A better title would be “The Gospel of Satan.” I just read the National Geographic Magazine’s article on the Judas Gospel. First of all, before I delve into my rampage; I would like to put forth the question: “Since when does National Geographic cover heresies?” I guess it’s just part of their general trend toward politicizing everything.
The Judas Gospel is a document that was discovered in the 1970s, and is one of the many Gnostic Gospels (see my post on them) that were written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D. This particular manuscript was supposedly written by Judas, or one of his followers, and presents a completely different message from the canonical gospels. This “gospel” says that Judas was the beloved disciple of Jesus. In other words, Judas was the only one of the disciples who actually understood Jesus and His mission. The other disciples were jealous of Judas and were worth nothing to Jesus. (Don’t ask me why He called them, then) So according to the Judas Gospel, Jesus asked Judas to betray Him, so that He would be able to die and therefore separate the soul from the body. At that point, Jesus would be free to practice His divine nature. The whole point of Gnosticism is to separate the soul from the body. After this, Judas killed himself so that he could also reveal his divine spark.
This is a completely outlandish and twisted account. Yet NG gives it more credibility than the canonical gospels. Why? Because it contradicts Christianity and gives people an excuse for not believing.
There are many, many problems with the concept put forth in the Judas Gospel. I’m going to give just the ones that I have thought of, but there are new ones I think of everyday.
Judas died, so how was he able to record the events? (Unless it was his private diary, or something.)
Jesus was divine, and came to earth to die for the sins of mankind. The Judas Gospel contradicts the whole message of Christianity.
The Judas Gospel contradicts the other canonical gospels in almost every fact. Why should we trust it more than the ones that have been in the Bible since the very first days of Christianity?
The letters of Paul, and the rest of the New Testament for that matter, do not back up any of the Judas Gospel’s “facts.” In fact, Acts condemns Judas just as the Gospels do.
BIG PROBLEM: The Judas Gospel does not fulfill the Old Testament. The whole point of Christ’s coming was to fulfill Old Testament prophecy, promise, and covenant from the time of Adam on down. The Judas Gospel makes itself irrelevant by not accomplishing salvation. If Judas was the genius in matters concerning Christ’s mission, why did he not fulfill it?
The article in NG has many problems itself. It says that the four canonical Gospels were anti-Jewish and wanted to portray Judas as the archetypical Jew. In other words, the authors wanted to take advantage of the situation. This is false. One of the Gospels is specially designed for Jews. The Bible says nowhere that Jews cannot be saved.
Ignatius has been really attacked for no reason. According to NG, Ignatius imposed the 27 canonical books on the church, and that before that; Christianity had been a very diverse religion with many gospels circulating and being accepted. This is the pit of falsehood. The true early Christians had the four gospels early on, and accepted them, because they knew the authors. The message agrees with everything else. Then the Gnostics came in and proclaimed their falsehood. Some were taken in, but not many. Gnosticism was recognized immediately for what it is: heresy. The NG account makes it look like Ignatius was the first one to say anything. In reality John speaks against it in Rev. 2:24.
Another thing is that NG attributes the “popularity” of the four canonical gospels to a hunch on the part of early Christians. The article paints the picture of predominately poor Christians coming into a book copying shop and asking for John’s Gospel, Luke’s Gospel, etc. The early Christians were not poor! Joseph of Aramethea had money, so did Philemon, Priscilla and Aquilla, etc.
As I notice with many other documentaries on this subject, the sources of truth for this article are liberal scholars who don’t give a whit about the Bible. They would be happy to accept anything that undermines God’s Word.
Again, I have to say that just because they wrote back then doesn’t mean everything they wrote was true. Fiction has been around for a while.
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