Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 05-23-2006, 12:30 AM

The Betrayer's Gospel - from the New York Review of Books

Quote:

[Scholars have commonly approached such noncanonical texts as the Nag Hammadi writings by assuming that they presuppose a particular worldview known as Gnosticism. In the newly published edition of the Gospel of Judas, Marvin Meyer and Bart Ehrman both use this approach to interpret the text. Summing up one of the basic tenets of Gnosticism, as he understands it, Ehrman writes: "This world is a cesspool of pain, misery, and suffering, and our only hope of salvation is to forsake it." The cosmos, in this view, is the evil creation of a malevolent lower being, who created humans by trapping sparks of divinity in material bodies; but not everyone has this "divine spark," and only those predestined few who do can be saved. Salvation is not a matter of faith or of ethics, however, but of acquiring spiritual knowledge—gnosis. Finally, according to this interpretation of the Gnostic gospels, Jesus' death has no part in the salvation of humanity, except as an example of how death releases the true self from the body: "In the Gospel of Judas, as in other gnostic gospels, Jesus is primarily a teacher and revealer of wisdom and knowledge, not a savior who dies for the sins of the world."

None of these beliefs is explicitly set out in so-called Gnostic texts, as Ehrman has freely admitted elsewhere,[1] nor do we have any evidence that the authors of these works considered themselves to be "Gnostics," rather than just Christians. Instead, the Gnostic credo is the construction of modern scholars, who have compiled it in part by drawing on the polemics of such critics of heresy as Irenaeus, and in part by creating a synthesis of ideas found in the various Nag Hammadi writings as well as other texts. . . .

KPaffenroth · 05-23-2006, 07:20 AM

I think Ehrman gets at the essential question better than much of the debate thus far on the Gospel of Judas: no one is really going to opt for or against the Gospel of Judas (or any other, for that matter) based on its historical accuracy (which, after two thousand years, is both impossible to ascertain, and in grave doubt). One will say the Gospel of Judas is "better" or "worse" or more or less "true" than other gospels, based on the worldview promulgated in that gospel. And the Gnostic worldview, though necessarily reconstructed from several texts and open to some variation and interpretation, is not particularly attractive to many people (Christian or not).

05-23-2006, 07:20 AM	#12
KPaffenroth New Member Join Date: May 2006 Location: New York Posts: 2	Ehrman's characterization of Gnosticism I think Ehrman gets at the essential question better than much of the debate thus far on the Gospel of Judas: no one is really going to opt for or against the Gospel of Judas (or any other, for that matter) based on its historical accuracy (which, after two thousand years, is both impossible to ascertain, and in grave doubt). One will say the Gospel of Judas is "better" or "worse" or more or less "true" than other gospels, based on the worldview promulgated in that gospel. And the Gnostic worldview, though necessarily reconstructed from several texts and open to some variation and interpretation, is not particularly attractive to many people (Christian or not).

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