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Our Past in Present Tense
The Gospel of Judas
Dr.
Yehuda Shabatay
San
Diego Jewish Times, April 21, 2006
SAN DIEGO—Recently,
the National Geographic Society announced to a group of scholars that a
translation of the Gospel of Judas is now available
to all interested. According to Terry Garcia, executive vice president of the
Society, the document contains “the most significant ancient non-biblical
text found in the past 60 years.” Even the few quotes published in newspapers
to date underline that statement because they shed a completely new
light on the relationship between Judas Iscariot and Jesus and contradict
Judas’ characterization that exists in all four Gospels included in the New
Testament. As is well known, each evangelist introduces Judas Iscariot — or
Yehuda, the man from Keriot, a village in southern Judea — as the betrayer of
Jesus. Judas’s personality is the lowest of the low: while he keeps the
disciples’ treasury, he steals from it all the time (John 12:6) and finally
betrays his master to the Jewish High Priests for 30 pieces of silver (Matthew
26:14-15). He doesn’t care about the poor, he is money hungry, and is
influenced by Satan in his deeds (Luke 22:3).
According
to John Shelby Spong, a former Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, who now teaches
at Harvard and is still a prolific author of highly regarded works on
Christianity, the story of Judas is “the ultimate source of anti-Semitism.”
In one of his articles, the Rev. Spong points out that “every detail that has
been written into Judas’ story has been lifted almost directly out of other
betrayal stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.” For example, Joseph was sold for
20 pieces of silver — at his brother, Judah’s advice (Gen. 37:27-28).
Another interesting parallel is found in the cycle of stories about King David.
It is told there that at some stage David replaced his military chief, Joab,
with Amasa. Joab, under the guise of wanting to congratulate his successor,
grabbed Amasa’s beard, ostensibly to extend to him a kiss of friendship. But
that proved to be a “Judas’s kiss,” because Joab disemboweled Amasa with
his sword (2 Sam. 20:9-10). Interestingly, the Acts of the Apostles clearly
refers to that story, suggesting that after Judas bought a field with the 30
pieces of silver, he hanged himself. “He burst open in the middle and all his
bowels gushed out” (Acts 1:18, cf. Matt. 27:5).
After
Christianity became a separate religion, the Jews were — and in many cases
still are — compared to Judas Iscariot. According to James Parker, a British
clergyman and historian, the early Church fathers frequently spoke about the
Jews’ avarice and neglect of the poor. An even more cruel accusation was made
in 1492, a short while before the expulsion of all the Jews from Spain. As Don
Isaac Abravanel tried to persuade King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to allow his
fellow Jews to stay, by offering a sizeable amount of money to their empty
treasury, the Grand Inquisitor, Juan Torquemada burst into the meeting room.
“See here the crucifix of our Savior, whom the wretched Judas sold for 30
pieces of silver to his enemies,” he shouted. “If you applaud this action,
sell him for a higher price!” Then he put the crucifix in front of the rulers
and left. Torquemada won, and the Jews were expelled.
Yet,
some Christian scholars have raised probing questions about Judas’s negative
portrayal for quite a while. In their opinion, Judas’s undisputed membership
in Jesus’s inner circle, and his presence even at the Last Supper, may
indicate a different reason for his betrayal, rather than receiving “blood
money.” Some have suggested that Judas wanted Jesus to confront the Roman
authorities as a political messiah, and that his betrayal was the result of
misguided zeal. More recent analysts have interpreted Judas’s action less than
a betrayal and more as an attempt to force Jesus and the Jewish authorities into
a dialogue. Thus, Jesus may have been “handed over” to those authorities so
that he might defend and proclaim his identity as the messiah. (Eerdmans
Dictionary of the Bible, 2000, page 749).
To
most scholars’ surprise, the Gospel of Judas comes up with an entirely
different, seemingly revolutionary idea. It maintains that Judas was so close to
Jesus that, three days before Passover, “Jesus said to him, ‘Step away from
the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom…’ And then
Jesus instructed Judas to go ahead and enable him (i.e., Jesus) to get rid of
his physical flesh and thereby liberate the true spiritual self or divine being
within him.” While this is contrary to the teachings of present day mainstream
Christianity, Karen L. King, a professor of the early history of Christianity at
Harvard Divinity School, maintains that the Judas Gospel might reflect the
debates that arose in the early centuries. In an interview with The
New York Times on April 7, Professor King stated: “You can see how early
Christians could say: if Jesus’ death was all part of God’s plan, then
Judas’s betrayal was part of God’s plan (too).” This is certainly logical,
because there has never been any doubt that Jesus’s birth, public career and
death were preordained, yet Judas’s deed was condemned by the Church.
Thus,
one can fully understand why the Gospel of Judas was cast out, together with
several other gospels by the Church authorities and saved by “heretical”
sects, known as the Gnostics (from gnosis — knowledge in Greek). Following the
disappearance of those sects, their writings became forgotten — until they
were rediscovered in the past seven decades, primarily in Egypt. As more and
more of such Gnostic writings come to light, numerous questions arise about the
beliefs and practices of Christians in the first three or four centuries of the
Common Era.
But
Christians are not the only ones who have to face problems presented by
archaeological discoveries. We Jews are similarly prompted to reevaluate our
understanding of the late Second Temple period since the publication of the Dead
Sea Scrolls, and members of both religious groups are still struggling to
comprehend the beliefs and the practices of our ancestors in that crucial period
of time in which those scrolls were composed. The Gospel of Judas is only one
more challenge to all of us interested in our past — a most challenging one, I
admit.
Dr. Yehuda Shabatay received rabbinical training in Budapest, a master of jurisprudence degree from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his doctorate in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York. He was engaged in Jewish educational administration over most of his career and now teaches Jewish studies and history at Palomar College and San Diego State University.