Judas Iscariot’s story is told from a different perspective in the Gospel Gospel of Judas. He is portrayed as a true follower of Jesus Christ. The divine Jesus has told Judas and revealed the truth about his mission on Earth to him. Judas truly understood what his master thought, while the other disciples were blind and didn’t comprehend what Jesus meant. We knew about the Gospel of Judas before it was discovered in Egypt because of the writings from the Irenaeus of Lyon. He was one of the founders of the early greek church. He was strict against “wrong” Christian beliefs, from his standpoint, of course. He lived around the year 180 AD. So, 150 years after Jesus was supposedly crucified. He is known as the heresiologist (Heresy Hunter) and one of the first in early Christianity. Irenaeus wrote a five-volume book called “Against the heresies”. He was declared a Saint later on by the Catholic church.
He liked to attack especially other Christianities which we know today as the Gnostics. The Gnostics had different branches between them like we have today, with Catholics and Protestants and this can split even up into more Christian sub-parts. Irenaeus wrote about a group he called the Cainites.
Judas didn’t write this Gospel, it was written much later.
When was the Gospel of Judas written?
Irenaeus lived and wrote about the Gospel of Judas around the year 180 AD. The Gospel of Judas must have been written earlier than that. We could carbon-date the only surviving copy of the Gospel to the year 280 AD and it was composed in Coptic, possibly translate from Greek to Coptic. So, it could have been written as early as the mid-second century AD because the text was properly written so late it is highly unlikely that it contains any historical information about Jesus but it provides us with a window into a time that second-century Christian thought.
How was the Gospel of Judas rediscovered?
As mentioned before we only knew about the Gospel of Judas from other writers like Irenaeus. It was lost for centuries and then rediscovered in Egypt. The climate of the land of the pharos of old is ideal for preserving ancient papyrus. It was found by treasure hunters near the town of El Minya, Egypt, in a cave, they sold the Gospel of Judas to an antiquity dealer in Cairo named Hana Asabil. The dealer tried to sell the Gospel for 3 million USD but he couldn’t find a buyer and then travelled to Long Island, New York and smuggled the Gospel of Judas into the USA. He stored the antique and delicate document in a safety box for 17 years. New Yorks’s moistures weather was the reason that the text was disintegrating and we lost around 10 % of the Gospel. The Gospel of Judas is part of the Codex Tchacos.
Gospel of Judas PDF
Please be aware we don’t have the complete text, a lot of the Gospel is lost or maybe still hidden. The dealer who sold the Gospel of Judas could have sold different pieces of it to different people. Hopefully, they will turn up at some point or we find a different copy of the Gospel somewhere. I can only provide the information we have so far.
Gospel of Judas is Gnostic
The Gospel of Judas is Gnostic in nature, more specific a Sethian, gnostic text, a contrasting take to the Christian Catholic/Orthodox faith. They believed the world in which humans dwell is a huge catastrophe. The Gnostics had good reason to think that as we can see today: A lot of bad stuff in our modern times still exists – at least from a human point of view. The world 2000 years ago was even worse! To name a few terrific things: slavery, war, pandemics, hunger, natural catastrophes, rape and hard, explorative work with no labour protecting rights. Why would an all-loving god do that? They properly have asked themselves, in fact, for sure. The Gnostics (which by the way we the modern scholarship is calling them that way) came to the conclusion that this world is like a conundrum. The Gnostics intended to find the secret knowledge. Gnostics believed that there was a divine spark which was trapped in the material world and this spark needs set freed by gaining the secret knowledge that the living Jesus has spoken. The Gospel of Thomas is another Gospel which illustrates the secret knowledge beliefs of the gnostics. All this would lead in the end to salvation. I have written a comprehensive blog post about them called Gnostic Christianity: A Strange And Mystical Religion. This logic of setting the divine spark-free through knowledge and being imprisoned in an awful world made in the eyes of the Gnostics more sense than a sacrifice on the cross for the sins of humanity.
What does the Text of the Gospel Of Judas say?
Jesus and Judas have a complicated relationship in the Bible. In this book (it is actually a collection of writings), Judas is the bad guy of the story who betrayed the anointed one. But maybe the context of the betrayal was completely different. Who knows? If it happened at all…
According to some ancient writings, the gospel of Judas that tells a different tale. This gospel claims that Judas didn’t betray Jesus out of any evil intentions, but because he believed in Jesus’ power and potential. In this gospel, Judas is seen as a hero who helped bring about the kingdom of God.
So is the gospel of Judas the real deal? We won’t know for sure but it seems likely that the text was made up of humans which could also be said about other Christian texts. If Judas was the good or the bad guy we have no proof of either of them.
Jesus doubts the other disciples
An Interesting point is that the disciples are portrayed to have no clue about Jesus and who he really is. Jesus laughed at them while they were sitting and preying, somewhere in Judea. They were irritated and Jesus said to them that they do not understand what they are doing and they pay because their god is commending them. The men answered him: Master you are the Son of your God! Jesus replied that they don’t know and will never know him. His followers were angry, frustrated and irritated as they didn’t expect such a reply from the mouth of their leader. Jesus in this story recognised whats going on and he appealed to them as to why their anger sneaked into their souls – he uses the words: the god within you become angry with them. Jesus expressed in this Gnostic gospel that his disciples were not aware of the divine wisdom – the kingdom inside them. Possibly that’s the reason why the author of the script wants to push the narrative that the followers of Jesus are clueless. Jesus challenged them by saying: If anyone of you can bring out the perfect humanity then stand up. The only one who could do that was Judas Iscariot but even he could not look him in the eye – to demonstrate that Jesus was still superior.
The great and holy other generation
Jesus went to another great and holy generation as he expressed to his disciples. The men felt troubled and stunned as they thought they were the chosen ones. The author tried to let it look like Jesus’ men were a bunch of losers. He pushed the agenda that Jesus is king and the disciples are full of sin and stupidity and not worth his attention.
The Disciples’ Vision
The disciples have seen Jesus in a dream or vision and they told him about it. They saw themselves in front of an altar to praise their god. The vision has shown them that they are fake and sinners and they have to justify themselves before YHWE. The vision portrayed them as the 12 priests they saw and the sacrifices which were brought to them by people have been all the generations ever lived.
Jesus in this story is praising himself as the son of god and his followers confirm this by saying please save us, as they released that they are in big trouble for all the wrongdoing they have committed in their life. The divine one – is comforting them by bringing up examples of scale – that this is not possible because they have collected too many sins and they will not have salvation.
Jesus and Judas
After Jesus told the disciples that they cant be saved, he took Judas aside and told him the “truth”. Jesus told Judas that every human and their souls will die but their spirit will be brought to heaven.
Judas Vision
Judas tells Jesus that he saw himself being stoned by the other twelve disciples and he flow but they were chasing him and on his way, he came to a house where people waited in the middle was a building a crowd waited for him. Jesus replied that Judas has mislead and no human can enter the house because it is holy. What Judas saw is the house of the holy generation and he is not permitted to enter it but he will rule his generation.
Jesus Reveals Everything to Judas
Jesus reveals the truth to Judas about what the kingdom of heaven is that is guarded by angels, how it looks and who will be worthy to enter it (in a broader sense, of course).
Judas asked Jesus what attributes the people of his generation must have and what will happen to them. Jesus replied that some souls will be saved and the sinful will die. Judas asked Jesus what will happen to them who are baptised in his name? Jesus replies that whoever is baptised in his name will destroy the whole generation of the earthy sinners.
The Betrayal
Jesus told Judas about the generation who will enter the kingdom after death and a star will guide him on the way to sacrifice Jesus for the sins of men to rescue them so they can go into the kingdom of heaven. Judas should sacrifice the human body of Jesus for this reason. Judas fulfilled the wish of his master to save mankind from their sins. The Jewish priests looked for Jesus to kill the heretic who mocked their god. They asked Judas who he was and where Jesus is. After answering the questions, they paid him for this information and Judas did as his master told him.
Summary of The Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Judas is a text which is challenging the orthodox Christian belief that refers to the descendants of the 12 Apostles. The 2nd. century AD Christianity was defined yet and many Christian sects followed their own way and imagined or invented different belief systems. In some areas, they overlapped but in others, they even say the opposite. The Gospel of Judas is such an example – who completely spins the story around. This was not unique to Christianity we can know that around Jesus’ time they have been many Jewish sects as well the best example is the Jewish sect near Qumran. Where we found the dead sea scrolls. The figure of Jesus son of Joseph stimulated many stories, if Jesus the Messiah really historically existed is still debatable, you can read more about this topic here.
