Musings on the "Gospel of Judas"

Yesterday the National Geographic Society officially presented to the world a bound papyrus codex (a manuscript volume of scriptural content—I looked it up), discovered in the Egyptian desert and RC-dated to around 400 AD. The text is in the ancient language of Coptic, and there are approximately 20 people in the world who are qualified to read and translate Coptic (for more on this theme, please see John Irving’s very funny book The Water Method Man, in which the main character labors over a translation of an epic poem, written in an obscure Norse language, before deciding he will simply make it up, reasoning that no one will ever know or care). The story of how a Team Of Experts rehabilitated the badly deteriorated manuscript and translated it is an interesting one, but what is more interesting is what they found that it said.

The text presents a story of Judas Iscariot that is far different from that found in the traditional Christian Bible. Bibleheads like Elaine Pagels (an expert on the so-called Gnostic Gospels, authenticated writings that were banned by the early early early Christian Church) are calling it The Gospel of Judas. According to her and others, the scroll basically presents a story that is far different from what appears in the modern Bible. It states that Jesus and Judas shared a mysterious bond, that Judas was the most favored of the disciples. More surprising, the text implies that there was some sort of agreement entered into between the two, even that what Christians commonly consider the betrayal of Jesus by Judas was in some way prearranged by the two men, or one man and one, well, God, if that’s what you believe. Whatever the specifics, what emerges is a far different portrayal of Judas than what’s found in the New Testament, and, perhaps even more provocatively, a different view of Jesus, too.

Now, I have lived through the popular resurgence of a lot of formerly reviled personages. Richard Nixon comes to mind. Sure, in the national zeitgeist Nixon is still the heavy-browed, heavy-jowled, swarthy shyster that he always was, but it’s undeniable that, perhaps beginning with his death in 1994, there has been a softening in the public’s perception of him, if not so much for the fact that he “ended the Vietnam War” and did “all sorts of other good stuff that went way under the Watergate radar,” than for his portrayal in such movies as Dick. Funny. Avuncular. Oddly similar in appearance to actor Dan Hedaya.

Trends are trends, and no people embrace their trends more than Americans. We go up and down like republicans at a state of the union address. Reality TV. Poker. (In fact, according to James McManus in his awesome book, Positively Fifth Street, Nixon was a lights-out, leather-assed poker assassin, as those who were in the Navy with him can attest, poor souls.) And with regards to historical figures, yes, people do come back to the warm fireside of popularity from the cold exile of public revulsion, or, even worse, ambivalence. The comeback is as American as apple pie eaten at a NASCAR event with a spork. There are second acts in American lives, Mr. Fitzgerald. Marion Barry. Martha Stewart. Even Trump hit hard times a few years back, I recall. John Travolta, John Dillinger (bank robber, or . . . Robin Hood?), John Smith (ugh, wait till that Pocahontas movie comes out). The popular perception of many a historical figure is like the weather. If you don’t like it, just wait ten minutes.

Even Jesus Christ was terribly unpopular early on, renounced by his own people, tortured, executed, etc., his followers persecuted. But man, his followers were really good. You’ve got to hand it to the early Christians for keeping that flame lit, and oh so gradually transforming their main persecutor, Rome, into their mainstay. It’s incredible; it’s like the entire Arab world being Jewish in another thousand years or so. And I think it is safe to say that Jesus’ reputation remains strong, no matter what those evangelicals are up to down there.

Judas, though: that’s a tough one. That’s John Wilkes Booth and Benedict Arnold with a dash of Hitler thrown in for some extra kick. The man whose very name is synonymous with betrayal is now seemingly waging a PR campaign from beyond the grave. Screw the grave: Holmes has got to own prime real estate just off the roundabout in the ninth circle of hell (indeed, in Inferno Dante witnesses Satan consuming Judas’ severed head, without end, along with the bodies of those other famed traitors, Brutus and Cassius. I swear to God, the NY City Council considered building a stadium there). But, with the emergence of this mysterious text, it seems that Judas, like George Jefferson, could be moving on up to slightly better digs.

The American fondness for the comeback has something to do with the idea of forgiveness. And forgiveness has a lot to do with Christianity, or Christianity with forgiveness, if you will. It’s like, only one of the most important of Jesus’ teachings, or something. So is it now time, in light of this incredible find, for Christians to forgive Judas? And if Judas can be forgiven, or if one of the “Gospel Truths” of the Bible, that Judas was the ultimate betrayer, can be recast in a different light, what are the implications in our own time? These are interesting questions that impact many aspects of our lives, from the way we handle criminals to the way organized religion tends to seize on certain principles or teachings while ignoring others. I mean, who decided that these Gnostic Gospels should be excluded from the New Testament, anyway? Jesse Helms is behind this in some way; I’m sure of it.

And here’s the kicker: where does Jesus fall in all this? Is Time magazine or Newsweek or whichever one does that thing where they have a person with an arrow, up or down, next to them, indicating their rise or fall in public esteem over the last week, are they going to have a picture of Jesus with a big fat downward-pointing arrow next to him: “Revelations indeed, Christ implicated in conspiracy to orchestrate his own death.” Not likely, but it should make people think. Jesus was certainly no lightweight in the brains department, and he must have known that his story just would not have the same gravity without it ending in a grand-mal seizure of a betrayal. Most good stories do. So maybe he did orchestrate his own death. I’m no Bible expert, but from what I do know of the New Testament, there are suggestions to that effect all over the place. After all, with the power of God on his side, it’s hard to believe that anything would happen to Jesus without him orchestrating it. Or, if you believe that Jesus was not God, but a sort of savvy marketing guru, the same remains true: he’d have to pull some serious strings to get things to come out the way they did.

Maybe Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot were thick. For me, what I understand of the so-called Gospel of Judas serves to humanize Jesus, and this may be a very bad thing for some people, but for me, it’s a good thing. Even if you are a card carrying bible thumper, you believe that Jesus was a man, in addition to being other things, and if he was a man, he did things that men do, and if what he was trying to do was to assure the rise of the Church according to the principles of the Lord God Almighty, then he did what he had to do, and I can’t blame him--it’s all sort of Machiavellian. But it is a shame about Judas, if indeed, as implied through the decoding of this new “Gospel”, he has been miscast through history. Let’s take a moment to reexamine Judas, and in doing so, our society, our perceptions, ourselves.