID promote there cause.

From a lager picture I think he showed just how dangerous it is to allow the kind of tactics used by ID to be allowed to choose what taught in science class.

If the Bible is the gold brick in the American spiritual sidewalk, then you simply have to ask: What is the relevance in the fact that Christ might not have been betrayed at all? That he may have orchestrated his own arrest? What does this say about his divine wisdom? About Bible stories as a whole? More importantly, how does the new and improved Judas story pinch the ass of our collective mythology? Does it or does it not kick out one of the shaky support beams of the modern Church? Shouldn't it?

I wince when I see something like this. The answer to Morford's question is "no, it shouldn't".

The modern church has long known of the existence of the GoJ, and known that it presented the betrayal story in a way contrary to that of the canonical Gospels. St Iraneus said as much in 180CE. Why should it be a source of major concern for the church in 2006?

The church has known - at least since the forties - that there existed gnostic Christians and non-canonical Gospels which were at odds in many ways with the canonical ones. And responsible scholars will be quick to add that the evidence dates the canonical Gospels anywhere from 3 decades to a century older than the gnostic ones, and that the oldest written traditions - including the genuine Pauline epistles - are not inconsistent with the orthodox view of Christianity.

There is little reason to believe that the Gospels contain reliable historical information about the life of Jesus, but there is far less reason to believe that the gnostic Gospels do so.

We may find a gnostic text from the second century tomorrow that contradicts the orthodox view more radically than GoJ. If we do, we will have no more reason to believe its historical account, and no less reason to believe the orthodox account than we have now.

To say that knowledge of GoJ means that "Judas may not have betrayed Jesus" is less sensible than believing knowledge of a Gore Vidal novel about Lincoln means that "Lincoln may have been banging his press secretary". There simply isn't any sense to it.

There are plenty of good reasons to hold the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life as non-historical. It's distracting and counterproductive to make a big fuss over something like this and give the orthodox preachers more ammunition against skeptics.

Accountings like this - from skeptics, or from the mainstream media - serve only to distract from the scientific import of this important archaeological find, and to cloud the debate over such important issues as when and how the orthodox church emerged, and how well or poorly is justified their claim to historical knowledge of Jesus and his life from their scriptures.

Well in response to the post above, historians do not necessarily consider older documents to be more valid than recent ones.

In fact, the closer a document to an actual event raises the risk ofmisrepresentation via a slanted view based on the writetr's motivations.

For example, a historian writing on a recent battle win for his country writes from the point of view of his country as the victor and public opinion and peer pressure might prevent him from writings a more balanced view.

50 years later, it may be easier to do a more balanced analysis with more input from the losign side.

So I have to disagree with smijer's point that the Gnostic Gospels are les valid than the canonical Gospels as they were all written almost a hundred years after Jesus' deaths and none of them were eye-witness accounts.

By the way, your lines of reasoning also does not work as scholars have theorised that the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas was written before the Canonical Gospel of John, which was supposedly written to refute Thomas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Pagels

In any case, both Gospels were written at about the same time.

Scholars see the gospel was composed before 100 AD and perhaps as early as 50-70 AD. Barrett suggests an earliest date of 90 AD, based on familiarity with Mark’s gospel, and the late date of a synagogue expulsion of Christians (which is a theme in John).

When it comes to the Gospel of Thomas, an early camp favoring a date in the 50s BEFORE the canonical gospels and a late camp favoring a time after the last of the canonical gospels in the 100s.

A direct refutation to those who belief that the Gnostic traditions are just heresays and not credible:

What would Christianity be like if gnostic texts had made it into the Bible?

Interview with Dr. Elaine Pagels

www.beliefnet.com/story/128/story128652.html

One of the biggest "finds" was the Gospel of Thomas (read the text), which some people call a gnostic gospel. Your new book puts forward the hypothesis that the canonical Gospel of John may have been written in response to Thomas' gospel, to refute Thomas. Yes. Many people have pointed out that the two gospels have a lot in common. They are both different from the other gospels we know, as symbolic and poetic interpretations of Jesus' teaching. But they have a very different practical turn. They both speak about Jesus as the divine light of the world that comes into the world, and the divine energy of God manifested in human form. But the message of the Gospel of John is that Jesus alone is that divine presence among us. Thomas' gospel suggests that Jesus taught something quite different, which is that everyone, in fact all being, came from that divine source [and that we can access that divinity on our own]. Yet you say in the book that the very 'heretics' who embraced Thomas' ideas were drawn to the Gospel of John. It is surprising. They could read [John] as poetry, with a wide range of interpretation. If you can read it that way, you can find things in it that Christians have found in it for hundreds of years: mysticism, poetry. It's precisely for that reason that one of the second-century church fathers, Irenaeus, said, "The Gospel of John is all right, but you have to read it my way." His way meant Jesus alone offers access to salvation and that believing in him is the only way to truth, and that not believing is a sure path to damnation. This, of course, has been the fundamental teaching of many Christians for thousands of years. I'm not trying to discredit it, I'm just saying, "This is not the only possible construction of Christianity by a long shot." Many people point to Jesus' statement in John 14:6: "No one comes to the father but by me." But in the totality of the accepted Christian canon, there are passages that do indicate there's a spark of the divine in everyone. There's "The kingdom of God is within you" in Luke, as you mention in the book, or Paul's "your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit." Other parts of the Christian canon seem to put forward this more open view that you say is characteristic of Thomas' gospel. It shows that the teaching of Jesus was recorded and transmitted in various ways. These suggestions [of divinity within oneself] are absolutely there, in Luke and all over the place, if you're looking for them. But they were later placed in a context of a much more strict interpretation, so they're often read that way. What fascinated me in some of these texts that were discovered is that there were people who read the Gospel of John and Thomas' gospel as entirely compatible. We have texts and poems that show that: for example, a text called the Round Dance of the Cross, or one called the Gospel of Truth, that uses passages from both Thomas and John. I think they might well be regarded as congenial if you didn't have a system of interpretation that says they can be read in only one way. You say that the figure of 'Doubting' Thomas in the Gospel of John was a direct refutation of Thomas' gospel. We don't actually know if the person who wrote the Gospel of John had a written copy of Thomas because we don't know exactly when it was written. But I think it's clear that whoever wrote the Gospel of John knew these kind of teachings because the language is so similar to his own. He knew them very well. And yet he thought someone was taking them in the wrong direction, and that's what he set out to correct. So when 'Doubting Thomas' felt Jesus' nail wounds and exclaimed, "My Lord and my God," that was a way for the author of John's gospel to tell the author of Thomas "You've got it wrong, there isn't necessarily this universal access to God, you have to go through Jesus, who is Lord"? Yes, it's really a way to tell people who follow that kind of teaching--you might call them 'Thomas Christians'--that even their own apostle realized at a certain point that he was absolutely wrong, and that John was right. It's quite a wonderful device. And it worked! If I mention Thomas, most people say, "Oh, you mean Doubting Thomas." Your book talks about the followers of a man named Valentinus and others who had a more esoteric or gnostic approach to Christianity. You imply there was a divide between "simple Christians" who had a more literal take on their beliefs, and the "seeker Christians," the Valentinians. Could you characterize these 'spiritual Christians'? They felt that faith is necessary, but as a first step. It's not where you stop, it's where you start. After that, you start exploring. You try to understand and verify in your own experience and seek. They always love the saying of Jesus: "Seek and you shall find." People who are comfortable with very clear boundaries and group definitions don't like the instability and ambiguity of people who say they are more advanced Christians or they don't have to do what the bishop says. I was trying to understand the politics of the early Christian movement. We've had one side of an intense controversy available to us. Now we also have the other. Now when I read the Gospel of John, I see Jesus standing there saying "I am the way, the truth, the light, I am the water," and I think "Who is he talking to? Why does he say this over and over?" New Testament scholars would say, "Well, Jesus never said these words"--and that's probably true. But why does the Gospel of John have Jesus say nothing else but "I am, I am, I am." It's clear to me now that John's refuting a view that says "Jesus is the light, and the light is in you, too." It turns it from a monologue, which always puzzled me, into a dialogue.

What are the type of people who read the Gnostic Gospels?

http://www.wehaitians.com/the%20heresy%20that%20saved%20a%20skeptic.html

The Heresy That Saved a Skeptic 14 June 03 By DINITIA SMITH www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/books/14PAGE.html

PRINCETON, N.J. — On a bright Sunday in February 1982, a grief-stricken Elaine Pagels, jogging in running shorts, found herself stopping at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan. Two days before, she had learned that her son Mark, 18 months, had pulmonary hypertension and was dying. It had been a long time since Ms. Pagels, a renowned biblical scholar whose 1979 book "The Gnostic Gospels" won the National Book and the National Book Critics Circle Awards, had been to church. She had never been able to embrace the certainties of Christianity, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Jesus, as literal events. But now she found herself intensely drawn in by the prayers and the choir's soaring voices. What was it, she wondered, that made Christianity so compelling, despite the obstacles of doctrine? The question grew more urgent. In 1987, Mark, 6, died. Then, 15 months later, Ms. Pagels's husband, Heinz, a physicist, was killed in a climbing accident, leaving her with their two other children, Sarah, 2, and David, 3 months, both of whom the couple had adopted. Now, Ms. Pagels says, she has found the answer to her quest by writing a book, "Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas." It is a study of one of the Gnostic gospels, early Christian texts written around the time of the New Testament and regarded as heretical. Ms. Pagels's book, clearly written, lyrical but deeply scholarly, is a surprise hit. Out just a month, it is moving up the best-seller list, and Random House has had to reprint it three times, with 108,000 copies now in print. Ms. Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, was interviewed last week in her large stucco house surrounded by lush gardens. "I am interested in how the Gnostic gospels change our view of what we know as Christianity," she said, "in how Christianity became what it became." She is 59, with a small face and blond hair, and was dressed in tailored black pants and blue jacket. She spoke softly, precisely: "There are some kinds of Christianity that insist you have to believe literally in doctrine. The Gnostic gospels open out the complexity and multiplicity of approaches to this. If you think the story of the virgin birth is mistranslated, for instance, it doesn't mean you have to throw out the whole thing." The gospel of Thomas is one of over 50 texts discovered by an Egyptian peasant in 1945 buried in a jar near the village of Nad Hammadi. Some were burned for fuel. The 52 that survived include poems, prayers and gospels (meaning "good news"), translated from Greek into Coptic, an African language. The texts' true authors are unknown. One, the gospel of Thomas, claims to give Jesus' secret teachings. It includes some traditions thought to date from A.D. 50 to 100, and perhaps earlier than the official Gospels of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Another, the Testimony of Truth, recounts the story of the Garden of Eden from the point of view of the serpent, who is not evil but a principle of divine wisdom. Among the most revolutionary findings in the Gnostic texts were the varying interpretations of Jesus' rising. Some say that the Resurrection was not a physical event but a symbol of how Christ's spirit could be felt in the present. Early Christians were subject to unimaginable persecutions, and church fathers believed that for Christianity to survive, there had to be a unified belief system, Ms. Pagels said. Some time around A.D. 180, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons denounced all gospels but Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as heretical, "an abyss of madness and of blasphemy." About 50 years after Constantine's conversion early in the fourth century, the New Testament became Christianity's official text. The name Thomas, in Aramaic, means "twin." Thomas may have proselytized in India, where Thomas Christians still worship today. Ms. Pagels chose to study Thomas because although his gospel is very similar to the accepted Gospels, there are crucial differences, especially between his and John's.

The Gospel of John calls Thomas "doubting Thomas." According to John, Thomas does not believe that Jesus has physically risen. Jesus appears and rebukes Thomas for being faithless. But when Thomas touches Jesus' wounds, he capitulates. "My Lord and my God," he cries. Ms. Pagels interprets this as John's attempt to discredit Thomas's teachings that differ from his own. "John has a low view of human beings," Ms. Pagels said, pointing out that for John, Jesus is a divine being who descended to earth. But in Thomas's gospel, she continued, Jesus' light is shared by all humanity. Thomas "has a high view of the rest of mankind," Ms. Pagels said. "That's the crucial difference in Thomas." In John, Jesus alone offers access to God. But, she said, "Thomas's Jesus directs each disciple to discover the light within himself." Thomas writes, "Within a person of light, there is light." Thus, for Ms. Pagel, Thomas gives more autonomy to the individual. During the eight years it took to write the book, Ms. Pagels said, she began to find Thomas illuminated her own experience. "Belief was not an issue anymore," she said. "It offered a different version of faith. The other versions had become univocal. We read the Gospels as if they all say the same thing." Ms. Pagels is often asked if she is a Christian. She worships in the tradition of Christianity, she said, because "that was the language of my culture," and attends an Episcopal church. "I love this tradition," she said, "but I also love many of the voices that are considered heretical." She was born into a family that was culturally Protestant but non-practicing. Her father, William McKinley Hiesey, was a plant biologist at Stanford University. "There was no acknowledgment of a spiritual dimension of life except as delusion," she said. As a teenager, Ms. Pagels joined an evangelical church. She was drawn by the music, she said, and was curious. It was also a rebellion, and she eventually stopped going. She graduated from Stanford, where she was a classmate of the poet Sharon Olds, who remembers her: "She had great dreams. I would dream about people getting murdered and people counting hamburgers, and she would dream about hillsides and beautiful woods." From early on, Ms. Pagels wanted to be a dancer. She studied briefly with the Martha Graham Company in New York but realized, she said, that "I was not going to be fabulous." So she enrolled as a Ph.D. student in the religion department at Harvard and learned Coptic. She married Heinz R. Pagels in 1969 and was hired as a Barnard professor. "The Gnostic Gospels" was Ms. Pagel's first mainstream book. After its publication she won a MacArthur Fellowship and wrote "Adam, Eve and the Serpent" (1988), in which she asserted that the traditional Christian attitudes toward sexuality emphasizing abstinence were not part of its origins but were developed in the fourth century by St. Augustine, who promoted the doctrine of original sin. Then came the catastrophes of her son's and husband's deaths. Ms. Pagels went into isolation, taking her two young children with her. She was "like an animal licking her wounds," said her friend, Wendy Doniger, a professor of the history of relgions at the University of Chicago. She wrestled with the connection between the tragedies and her work. Often, people believe that a tragedy is their own fault, or that God has done it to them. "She did not find that comforting," Ms. Doniger said. "The truth behind those books that came after the deaths is that what happened to her is a morally inexplicable set of accidents." In 1991, Ms. Pagels moved to Princeton. She published "The Origin of Satan" in 1995, arguing that Satan in the Hebrew Bible was not evil but an obstructing angel, God's interlocutor. She said Satan became the personification of evil partly as a result of early Christian efforts to demonize adversaries, including Jews. A friend had introduced Ms. Pagels to Kent Greenawalt, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on constitutional law. Each had been devotedly married for two decades and widowed in the same year. In 1995, the two married and combined families (Mr. Greenawalt has three children). The years since, Ms. Pagels said, have brought her ever increasing happiness. And what was the answer to the question she posed at the beginning of her new book? What is it about Christianity that she loves? She struggled for words. "The hints and glimpses of spiritual possibility," she said, "of the mystery that shines through our experience." "Wordsworth does it better in `Tintern Abbey,' " Ms. Pagels said, quoting from the poem: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things

Without going into to much detail, I'd like to clarify why I don't think there is much value in the Gnostic gospels toward understanding early first century history.

In fact, the closer a document to an actual event raises the risk ofmisrepresentation via a slanted view based on the writetr's motivations. ... So I have to disagree with smijer's point that the Gnostic Gospels are les valid than the canonical Gospels as they were all written almost a hundred years after Jesus' deaths and none of them were eye-witness accounts.

First, my point was mainly that we can no more say the betrayal "may have happened this way" on the basis of GoJ, than we can say it "may have happened" the other way, on the basis of the canonicals - that the slim possibility that a later Gospel with a novel accounting of the betrayal reveals a historical truth that should "shake up" the orthodox understanding.

Your reasoning about how later histories are somewhat less biased than immediate ones is valid, but doesn't really apply in the case of a controversy that could never have been recorded by witnesses in the first place. GoJ agrees with the canonicals on the points of historical import: that Judas identified Jesus to the captors, and accepted money in exchange. They disagree on Judas motivation - personal greed versus Jesus' request - a controversy that could not have been settled by the oral tradition that was the Gospel writers relied on for historical detail.

If there was an advantage for one side or the other, it should go to the canonicals, because there was less time for corruption of the oral tradition, and there was double attestation in the canonicals (Mark & John) versus single attestation in Judas.

By the way, your lines of reasoning also does not work as scholars have theorised that the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas was written before the Canonical Gospel of John, which was supposedly written to refute Thomas.

Scholars have theorized this - and have theorized the opposite. Conservative scholars date Thomas much later than John. We really cannot know which was first. My personal leanings are toward the theory that John and Thomas were both written about the same time - about 100 CE, that John was originally proto-gnostic in theology, and was eventually redacted by orthodox scribes to remove its proto-gnostic character, and to rebut gnostic ideas.

However, it's worth mentioning two things: 1) both John and Thomas significantly postdate the synoptics, and 2) Thomas - a candidate for a very early gnostic document compared with the remainder of the gnostic gospels - relies much more heavily on sayings found in Q than the remainder of the Gnostic literature, GoJ included. This is a double edged sword - on the one hand, if Thomas is indeed an early writing as the more liberal scholars suggest, then it supports the view that gnostic or proto-gnostic theology existed in the late first century, not long after our first testimonies to orthodox thinking. On the other hand, if Thomas is truly early, it also shows that early gnostics had not diverged as drastically from orthodox views as later ones did.

My personal view is that Thomas was fairly early, and that it is a witness to an early gnostic tradition, jsut as the synoptics are witnesses to an even earlier orthodox tradition... I personally believe that the church in 70-100 CE was heterogeneous but primitive - containing a lot of "Jesus Movement" material, and a few varieties of theological expressions on its meaning - including the synoptics, teh Pauline epistles, and John and Thomas. I suspect that the orthodox view and the gnostic view were both innovations on this early character of the church, and were both later made exclusivist redactions on this earlier Jesus Movement tradition. I do believe that the orthodox innovations are earlier than the gnostic innovations, and that they remained truer to the traditions of the founding movement. I believe the Gnostic departure was somewhat later and somewhat more radical. I believe that both groups eventually distanced themselves from the others' innovations - the orthodox by redacting John and rejecting Thomas - the Gnostics by writing their own, independent canon. See Marcion for an example of a "transitional fossil" in the development of gnosticism - he dropped the synoptics and John, kept the authentic Pauline epistles, and included two early second century gnostic gospels in his canon. It is more difficult to find the "transitional fossils" in the orthodox tradition, because they kept and redacted the scriptures of the earlier church, redacting only where necessary, quietly taking focus away from Thomas and other early gnostic apocrypha, and never accepting the novel gospels composed by the emerging gnostic sects. Nevertheless, we do find a few cases of such a transition - notably in redactions in John and later additions/harmonizations in Mark.

Unfortunately, the Gospel of Judas, and its quasi-historical view of the betrayal came too late to give significant attestation to the beliefs of first century Christians, which we sometimes use to guess at the traditions which informed those beliefs, and therefore to guess at the historical facts about Jesus.

It sheds no new light - it's controversial claim is at best no evidence of Judas' actual motivation, and at worst, is an innoveation meant to stress a theological point important to second century gnostics.

Now, does any of this make more clear why I suggest it is counterproductive to present GoJ as evidence to undermine the orthodox belief? The orthodox belief stems from the idea that the orthodox canon represents eye-witness history, something derived directly from it. What believer is going to have their idea of Judas' motive shaken by a document that comes from the 2nd century and could not possibly have depended on eye-witness accounts? And, what fence-sitter - what interested, but casual observer - is going to be more sympathetic to a view that 2nd century innovations are a cause for concern because they conflict with both modern and first century orthodoxy?

Hi smjer, thanks for the reply.

I have already proved that there is much value even as much as value in the Gnostic gospels as compared to the canonical Gospels as they were written at around the same time with some of the Gnostic Gospels written before the Gospels in the Bible.

I'll prefer to let people read my first 2 readings for themselves to arrive at their own conclusions.

Thanks for acknowledging my point in raising a valid scholastic concern i.e. that the closer a document to an actual event raises the risk of misrepresentation via a slanted view based on the writer's motivations.

However I have to disagree with your conclusion that this principle does not apply in the case of a controversy that could never have been recorded by witnesses in the first place.

First, since none of the Gospels are eye-witness reports, they can be equally valid and subjective.

So what is the harm in teaching the controversy i.e. that there were 30 Gospels competing in Christianity's early age with dissenting views.

After all, what harm is there to teach both sides of the story?

Only people who can't bother with finding out more of their own religion will use the easy escape of referring to adherence to just 4 Gospels out of 30 to reflect their interest in knowing their faith?

And if the orthodoxy of the Church Council is so well-nigh absolute, why was there later a Protestant movement which challenged many of the conventions held dear by this orthodoxy?

In fact, history has that Christian orthodoxy has always been challenged and should be challenged or else the religion would not have flourished as it is such as Christianity moving away from its anti-science tendencies that characterise the sentiments that prosecuted Galileo and Copernicus who challenged the views held by the Church with modern science and research.

Let's examine some discrepencies that I see in your statement below:

"GoJ agrees with the canonicals on the points of historical import: that Judas identified Jesus to the captors, and accepted money in exchange. They disagree on Judas motivation - personal greed versus Jesus' request - a controversy that could not have been settled by the oral tradition that was the Gospel writers relied on for historical detail."

First discrepancy. Both canonical and Gnostic Gospels were based on oral traditions for historical details. That is why it is impossible to identify or quote who was the writer behind each Gospel. So your last sentence is quite misleading.

Since both of us agree that all these Gospels were probably written around the same time, there is really no reason to exalt or canonise 4 out of 30 Gospels unless the reasons are strictly political, which is a view shared by both conservative and non-conservative scholars i.e. Christianity in the early days was often prosecuted and needed a centralised view of the religion with as little dissent as possible for survival.

For many scholars, the insights revealed by the Gospel of Judas or GOJ showed that Christ may well have indulged in suicide, which does go against Christian orthodoxy. This may well be one of the reasons it was not included.

Nor is it advantageous for the Church to acknowledge Christian writings that claim that many events like the snake and the apple were just fables and that Jesus was not necessarily the son of God, which was something the early Church Council voted to make it a fact in Christian orthodoxy.

However, with the widespread literacy and scholastic methods available today, all of us have the right to examine all these ancient Christian writings for ourselves to determine which version is the right one for us.

I would see this pro-active approach of much greater personal value than a fence-sitter or an unthinking sheep that blindly follows the dictates of pastors without questioning.

Since both of us agree that all these Gospels were probably written around the same time, there is really no reason to exalt or canonise 4 out of 30 Gospels unless the reasons are strictly political,

I don't agree with that, entirely. I think there is strong evidence that Mark was the first "gospel" written, that the the other synoptics were written within about 20 years of Mark, that it is likely that John and/or Thomas were written within another 20-30 years, and that the other Gospels came sporadically over the next 60-100 years.

This doesn't mean that we should "exalt 4 of them". But we should recognize the signifcance of each, based on what kind of thinking it reflects about the religious ideas within the sect that produced it and at the time it was written and redacted - to whatever extent we can know these things.

First, since none of the Gospels are eye-witness reports, they can be equally valid and subjective.

I'm sure that they have equal or near-equal import for understanding some things - especially, and most importantly, the disposition of the people that composed them and the communities that used them. It would be somewhat presumptious to say that they are on equal footing as reports of historical fact. We can look at the traditions these Gospels reflect, and learn something about those traditions. And, having a tentative view of the traditions themselves, we can further analyze to make educated guesses about what historical nuggets of fact, if any, they contained. This exercise is difficult to the point almost of being a mere distraction - however, my personal views from what I have read of various scholars and the arguments they make, is that Gnostic gospels - particularly those of the 2nd century - were prone to a greater degree of mythologizing of the earlier traditions - for what that's worth.

So what is the harm in teaching the controversy i.e. that there were 30 Gospels competing in Christianity's early age with dissenting views.

Little harm here, unless we reduce our entire discussion of the relative import of the Gospels to history to this point, and use that oversimplification, together with misunderstandings among our hearers, to make a point by erroneous means. The pew-sitter has a peculiar view of what Scripture means. They believe that these scriptures have a great deal of historical authenticity. Hearing of the existence of a "new" Gospel, they can easily be led to believe that the "new" Gospel is no different in character the canonical ones. They can take this as an "internal" contradiction, which undermines their view of scriptural authority. In fact, by the time GoJ was written, there had been quite a schism between the orthodox and gnostic sects. And, while it is true that both sects were innovations upon earlier religious ideas, we must not lead the hearer to believe that the gnostic innovations carried historical import - that they are a source of controversy over the happenings of Jesus' life. They aren't really. They are a source of controversy between later innovations, well removed from the historical events of Jesus' life. If we do not make the clarification that the gnostic gospels were innovations, removed from history, we can be accused of dishonestly omitting this fact. If we call them a source of controversy over what happened historically, then we are, in fact, stretching the truth. This is what we accuse conservatives of doing with the canonical gospels, and rightly so.

It is important that we make clear that the real value of GoJ is to get insight into second century beliefs of the gnostic sect - and perhaps as additional data to help us guess about the first century traditions from which they grew. If we wish to discuss the inauthenticity of the Judas story, I think we are better served to make the same case about the canonical gospels - while honestly acknowledging that they appear less mythologized and that they were written earlier. Our case about the canonicals is still strong for all of the reasons you state in your first response to me. But, the case we should make is that the canonicals represent non-historical accounts - not that the other gospels, written and used by other sects at another time, contradict the canonicals. Because, of course they contradict the canonicals. That's the definition of sectarianism. They come from a competing religion. It's little more surprising, or relevant to the debate about the historicity of the canonicals, to find contradictions between the gnostics and the canonicals than between the Book of Mormon and the gnostics.

In fact, history has that Christian orthodoxy has always been challenged and should be challenged

No argument here! :)

" ...They disagree on Judas motivation - personal greed versus Jesus' request - a controversy that could not have been settled by the oral tradition that was the Gospel writers relied on for historical detail."

First discrepancy. Both canonical and Gnostic Gospels were based on oral traditions for historical details. That is why it is impossible to identify or quote who was the writer behind each Gospel. So your last sentence is quite misleading.

I don't see the discrepancy. To the extent that either tradition contains historical details, it relies on oral tradition for them. Chances are that those oral traditions did contain some accurate historical kernels, and it is even possible that, by reconstructing those traditions, we can speculate responsibly on what the actual history of Jesus life might have been, albeit without much certainty or detail. My point is that the private or secret motivations of Judas are non-historical in character, and that 2nd century claims about them are at best no better informed than 1st century traditions on the same. Perhaps the traditions of both might help us to guess whether Judas did indeed identify Jesus, and whether he did indeed receive money for it. But differences in non-historical abstractions don't undermine one another - they are each undermined by their own weaknesses.

In other words, there may be historical truth to the notion that Judas received money in return for identifying Judas, and that the Gospels correctly record a historically valuable tradition about that. It is still unlikely to the point of impossibility that the further traditions - the early and orthodox tradition that Satan entered Judas at the last supper and enticed him to betrayal, or the gnostic tradition that Jesus secretly asked for betrayal - are the descended from a historical witness. Because there would have been no witnesses to those events able to record such traditions. Both are clearly un-witnessed rationalizations about why Judas behaved this way. We are no longer talking about quasi-historical traditions, but instead about theological rationalizations. It simply isn't true that the rationale presented under gnostic theology in the second century should be any cause for concern among those who are committed to the rationale which was a product of orthodox theology, and which was the only one recorded in the first century. To suggest otherwise is either uninformed or dishonest.

Besides the academic reasons for studying the new Gospel of Judas, we should be very careful about if, and how, we use it for challenging orthodoxy. I think that a case can be made that orthodoxy and gnosticism were both innovations on the earliest church beliefs, and that the existence of multiple viewpoints fairly early in Christianity is one element of that case. However, that case is complex, and the heterogenity of the early church is difficult to prove, making that aspect of the case one of the more obtuse to approach. We do not pay ourselves to simplify that case to "the Bible might have been wrong, because here's another Gospel that says something else". I think the existence of the gnostic faith and its canon can assist with a much simpler approach: that of analogy. "You see how this gnostic view seems to be an innovation from Thomas, and that one from Judas, while each carries forward other traditions faithfully? Well, for similar reasons, I think there is evidence that this orthodox view seems to be an innovation from Mark, and that one an innovation from John or a redaction of John." This approach doesn't irresponsibly diminish the apples and oranges distinction between the synoptics and later writings, whether canonical or not, and it is also simple enough to present without going into the murky waters of treating each tradition as "equally historically valid", when that may not even be the case, and certainly does not appear to be from an informed pew-sitters perspective.

Am I making any sense yet?

Hi smjer, I will only address the points in your posts that I have problem with. Those things that I don't mention from your post means either I agree or I reserve my judgement, ok?

I'm cool with this statement i.e. "I think that a case can be made that orthodoxy and gnosticism were both innovations on the earliest church beliefs, and that the existence of multiple viewpoints fairly early in Christianity is one element of that case."

In which case, the reasonable conclusion is to read them equally and just as deeply.

Contrarty to what you said, as long as the Gospels are not first-person witness accounts, scholars will find it legitimate to jude them on equal footing as none of them are reports of historical fact.

None of them can be held superior as the Gospels were written roughly around the same time with no Gospel qualitatively proven to be earlier or pre-eminent from the other Gospels on any legitimate scholastic grounds. You have to give me real proof if you think otherwise.

And as long as the Gospels are mainly transmitted by oral tradition, discrepancies will always occur i.e. during the trasmission, people may stress different issues, translate and inteprete things differently in the passage of time from Jesus' death to the time of the writing of the Gospels 70-100 years later.

Such discrepancies are thus a given.

I also disagree with your comment that Gnostic gospels - particularly those of the 2nd century - were prone to a greater degree of mythologizing of the earlier traditions.

The Gnostic Gospels represent the Snake and the Apple story, Adam and Eve as moral fables, not actual historial events. You have to thank the Christian theocracy for pushing these myths.

I stand by my belief that the Gnostic Gospels written by Thomas, Judas, Mary Magdelen, inclusing the 2-3 writings attributed as the writings of Jesus represent equally valid views for Christians to know as they were written at the same time as the 4 canonical Gospels, all of which were neither factual. They were there just as Paul, Matthew, Mark and John was.

Thus a focus on just 4 Gospels when Christian history revolved around 30 Gospels is a real controversy in terms of orthodox bias and hubris.

No Christian leader have the right right to tell any Christian what to read or how read Christian writings. That was what the Protestant movement was all about i.e. Christian need direct access to the Bible and other Christian writings without going throught he clergy as an intermediary.

I have also pointed out clearly that many cholars see the Gospel of John written to refute the writings in the Gospel of Thomas. So if you don;t read both, you won't stand the motivations behind the writing of the Gospel of John which is at the other extreme of what the Gospel of Thomas preaches.

"the two gospels have a lot in common. They are both different from the other gospels we know, as symbolic and poetic interpretations of Jesus' teaching. But they have a very different practical turn. They both speak about Jesus as the divine light of the world that comes into the world, and the divine energy of God manifested in human form. But the message of the Gospel of John is that Jesus alone is that divine presence among us. Thomas' gospel suggests that Jesus taught something quite different, which is that everyone, in fact all being, came from that divine source [and that we can access that divinity on our own].

... In some of these texts that were discovered is that there were people who read the Gospel of John and Thomas' gospel as entirely compatible. We have texts and poems that show that: for example, a text called the Round Dance of the Cross, or one called the Gospel of Truth, that uses passages from both Thomas and John."

Simply put, the teaching of Jesus was recorded and transmitted in various ways. These suggestions [of divinity within oneself] are written in all the Gospels.

By focusing on a strict reading of just 4 Gospels, believers will it difficult to open up their worldview to competing thoughts as well as developing tolerance for them.

Case in point:

The Gospel of John preaches that Jesus alone offers access to salvation and that believing in him is the only way to truth, and that not believing is a sure path to damnation.

The Gospel of Thomas however preaches that all of us can find our own way to access the divine spark in all of us, which refers to our conscience which drives our ability to differentiate right from wrong.

I think by this simple example I can show the need for all true Christians to read as much as possible all the literature of their religion before coming to any conclusion about one's religion.

In the Chinese culture, the Chinese always preached that one should seek to expand one's horizons before concentrating on one's particular strengths.

See it this way. Try to be a jack of all trades. Expert in some. And master of a chosen few.

How else do you think that Chinese scholars and historians can handle the hundred schools of thought during the Chun Qiu era of which Buddism, Taoism and Confucianism is just 3 out of 100 philosophies.

Just an article that reveals how a narrow view of religion based on a trict reading of the Bible can lead to religious excesses:

Outrage at Funeral Protests Pushes Lawmakers to Act

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ Published: April 17, 2006

NASHVILLE, April 11 — As dozens of mourners streamed solemnly into church to bury Cpl. David A. Bass, a fresh-faced 20-year-old marine who was killed in Iraq on April 2, a small clutch of protesters stood across the street on Tuesday, celebrating his violent death.

Skip to next paragraph

Orlin Wagner/Associated Press The Rev. Fred Phelps, the church's leader, testifying in February at a State Senate hearing in Kansas about a bill that would limit protesters. "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," read one of their placards. "Thank God for I.E.D.'s," read another, a reference to the bombs used to kill service members in the war. To drive home their point — that God is killing soldiers to punish America for condoning homosexuality — members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., a tiny fundamentalist splinter group, kicked around an American flag and shouted, if someone approached, that the dead soldiers were rotting in hell...

... The Westboro Baptist Church, led by the Rev. Fred Phelps, is not affiliated with the mainstream Baptist church. It first gained publicity when it picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, a gay man who was beaten to death in 1998 in Wyoming.

Over the past decade, the church, which consists almost entirely of 75 of Mr. Phelps's relatives, made its name by demonstrating outside businesses, disaster zones and the funerals of gay people. Late last year, though, it changed tactics and members began showing up at the funerals of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, has put it on its watch list.

Embracing a literal translation of the Bible, the church members believe that God strikes down the wicked, chief among them gay men and lesbians and people who fail to strongly condemn homosexuality. God is killing soldiers, they say, because of America's unwillingness to condemn gay people and their lifestyles....

Well, kes - I agree generally with you on that point. I'm a Unitarian, so we value a broad perspective on religious ideas. I hope that my unease with the presentation of Judas as something new and controversial that will "shake the church" or whatever was not mistaken for a view that gnostic scriptures and philosophies are without value, and should not be discussed in the presence of True Believers.

Well, kes, on the importance of discouraging fundamentalism, and on the desirability of education about a variety of religious views and moral notions, we are in complete agreement. I hope my unease with the particular argument against orthodoxy reflected in the popular presentation of the import of the Gospel of Judas was not mistaken for antipathy toward an expansive view of religious studies!

Well, kes, on the importance of discouraging fundamentalism, and on the desirability of education about a variety of religious views and moral notions, we are in complete agreement. I hope my unease with the particular argument against orthodoxy reflected in the popular presentation of the import of the Gospel of Judas was not mistaken for antipathy toward an expansive view of religious studies!

Well, kes, on the importance of discouraging fundamentalism, and on the desirability of education about a variety of religious views and moral notions, we are in complete agreement. I hope my unease with the particular argument against orthodoxy reflected in the popular presentation of the import of the Gospel of Judas was not mistaken for antipathy toward an expansive view of religious studies!

Hi smjer, I do understand your unease is just with the presentation of Judas as something new and controversial that will "shake the church".

I'm glad you acknowledge my assessment of the Gnostic Gospels which have just as much value as its canonical contemporaries. Let's move on from this.

I'm not trying to do a ID PR spin by asking scholars to teach a controversy between evolution and Intelligent Design when there is no such controversy among scientists with the possible exception of Behe who is a biochemist. I discounted Dempski as a mathemtician and Myers as a philosopher.

I'm just trying to point out that the truth is still out there about the life and teachings of Christ and we should not blindly take the Bible and the positions of the Church blindly as they can be flawed i.e. being written and developed by fallible men.

Consider this phenomena.

The Catholics posited their pro-life position as an act of humanity and mercy. However the Catholic position dictate that unbaptized babies spent eternity in eternity as though they were incapable of committing a sin that would merit hell or require reparation in purgatory, the stain of original sin was believed to keep them from enjoying full communion with God. Kindly note that you can't really find a direct quote from the Bible on this. Limbo, never officially defined by the church, was a theological concept developed in the Middle Ages.

To me, this is clearly heresy as it contradicts the picture of a caring and merciful God. Why would he prejudge a baby as tainted with an original sin when it is clearly that it is unable to understand the concept of sin and it should not be a sinner simply by being born a human?

There is really NO point in baptising a baby who have not read the Gospels nor understand them.

Baptism is actually a useless practise if the person does not first repent his sins and truly believe in the Christian faith. For example, the thief who was crucified next to Christ was not baptised but went to Heaven anyway.

In the early days, baptism was understood to be a rite of initiation into something new. To be water baptised was a sign of adherence to the teachings of the respective teacher. John taught repentance for the remission of sins. Those who received his teaching had to repent (turn from sin), confess their sins (Mark 1:5) and "bear fruits worthy of repentance" (Luke 3:7,8). There has to be a change of heart before John would willingly baptise the people coming to him for baptism.

There have been far more interpretations on the value of baptism since then. For example, modern Lutheran beliefs say that you can be regenerated through baptism and also regenerated by believing in Jesus, without baptism, and then later baptised.

For me, I think passing judgement on unborn or newly born babies is one of the most stupid things someone can do. First, you are in no position to judge as you won't know the baby nor can you pass judgement on his future actions. Only Heaven or the gods can.

Second, the position that men are born good while men are born evil was amply explored by the 2 great Confucians after Confucius' death i.e. Meng-zi and Xun-zi. Scholars have come to the conclusion that such a debate is meaningless. Here's an example why.

When a baby is born and a butterfly lands on his ends. Filled by the curiosity that drives all babies, the baby closes his hands around the butterfly, accidentally killing it. Is he then a sinner?

Or should one admonish him and tell him and in the future repeatedly to love and treasure all living things.

The baby is not going to come to this moral yardstick by itself as it does not know better, lack the reason and the intelligence to comprehend the gravity of the issue.

Thus a baby's nature should be seen as neutral, full of possibilities so that one must reserve judgement on any baby.

This comes back to my point that the Church and its teachings need to be shaken or it may fall to theological complacency or worse religious fundamentalism as Bible literalism is now clearly on the rise.

The Protestant movement helped shake the Church out of the Dark Ages that came from its theocratic rule. In today’s time, we desperately need a movement based on reason, understanding and conscience to keep any religion on the right path.

typo: "When a baby is born and a butterfly lands on his hands."

I'm surprised that everytime a new Gnostic book is discovered, it's accepted as true, whereas few people still believe the New Testament is telling the truth. Although this one about Judas has been known since the '70s, why is it now considered worthwhile? Did it ever occur to anyone to think that there were reasons why the early church rejected the teachings of the gnostics? Check out what they actually say and you'll find good reasons to reject them also.

Hi Philip, that's not true. You should be surprised that everytime a Gnostic Gospel appears, it is rejected by orthodox Christians out of hand as heresay, even though they did not read it.

Given the fact that the canonical Gospels and Gnostic Gospels were written at around the same time i.e. 60-100 years after Jesus' death by unknown writers, there is no reason other than dogma not to give each Gospel equal weightage.

In fact, reading the Gnostic Gospels give you greater insights on the biases and motivations of the unknown writers of the canonical Gospels.

The case is clearly between someone who is open to new knowledge verses Bible literalists who are convinced that all there is to know is already in the Bible, which is plainly arrogance speaking if they have not read all the Christian writings available.

The Gnostic Gospels include writings attributed to Jesus himself who wrote from the perspective of man. If you truly love his morality, rather than the glorification of his divinity that voted into being by the early Church councils, you really have little reason not to try to at least read the Gnostic Gospels once.