Gospel of Judas

When I first heard this story a day ago, I thought, "I know this." How I already knew it though, completely escapes me. It just didn't seem like new news.

I've always wondered why the Christian side of religion, most especially the early Catholic church that was responsible for setting most of the christian doctrine, was so willing to limit God and/or Jesus to basic human failings. God is supposed to be all knowing and all powerful. Didn't most of us learn the word omniscient through our Sunday School classes? I know I did. I also remember questioning our pastor when I was about twelve about how anything could happen to Jesus that was a surprise since you would think he'd have that same "all knowing" knowledge. That's why this story of the Judas betrayal makes far more sense than the one most of us learned as children.

Of course, I also have believed, long before the DaVinci Code was written, that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had something going. Many years ago, I heard a Jewish to Christian convert preacher talk about ancient Jewish wedding customs and make this link based on the wedding story where Jesus turned the water into wine. It has something to do with who was the host/hostess at that wedding and how that would relate to who was the bridegroom. I forget the details, just remember the conclusion that the wedding was Jesus own wedding and that Mary Magdalene was the most likely bride. This made more sense to me at the time than the Catholic/Christian tenet of celibacy.

God's commandment was "be fruitful and multiply" not withhold your seed to prove how pious you are. Celibacy is against the natural and makes no sense in relation to anything else we can learn about God from the Biblical text. God and Jesus were constantly preaching love. In the ancient Jewish tradition, young men were supposed to follow a certain proscribed pattern of behavior from their movement into manhood at 13 and followed by a certain number of years of learning and then at the right age to take a bride and become a man of his own kingdom, blah, blah, blah. Jesus followed the pattern and yet if one didn't want to know differently, you'd have to conclude he was gay, only hanging around with the men, sleeping with the men, eating, drinking, living with the men. I don't believe it. These were outdoorsmen, these were "real" men, not a bunch of namby pambys like the early Catholic church tries to paint them. This band of disciples and their followers were a tough group and to think that their sexual drive was any less than any other person is just plain stupid.

Well, this is not a religious blog, so I won't continue. I am still interested in the release of the Judas Gospel from an archaeological point of view.                        

Gospel of Judas released

WASHINGTON, April 6 (UPI) --

A translation of the so-called Gospel of Judas was released Thursday, 18 centuries after it was written and 30 years after its discovery in Egypt.

The text, written in Coptic in the 2nd century, portrays Judas as Jesus' closest and most beloved disciple. While Judas was Jesus' betrayer, the betrayal was at Jesus' request.

Scholars who put together the text and made the translation were funded by the National Geographic Society and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery. The National Geographic magazine reports on the work in its May issue.

In a key exchange with Judas, Jesus tells him that "you will sacrifice the man that clothes me," the gospel says.

"Jesus says it is necessary for someone to free him finally from his human body, and he prefers that this liberation be done by a friend rather than by an enemy," said Rodolphe Kasser, a minister who led the translation team.

While scholars agree that the Gospel of Judas is a major discovery, many feel it is unlikely to have any great impact on Christian beliefs. It is one of a number of gospels rejected when leaders of the early Christian church put together the collection of writings that became known as the New Testament.

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Comments

[Americaphile]

Rev. 22:19 For I testify unto every ,an that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things,God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.

Case closed, there are no missing books of the inspired word of God. National Geographic is a nest of perverts who hate God, but I know their final fate. I also don't know why typekey insists on remembering me only as americaphile. Great blog, first time I've ran into it, I blog at http://sanitybluff.blogspot.com
The blog is called Sanity's Bluff, and web_loafer is the name I use there.

Again, great blog.

[Pal2Pal (Sara)]

Sorry, but you are misinterpreting what you read simply because the Bible as we know it now was compiled 300+ years after the Book of Revelations was written and was a decision by a bunch of Catholic gurus who made arbitrary decisions on which books got included what didn't. Much of the decision was political rather than spiritual and God didn't have anything to do with it. Besides that quote, in my mind, refers to the prophecies of Revelations, not the entire Judaic-Christian Biblical text.

Thanks for your compliment. Always nice to hear kind words.