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Yes, thank you Didymus.

Sodom and Gamorrah were both destroyed in the same act of God for their sins (mostly homosexuality).

I'd be willing to bet that there were documents from the two cities telling a different story than that of the bible, it still comes down to what you want to believe in.

TOTPD!

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RIP Nathan "Buz" Buzdor

Can you point me to where it says what their sins were? I've often heard that they were "wicked" but I've never actually heard what made them so "wicked".
*reveals his lack of reading the Bible*

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Genesis 18:20 (notice the "complaints"; their sins were committed against people).
Genesis 19 (specifically sexual assault).
2 Peter 2:6-10 (hatred of God).
Jude 7 (immorality).

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Ok, back to the actual topic here:

The manuscript is about as authentic as it gets. Mind you, this is not the original copy. Radiocarbojn dating puts it's origin at between 220 and 340 AD, but the original work may have existed as early as 130-170 AD. How and when the book originated is unknown, as is the author. It's extremelyb likely that this was one of many workes that originated in the Gnostic comunity of belivers.

Now, becasue the Gnostics were later declared Heritcs by the Church, many people today imdeiately think "Cultic fruitloop nutjobs" when they hear the word Gnostic. That's what happens when there aren't any Gnostics around anymore to tell us what they were really like. Most of their writings were burned or banned or just plain lost. However, some of their works (like thius Gospel of Judas) survived, and can give us some insight into what they were all about.

Now, as to the title: The work itself is NOT titled "the Gospel Of Judas". In fact, it's not actualy given a proper title at all by the author (that is, the opening words of the work, which describe what the work is, are simply a one-line opening sentance that forms the first line of the first paragraph.) It just starts with: "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week three days before he celebrated Passover." Everything else that comes before that was added by modern editors to label the work and put it in a academicly acceptable format.

The Gospel of Judas is not a complete account of the life of Jesus. There is a short (ok, really damm short) introduction which makes plain who this Jesus is that were going on about in the rest of the book, and then we jump right into the Last Supper. So, it essentialy begins at the Last Supper, and ends with Judas's suicide. Its author claims (in typical Gnostic fasssion) that this is "The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week three days before he celebrated Passover. Notice that the author does not refer to Judas in the first person. That is, the author does not claim to be Judas. He does, however, leave the door open to this being a oral history that goes back to Judas telling this story to someone... but he doesn't explicitly claim that either. Again, typical Gnostic tradition. You can see where later gnostics developed their mysticism from.

Anyways, in a nutshell, here the interesting points:
> Jesus was more anti-establishment than is portrayed in the four canocal gospels.
> Jesus he laughs a lot
> Judas, not Peter, not John, is the "Beloved Diciple"
> Jesus laughs some more
> Jesus is amused that the diciples would pray to God to bless their food.
> Judas is told "secrets" by Jesus. The author doesn't bother to tell most of these to us. (Hey, it's a gnostic work).
> Judas is told that he must betray Jesus. He reluctatly accepts. Recives the 30 peices of silver.

The story ends aburpty here. It could be that aditional pages were lost, but we may never know.

Now, you can read into this what you will. After all, there's no Spanish Inquisition anymore and no angry mob is going to come to your door with pitchforks and torches and accuse you of being a witch. Well, I hope not anyways. (If you are in fact a witch then all bets are off.)

Now, a lot of people ae going on about some mysical nonsense regarding the Gnostics beliveing the the God of creation is not the true God. Uh, yeah.. whatever. I just think Jesus would have found it hillarious that people pray over their food in such a ritualistic fassion. Jesus was anything but a stickler for rituals, after all. I mean, can you quote me a passage in the canocal bible where Jesus performs a Ritual? (And before I kick you for saying "The Breaking of the bread" I'll kindly point out that that only became a ritual when other people did it. When he did it it was the regular thing one did to get a portion of bread from a loaf of bread. No, they didn't slice their bread. They broke hunks off. It was what people did when they ate bread. The jews did it, the romans did it, the samarians did it, every body did it. Jesus breaking bread off a loaf was not a ritual when he did it at the last supper.)
Give up?
In fact, the only time I can think of that Jesus did anything even remotely ritualistic was when he went to be baptised by John the Baptist. Notice that someone ELSE was doing the ritual. Jesus was having a ritual done to him, not the other way around. I think that says something about how the biblical Jesus veiwed rituals: He respected them, but he had little use for them.

If you look at how the biblical Jesus went about his ministry, he fits more with the modern image of a rock star then he does of a church goer. He's hanging about with low-lifes, whores, burly fishermen, and he basicly starts a cult and defies convetional religious authority at every turn. The Gnostics seemed to have a much stronger idea of Jesus as a rebel then even the canocal gosples do, and it shows in the Gospel of Judas.

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Actually, the breaking of bread was a tradition in his day. Read Exodus 12 for details. As was Baptism. It was called michvah, and was usually practiced in special pools rather than rivers, but the idea is essentially the same: that God washes away our sins and cleanses us to live for him.

And I find it strange that Jesus would laugh at his disciples blessing their food, when he himself blessed the bread and the cup he used to institute the Sacrament.

Now I will agree, Jesus took these rituals and did something new with them, but it is most certainly not true that he never performed a ritual at all.

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Breaking bread was about as ritualistic then as shaking hands is now. It wasn't a religious ritual by any means, merely a cultural convention.

The gospel of Judas contradicts the account of the canocal gospels when it comes to he last supper. In it, it is the disciples who are breaking the bread and offering prayer, not Jesus. This is probably the prime reason why early church fathers condemed the Gospel of Judas, since by their time the eucharist had become the center of church ritual.

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I'm completely at a loss to explain why this is so controversial. First of all, I'm willing to bet most people haven't actually read it (with the exception of Sarge, who gives a pretty good run-down above). I just finished reading it here, and frankly I'm unimpressed.

First of all, I must've missed the part where Jesus tells Judas to betray him. I suppose it could be this part:


But that's not even in the imperative, so it could swing both ways from being a command to simply being a prophecy. I mean, sheesh, if you want some juicy stuff, check this out:


"Do quickly" -- now that's an imperative if I've ever seen one!

These are all legitimate questions: Why did Judas betray Jesus? Was the betrayal necessary for Christ's sacrifice to be made? Was it therefore a good thing in a twisted sort of way? I'm not prepared to answer these questions now, but I agree with all of you that they're worth discussing. My question, though, is why do you all sit around and wait for some esoteric Gnostic gospel before you start asking these questions when the controversy is right there in the good book itself?

If you really want to stir up controversy, let's discuss all this stuff about Adamas, the luminaries, the firmaments, the aeons, the Self-Generated, Nebro, Yaldabaoth, Saklas, and the five rulers of the underworld that are spoken of in the Gospel of Judas (most of that's on page 5 of the PDF I linked to above). Where are they getting this crap from? It sounds like a comic book or something. The bottom line is none of this cosmology even remotely agrees with any of the canonical New Testament writings (or even Old Testament writings, for that matter). On the contrary, it's complete jibberish! It's no wonder to me why the church fathers would've kept this book as far away from the canon as possible.

The Gnostics were about two things, primaraly:

1)Mysticism and "Secret Knowedge" revealed to the intiated. Basicly, they seem to have been making stuff up and passing it off as "revealed secrets." A lot of it is seems to be utter nonsense, but it coukld be they they were talking in "code" (so to speak). Since they faced persecution from roman authorities, they may have been trying to hide their activities by passiong as Pagans: This might explain the arcane names, phases, and mythical-sounding stories. Or they might just have been a little bonkers.

2)Being organized along the lines of small, cultic groupings of believers as opposed to the more formal, higherarchical organization that the "mainstream" church evolved into. This was common of many christian groups at the time, since formal organization is too risky when the religion is illegal. There was, naturalry, a lot of variance in the style and substance of the Gnostic groupings, but typicly they would have met in private homes, with or without an acknowledged leader, and they would have had sub-groups within the main group (inner and outer circles, initiates and novitiates, etc.). One of the halmarks of Gnostisim is that as one is given access to "higher mysteries" as one becomes more and more initiated into Gnostic life, one finds that one's circle of company becomes smaller and smaller.

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If Judas was, in fact, instructed by Jesus to be a traitor, then why did he hang himself afterwards?

Sorry if this has already been brought up.

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TEF, your sig rules.

And, um, on topic, Judas killed himself because he felt sorrow and remorse and the horror of what he'd done.

I may hold the belief that Jesus told Judas of his betrayal prior to said act. I don't know if he was asked to do it. But either way he is regarded in my eyes as a crucial part in the founding of Christianity: the religion.

That being said, we must all remember why he died (Jesus).
When I hear Judas being called a sinner and betrayer, I remind those people of why it had to be done. According to the Gospel, Jesus was the final blood sacrifice that needed to be made in order to save human kind from grasp of the forces of Hell. If Jesus was not betrayed, not only by his disciple but by his own people, or wasn't killed by the Roman torture of Crucifixion, than human kind would be quite different today. Some may say that it would be better without the Christian touch, others that society would have fallen to all-hell. But nothing happens without a reason. Even death itself has a cause that goes beyond our very conception.

In these days of great strife and deep sorrow, we may believe that we have fallen once again to the hand of Hades. Fear not, for our lives will end in reward, for if we are righteous; we will receive a glories gift. Whether you believe in Valhalla, Nirvana, the other-world, Moksha, Jannah, or Heaven: as long as you live a righteous life the only way you know how, you shall achieve that goal.

So regard not Judas as a villain, regard him as a loyal servant of the lord, whom took his own life in grief: that he may be forgiven.
Without Judas, Christ would just be a myth.

I wouldn't exactly go that far. If Jesus had another disciple instead of Judas, then that one (or another disciple) would betray Him.

Steve, do you think that Jesus told Judas to betray him? Jesus knew that one of his disciples would, anyway.

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I wouldn't put it past a divine being to tell his followers what is in store for them.

After all, Jesus (acording to my beliefs) knew he would make a self-sacrifice.

To answer your question: it's completely possible in the eyes of a religios man. But in the eyes of the doubtful: it's imposible anyway.

One can be religious and still have doubts. Just becasue your profess a certain faith doesn't mean you don't also question some of the things you are told you must believe.

Only fools and charlatins claim to have no doubts.

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this is true, I was once a would-be catholic. But I renounced the catholic strand of christianity and substitute it with my own belief-systems.

I fallow what I believe to be right, and "right" may change from time to time. This is because I am on an ever-flowing path to find what is just, while staying near the path of Christianity and Budhism.

Here is a response to the Gospel of Judas from the LCMS website:

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LCMS makes a number of good points. However, when he says that the Gospel is nothing new, he downplays the fact that before the recovery of the Coptic manusript, we didn't actualy know what any of the Gospel of Judas said. All we had were tangiental information regarding the existance of a Gnostic gospel. Nobody knew what was actualy in the text.

As it turns out we are still missing a good deal of the text becasue the papyrus that was recovered had been stored in a safe deposit box for about a decade. It had dried out and began to fall apart. Some of it had already turned to dust before it was finaly recovered.

The blame for it's present condition lies with an antiquties dealer who didn't realise what he had. Aparantly, he didn't know anything about the preservation of ancient texts becasue storing such items in safe deposit boxes is about the worst thing one could do. It would have been better if he had burried the papyrus in his back yard: At least then it wouldn't have dried out so badly.

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I am surprised at the number of books that have been published on TGOJ recently. Why, there were three different volumes published by three different authors, JUST IN WAL-MART!

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