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The two leading, bestselling experts on the Gnostic Gospels weigh in on the meaning of the controversial newly discovered Gospel of Judas.
When the Gospel of Judas was published by the National Geographic Society in April 2006, it received extraordinary media attention and was immediately heralded as a major biblical discovery that rocked the world of scholars and laypeople alike. Elaine Pagels and Karen King are the first to reflect on this newfound text and its ramifications for telling the story of early Christianity. In Reading Judas, the two celebrated scholars illustrate how the newly discovered text provides a window onto understanding how Jesus' followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.
Most contemporary readers will find passages in the ancient Gospel of Judas difficult to comprehend outside of its context in the ancient world. Reading Judas illuminates the intellectual assumptions behind Jesus' teaching to Judas and shows how conflict among the disciples was a tool frequently used by early Christian authors to explore matters of doubt and disagreement. Presented with the elegance, insight, and accessibility that has made Pagels and King the leading voices in this field, this is a book for academics and popular audience both. Pagels's five previous books, including the New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief, and King's The Gospel of Mary of Magdala prove that there is a considerable audience eager for this kind of informed and engaging writing.
Review:
"The Christian Gospels are surprisingly ridden with conflict. Each one — whether officially part of the New Testament or not — contains a sometimes acrimonious debate about faith or practice, theology or authority, this leader or that one. In the recently published 'Gospel of Judas,' for example, that archetypal traitor becomes the only true believer, the one who 'lifted up his eyes... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) ... saw the luminous cloud and ... entered into it.' The gospel was discovered sometime in the 1970s along with some other texts in a papyrus book in Egypt. The original 2nd-century Greek text had been translated into Coptic — the Egyptian language using the Greek alphabet — in the 4th century. This version was stored inadequately, protected irresponsibly and bartered greedily for maximum profit. Finally, last year, the badly damaged gospel received expert preservation, scholarly restoration and public presentation by the National Geographic Society. In their slim but excellent 'Reading Judas,' Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King rightly focus on the text's ancient and provocative theology rather than on the codex's modern and tortured history, with King also providing a new and very well annotated translation of this early Christian document. The Gospel of Judas records conversations between Jesus and his 12 disciples in the week before his death. But while the other disciples are derided for their incomprehension 'about the mysteries which are beyond the world and about the things which will occur at the end,' Judas is praised for his understanding. And as the only perfect disciple, his destiny is to betray Jesus. But what theology can possibly equate ultimate treachery with supreme sanctity? On the one hand, this gospel launches a brutal polemic against the glorification of martyrdom. It argues that God does not desire martyrdom, let alone demand it, believers should not want or seek it, and bodily resurrection should neither be promised by God nor expected by martyrs as the reward for bodily torture. But on the other hand, Jesus commands Judas to betray him and thereby guarantee his martyrdom, as well as Judas' own eventual martyrdom for that treachery. How can the gospel be for and against sacrificial martyrdom at the same time? Because the Gospel of Judas is not debating the fact of martyrdom but the meaning of it. And in this text, the meaning of martyrdom depends on a much deeper and more fundamental layer of the gospel's theology — one derived from Greek philosophy. Plato's famous pun of soma as sema, the body as tomb of the soul, emphasizes a giant fissure in Western sensibility between two interpretations of human identity. One interpretation claims that we are souls temporarily residing in bodies, spirits provisionally lodging in flesh. Eventually, that soul will be 'freed,' said Socrates as he prepared for martyrdom, 'from the shackles of the body by death.' The other interpretation claims that we are ensouled bodies or incarnate spirits, indissoluble unions of body and soul, flesh and spirit, able — like two sides of a coin — to be distinguished but never separated. In the first interpretation, the body is never of any lasting value or ultimate importance. And it is with that former or platonic understanding of the human being that the Gospel of Judas faces the problem of martyrdom. Martyrdom leads not to a resurrection of the body, it says, but to a liberation from the body. It bears witness not to the body's importance but to its unimportance. And how does martyrdom, which depends so absolutely on the body's suffering, prove the body's unimportance? The answer appears most clearly in the gospel's climactic moment: 'As for you, you will surpass them all,' says Jesus to Judas. 'For you will sacrifice the human being who bears me.' So, in the gospel's final lines, 'Judas received some copper coins. He handed him (Jesus) over to them.' This is 'good news,' the authors explain, because Judas 'has discovered through Jesus's teaching and his death that what dies is only his mortal self, and that his soul, filled with the spirit, already recognizes its home in God.' In a world where suicide and martyrdom have started to merge, it is hard to imagine an ancient text debating a more modern question. But martyrdom and sacrifice can hold more meanings than bodily resurrection after death or bodily liberation by death. In a brutal world, some people become martyrs — without God demanding it or themselves wanting it — whenever nonviolent justice confronts violent injustice. In a tragic world, some people sacrifice themselves — that is, make their lives sacred (from the Latin sacrum facere, to make sacred) — by giving up their own lives for others; recall, for example, the man who drowned saving fellow passengers when Air Florida 90 crashed into the Potomac off the 14th Street Bridge. Martyrdom and sacrifice can bear witness, as in the Gospel of Judas, to the body's unimportance, but they can also bear witness to precisely the opposite. John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus of religious studies at DePaul University, is the author, most recently, of 'God & Empire: Jesus Against Rome, Then and Now.'" Reviewed by Benjamin ForgeyJoseph J. EllisWilliam Jelani CobbJames T. CampbellMichael DirdaRon CharlesJonathan YardleyJohn Dominic Crossan, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:
"[T]his elegantly written book makes clear the relevance of a centuries-old text for a contemporary audience." Booklist (Starred Review)
Synopsis:
This author team, writing in an engaging, accessible style, is the first to reflect on the recent discovery of the Gospel of Judas and how that text provides insight into explaining how Jesus' followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.
Michelleyevshky, June 6, 2007 (view all comments by Michelleyevshky)
I am still coming to terms with this book. This book is the translation (by Karen King) of one of the newest Gnostic discoveries, the Gospel of Judas, accompanied with an interpretation of it by Elaine Pagels.
The book's layout is, in my opinion, sketchy. First comes Pagels' interpretation, followed by Kings' translation, followed by nearly 50 pages of notes and references. I dislike reading something after being told what to believe about it so after realizing I disliked the layout turned immediately to the Gospel of Judas.
My first impression of the Gospel of Judas was laughter. It was a bit ridiculous in a mean-spirited sort of way. There was homophobia and what could be dumbed down as racism and anti-Semitism, even anti-Christian sentiments. It was originally written in Greek in the first century C.E. although the translated version was from Coptic and the fourth century. The writer was not Judas, but presumably some early Christian. The setting is eight days before Jesus' death and the synopsis is that of Jesus picking Judas out from amongst the twelve to be given the Mysteries of the Kingdom. A great deal of the text has, unfortunately, been lost.
The notes were comprehensive, though very nitty-gritty. I went through the Gospel again with the aid of King's historical context and etymology. This helped sort out some of the places in which I found myself at sea.
Then I allowed myself to read Pagels' interpretation. She sees the writer as responding to the early Christian concept of martyrdom and sacrifice. There were those, like Irenaeus, who saw martyrdom as a gift from above, and the only way to obtain eternal life. The Gospel of Thomas, as Pagels reminds us, calls some victims "empty martyrs...testify only to themselves." (This brings to mind the likes of Eichmann. Surely if there ever were a martyr to a cause Eichmann would be one, though few Christians believe he might also obtain eternal life.) With this argument in place Pagels reiterates the Mysteries of the Kingdom which Jesus imparts to Judas, claiming that this anonymous first century writer was claiming that it is through becoming part with "divine spirit" that eternal life is obtained, not through martyrdom.
I found this to be a frustrating, enlightening, and interesting read. The Gospel of Judas itself, masterfully translated and torturously placed in context with history and etymology, was after all, only boorish bunk. Very old boorish bunk, granted, but still boorish bunk. I thought Pagels' explanation of early Christian histories fascinating and wonderful, but thought her explanations of what the anonymous author meant sometimes probable and often far-fetched. I don't think we CAN know what the writer meant, any more than we can know what the rest of the gospel writers meant. Her attempts to try came across at times too confident in her own knowledge, of which she is no doubt one of the most knoweldgable alive today.
I am not giving this book a rating because of an assumption formed off two facts.
Fact One: I dislike books on religion and only read them to understand the history of the world and why it is the way it is today and to come to terms with my own evangelical upbringing.
Fact Two: Elaine Pagels and Karen King are both competent scholars and good writers/translators.
Assumption: I am far, far, far from an objective reviewer, and as an amateur cannot effectively rate this book on a scale from 1 to 5. Any attempt to do so would be inaccurate.
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"Review"
by Booklist (Starred Review),
"[T]his elegantly written book makes clear the relevance of a centuries-old text for a contemporary audience."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
This author team, writing in an engaging, accessible style, is the first to reflect on the recent discovery of the Gospel of Judas and how that text provides insight into explaining how Jesus' followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.
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