ELECTROGOD

Anyone follow how the news is jumping all over the story of the book of Judas?
I saw a Vatican spokeman say something about the writtings being a 2nd century mythical fabrication. I had to laugh because he just described the Bible.

Toto

See this thread: Gospel of Judas published, which is concentrating on issues relating to the Coptic translation.

There will be a TV special Sunday.

News stories like this indicate that the document is not a forgery. It is a gospel from a heretical sect.

rob117

My English teacher brought this up today. Neither the teacher nor anyone in the class seemed to understand that this is a gnostic document probably written in the second century- and hence, should not be treated as actual evidence regarding actual events in the early first century. Nobody seemed to know that we've known for awhile that Judas was glorified in certain gnostic circles, and that Irenaeus, one of the early Church fathers writing around 180, actually mentioned a gnostic Gospel of Judas.

I hate what the media does with biblical studies (and everything else for that matter). They give little snippets of sensational news and don't bother to tell you the background. Hence the public is more familiar with the Da Vinci Code than they are with the Documentary Hypothesis, and if you try to explain the gnostic theology behind the Gospel of Judas, the first response you get is, "What's a gnostic?"

Faldage

Of course, one might ask, where Christianity would be if Jesus hadn't been crucified.

sorompio

Was he? There is no historical evidence of the existence of such individual, but believers don't seem to care and would swallow any baloney instead of serious investigation. :devil:

yalla

Newspaper poster outside the supermarket this morning, in BIG letters.
NEW EVIDENCE
JUDAS
SAINT OR SINNER?
Murdoch rag.

Diogenes the Cynic

I agree with this and what's especially annoying is that a lot of people mistakenly believe that the sensationalist headlines actually represent scholarly opinion -- i.e they think that NT scholars themselves are trying to make any case for the historicity of GJudas. I've heard some fundies actually get snippy about "those liberal scholars trying to say the Canonical gospels are wrong."

I wish the media would do a better job of getting across how scholars really view this kind of material instead of treating it like anyone in NT studies thinks this is some kind of explosive revelation about historical events.

Of course, that would mean they'd have to explain that NT scholars simply see this kind of thing as competing interpretations of a fictional character so....

rob117

Actually, the majority of NT scholars accept both Jesus and Judas as historical persons. The canonical (and other) gospels are just not seen as completely accurate depictions of them.

I think it's more that ratings go up the more sensational you get. In reality, the Gospel of Judas is not as sensational a discovery as the media makes it, because if they just tell you what it is, their ratings don't go up as high.

Diogenes the Cynic

That's true of Jesus but not so much of Judas.

rob117

That's not what I've gathered. A Marginal Jew, which is something of a definitive study, accepts him as historical, as do the sources it references.