Friday, April 07, 2006

The Gospel of Judas?

Well, National Geographic is releasing a "new" ancient text that "contradicts" Christian belief about Judas, recorded in a 1700 year old document that has Jesus asking Judas to betray him. Check the article here.

Now I don't understand why they're making such a big controversy out of this. If the text is genuine, then the Christians of the day must have known about it, and dealt with it. In fact, the article itself shows this:
"The manuscript was mentioned around AD 180 by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon, who called it fictitious."
Big surprise. The article also says that there were "competing views of Christianity, and this seems to have come from a Gnostic influence." Wrong. Gnosticism was not a competing view of Christianity any more than Jehovah's Witnesses are today. It was a cult that borrowed Christian terminology to build itself up.

But more, are people going to all of a sudden believe one text that gives a positive account of Judas (and completely reverses Jesus' understanding of the goodness of nature) over and above four similar, unanimous and non-contradictory witnesses? That makes no sense no matter how you splice it!

Further, I find it highly amusing that, just as at Jesus' trial itself, all these sources that "undermine" Christian claims are so self-contradictory!

On the one hand, we have Dan Brown, et al., who claim that Jesus never died, but instead ran off with Mary Magdalene. Then we have this Gnostic account that said Jesus wanted to die in order to liberate himself from the flesh he was in. And we have other people like Tom Harpur (in his book, The Pagan Christ) and Italian atheist Luigi Cascioli claiming there never really ever was a Jesus Christ of Nazareth!

With all this so-called "serious scholarship" behind each of these views (which, when you compare those who hold each view, even those three streams of thought are self-contradictory--ie, Harpur and Cascioli don't agree with each other about where the "Jesus Myth" originated) leading to such contradictory conclusions, how can they at all stand against 2000 years of unified teaching about Him?

When you're that desparate to hide from the truth, any lie, no matter how ridiculous, sure begins to sound good, I guess.

God bless.

7 Comments:

Blogger Eric said...

I'm definitely way cooler than the Gospel of Judas.

8:29 AM  
Blogger Gregory said...

That's not hard!

Hey, guess what! I get to play Jesus in the Oakville Good Friday Way of the Cross!

10:03 AM  
Blogger Eric said...

I'l do it, if you'd like.

1:30 PM  
Blogger Gregory said...

Hey Matt!

I'd appreciate the availability for driving. Pete Milway also offered (though he's not able to come. He'd just drive to St. D's afterward to pick people up. I'm not entirely certain what all the arrangements are when it comes to that, though.

Sorry.

And Eric, you can't. You're having your LOTR birthday marathon the night before.

And, no.

3:42 PM  
Blogger Eric said...

You're just jealous, 'cause you know I can play a way more realistic Jesus...and I can speak...Aramaic...I assume.

Hooray for me!

Well, I'll see you, hopefully monday, but if not, then lets try to hang next week/end possibly.

4:28 AM  
Blogger Gregory said...

Eric, you've got the hair, but I had the beard...and a wig. So there.

2:09 PM  
Blogger Eric said...

Man, Eric is so cool.


~Not Eric

4:44 AM  

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