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Religion
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Title: Recovered Gospel of Judas Gives Alternative View of Christ's Betrayal
Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur
URL Source: http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/printer_1153203.php
Published: Apr 6, 2006
Author: Frank Fuhrig
Post Date: 2006-04-06 21:18:18 by Brian S
Keywords: None
Views: 282
Comments: 20

Apr 7, 2006, 19:00 GMT

Washington - The Gospel of Judas, attacked as heretical in early church texts but lost to Christianity for the last 17 centuries, was revealed Thursday by scholars in Washington.

The 26-page papyrus document casts Judas Iscariot as the best friend of Jesus, doing his master's bidding by betraying the Messiah.

For nearly two millennia, the four accepted gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have made Judas a synonym for betrayal, portraying him as selling out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. His kiss identified Jesus for the Romans to arrest, and after the crucifixion, a guilt-ridden Judas was said to have committed suicide.

In the newly revealed version, believed to have been written in the second century in Greek by an unknown author, Jesus tells Judas, 'You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.'

Rodolphe Kasser, a top scholar of early Egyptian Christianity and co-editor of the annotated Gospel of Judas now being published, describes Jesus in the book as saying it was '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.

'So he asks Judas, who is his friend, to sell him out, to betray him. It's treason to the general public, but between Jesus and Judas it's not treachery.'

Pages from the codex were unveiled at the headquarters of the National Geographic Society, a US-based group that promotes knowledge in wide fields including natural science, history and geography. The ancient document goes on public display Friday at the National Geographic Museum in Washington.

A two-hour special television broadcast on Sunday offers revelations about the ancient document, purported to be a long-hidden account of the life of Jesus by one of his disciples. For Christians, the broadcast coincides with Palm Sunday, the day of Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, where he would be crucified. The following Sunday, April 16, is widely celebrated as Easter to commemorate Christ's resurrection.

The rediscovered gospel is typical of the Gnostic sect of early Christians, who believed that the material world was corrupt. They sought salvation through secret knowledge, revealed by Jesus to his disciples, to escape their material bodies and re-enter the spiritual realm.

The Gospel of Judas was previously known only through surviving references in early Christians writings. Most were condemnations, such as one in the year 180 by St. Irenaeus, bishop of what is now Lyon, France, in a work written to condemn what he considered heresies at a time when many competing gospels and strains of Christian interpretation were competing across the Mediterranean world.

St. Irenaeus called the Gospel of Judas and other alternative versions of the life of Christ 'fictitious histories.'

But the Gospel of Judas was soon lost to history, until the discovery of the current version, a translation from the original Greek into Coptic, the ancient language of early Christians in Egypt.

Radiocarbon dating of the papyrus sheets and leather binding put the origins of the material between the years 220 and 340. Testing of the ink confirmed the time frame.

The theological content, style, grammar and script were all consistent with other Gnostic texts of the era in Egypt, according to academics who examined the manuscripts. A convincing forgery of such obscure cultural details would be improbable, one of the lead scholars on the project said.

Written in the ancient language of Egypt's Coptic Christians, the pages are believed to have turned up in the 1970s in Egypt, perhaps near the city of al-Minya, Egypt, along the Nile some 200 kilometres south of Cairo.

An antiquities prospector sold the book to a Cairo antiquities dealer. It was stolen with most of his collection around 1980 but eventually recovered.

In 1983 the dealer, seeking buyers, showed the papers to three academics, including Coptic scholar Stephen Emmel, then a graduate student in Rome. They were not allowed to photograph or take notes on the collection of brittle papyri, which were folded in newspaper and stuffed inside shoe boxes.

Now professor of Coptic studies at the University of Muenster in Germany, Emmel said it was clearly an ancient, valuable find, but they had too little opportunity to realize it contained the Gospel of Judas. At the time it was 60 pages in full, but much of it disintegrated in the following two decades before it was properly conserved.

He and the other two scholars in 1983 were unable to purchase the codex, for which the Egyptian dealer was asking 3 million dollars, and it disappeared again. It was eventually stored in a safe-deposit box in 1984 at a bank outside New York City.

The document stayed there until its purchase in 2000 by Swiss- based antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, who still had no idea of the exact contents.

She let it be examined by scholars at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where papyrus expert Robert Babcock recognized it as the Gospel of Judas. The 26 surviving pages also contain a letter of Peter to Philip and fragments of other obscure religious documents.

After unsuccessful sale attempts, Nussberger-Tchacos left the codex with the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art. Eventually, the National Geographic Society and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, based in La Jolla, California, joined to restore and translate the Gospel of Judas, in exchange for publication rights.

The full document will eventually be housed permanently in Cairo's Coptic Museum.

'We can consider it a real miracle that (such an ancient literary work), especially one threatened by the hatred of the great majority of its contemporary readers, who saw it as a shame and a scandal, destined to be lost ... would suddenly appear and be brought to light,' said Kasser, leader of the restoration and translation project.

© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 20.

#2. To: Brian S (#0)

Looks like Judas is due an apology, and election to the Communion of Saints.

MUDDOG  posted on  2006-04-06   21:31:22 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: MUDDOG (#2)

What would Judas do?

Fred Mertz  posted on  2006-04-06   22:25:11 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Fred Mertz (#4)

What would Judas do?

Funny stuff there Fred.

Years ago I was fascinated by the epic stories told in the Dead Sea Scrolls. John the Baptist being the brother of Jesus, Jesus begat from not a virgin. The Children of Light battle the Children of Dark. To this day I wonder if the blood line theories are in the ballpark. When I don't think of the political confusions we live in, I find the world an incredible place with countless histories to discover/consider.

Ragin1  posted on  2006-04-06   23:13:40 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: Ragin1 (#7)

John the Baptist being the brother of Jesus, Jesus begat from not a virgin. The Children of Light battle the Children of Dark.

John the Baptist was Jesus' cousin:

http://www.bluelett erbible.org/kjv/Luk/Luk001.html#36

...Behold, a virgin shall conceive....

http://www.blueletterb ible.org/tsk_b/Isa/7/14.html

...Children of Light

http://www.blueletterbi ble.org/tsk_b/1Th/5/5.html

vs. Children of Darkness

http://www.ohr.org.il/season s/5759/teves.htm

Jesus' "bloodline":

http://www.blueletter bible.org/tsk_b/Isa/53/10.html ; Galatians 3:16-29 http://www.bluelett erbible.org/kjv/Gal/Gal003.html#16

The conspirators' bloodlines:

http://www.the watcherfiles.com/bloodlines/introduction.htm

AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt  posted on  2006-04-07   19:30:16 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt (#12)

Do we have the actual documents written by Mathew Mark Luke and John? Do we have the documents Paul wrote to the churches? Or are they copied by historians?

Ragin1  posted on  2006-04-07   19:47:41 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: Ragin1 (#13)

If God wanted us to PREACH THE GOSPEL, would He have left it up to chance that we would receive the WORD TO PREACH, or leave the WORD UNSAID for 2,000 years?

He did, however, say this:

1Cr 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God

Luk 12:1 In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Luk 12:2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.

Luk 12:3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.

Rom 2:16 In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

2Cr 4:2 But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt  posted on  2006-04-07   20:04:34 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: AllTheKings'HorsesWontDoIt (#16)

you're right above when you say people will (and do) just come out of the woodwork to deny the bible. I call them naysayers.

that is a new one about the 'dogma'. I guess it means that the bible is illegitimate because people believe in it. but all of this other stuff people believe in, that's legitimate. many intellectuals seem to believe that any belief that speaks against the bible is true and anything in the bible is false. it is their faith. and with it they ridicule other people's faith.

One fellow (on this board) told me he was a 'liberal catholic'. and he said that liberal catholics invented logic. and he said that the old testament does not predict that jesus would come. and he said that if you believe in the bible, then you support slavery. and he said that anyone who believes in the bible makes christians look bad. these are all exactly things that this guy said. and he says he teaches this stuff in bible studies to other liberal catholics I guess.

liberal catholics have many peculiar beliefs, but it is not dogma. thomas acquinas' writings are not dogma. but the bible is dogma. we must remember that.

I laugh at them.

Red Jones  posted on  2006-04-07   21:19:27 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: Red Jones (#19)

just come out of the woodwork to deny the bible

Where did I deny the Bible Red? Which Bible are you refering to?

but the bible is dogma. we must remember that.

The Bible is a book. If one believes it, one chooses to believe it on blind faith. Our choice. I think He called that free will. His greatest gift, and not incedently the first thing a bigot will try to take from you.

Ragin1  posted on  2006-04-10   2:32:57 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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