When the Gnostic Gospel of Judas was published with great fanfare, it was trumpeted as showing Judas as a good guy whose role was a blessed one. But was that true?

So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.

Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream ChristiansÂ’ belief in the atoning value of JesusÂ’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.

So what we have here is, as I pointed out at the time of the original publication, is a document by a heretical sect that was properly rejected by the early Church. That modern scholars have willfully mistranslated it and overlooked the fact that it is both anti-Semitic and anti-Christian (the Jewish Yahweh is an evil demon, while the crucifixion had no value and the Christian Eucharist is meaningless) is indicative of some other agenda than illumination of history. Whether that agenda was to make a quick buck, to spur a healing of Jewish-Christian relations, or to undermine Christianity itself, both the original Gnostic work and the subsequent translation by National Geographic are clearly fraudulent and deserve rejection by people of good will everywhere.

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Posted by: Greg at 04:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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