Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed Book

This book is neither a novel nor about a gospel written by Judas. It is rather a serious and well documented work on the history of the beginning of Christendom. Yes, of course, it is about the gospel of Judas. But as with other Gospels, whether they are part of the New Testament or apocryphal, it was not written by one of Jesus' apostles.

This book also talk about:
The four Gospels of the New Testament, the Acts of the apostles and Paul's epistles. The author compared all these books and showed many discrepancies and contradictions relative to each other.

Then the Gospel of Peter, discovered in 1886, a book condemned by early church fathers for containing a docetic Christology. Other fragments of the Gospel have turned up in Egypt in the twentieth century. In fact, we have more fragmentary copies of the Gospel of Peter from the early centuries than of the Gospel of Mark. Was Peter the more popular Gospel at the time?

There is also the Gospel of Mary, discovered in 1896, which contains a Gnostic revelation given by Jesus to Mary about how the soul can ascend to heaven.

Then there are the fifty-two writings of the Nag Hammadi library, including the Secret Book of John, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, and the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter'all of them Gnostic writings detailing aspects of the Gnostic worldview'not to mention the Gospels of Thomas and Philip from the same collection.

In the 1980s a book called the Gospel of the Savior turned up, which narrates Jesus' last hours and his final words delivered . . . to the cross!

And now there is the Gospel of Judas, another Gnostic dialogue that discusses the "secret revelation" Jesus gave to Judas Iscariot.

But these books are only a small part of the references given by the author.

About the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, the author says: "No one thought the Gospel was actually by Judas himself. Judas was an illiterate peasant, like Jesus' other disciples. But there was the possibility that it was one of our oldest surviving Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but possibly from the second Christian century. That century had seen a proliferation of Gospels forged in the names of Jesus' disciples-Gospels written in the names of Thomas, Philip, and Mary, for example. This Gospel would be different, HOWEVER. All the other surviving Gospels told the story from the perspective of Jesus' friends. This one allegedly was by his enemy. But according to the hints and rumors circulating in the early church, this lost Gospel named after Jesus betray portrayed Judas Iscariot not in the rotten apple in the apostolic barrel but as the one disciple who understood Jesus' teaching and did his will."

Mr. Ehrman makes it very clear that Jesus was an apocalypticist. That is to say, like many other preachers of his time, he asserted that the end of the world was very close. Jesus repeated many times the same thing, "Truly I tell you, this generation will not be away from these things take place (Mark 13:30)" because "the time has been fulfilled" (Mark 1:15) and "Truly I tell you, some of those standing here will not taste death before they see that the Kingdom of God has come in power". This generation was his own and that of his apostles. So Jesus believed that the God's Kingdom (or the Kingdom of Heaven) was imminent. And this was the foundation of his and other Apocalypcists's beliefs.

Moreover, the Twelve would be the rulers of this Kingdom: in the "age to come, when the Son of Man is seated upon his glorious throne, you also will sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt. 19:28; cf.Luke 22:30). So the apostles believe that they would be soon at the head of the twelve tribes of Israel, the powerful overlord of God's Kingdom, and so during their lifetime (reason why there were TWELVE apostles, not less, nor more). They even argued to know which ones of them will be superior in the upcoming Kingdom of God; they want to know who will be allowed to sit at Jesus' right and left hands (Mark 9:34; 10:35-37). Given what Jesus had told them about their future roles in the Kingdom, it is no surprise that they had visions of grandeur: they were to be the twelve rulers in the utopian Kingdom that was soon to arrive. This is what the Twelve'including Judas Iscariot'expected.

It is no wonder that they could not make heads or tails of Jesus' declaration, near the end of his ministry, that he was about to be rejected and killed. Killed? How could he be killed? The Kingdom was coming, and they would be its rulers. Jesus was their master now. Wouldn't he be their master then? So the disciples never did understand that Jesus was about to die. They thought he would be with them in the Kingdom. In fact, he would still be over them. They would be the overlords, ruling the twelve tribes, but he would be the Lord of all, the king of the Kingdom. And what is the Jewish term used to refer to the future king of the future Kingdom, the one who would be anointed to rule over all? It is the word messiah, and the equivalent term in ancient Greek, the language of the New Testament, is christos, or Christ. But no Jew of the ancient world thought the messiah was supposed to be God. The messiah was the "anointed one," the mortal chosen by God to rule over his Kingdom. Furthermore, Jesus was none of the things that Jews expected the messiah to be. Calling Jesus the messiah made no sense to most Jews, of Jesus' own day or afterward (e.g. the messiah was not supposed to "rise from the dead"). For Jews, what made the messiah the messiah was the fact that he was God's chosen one who would rule God's people.

However, Jesus did not mean that he was the messiah in the sense that he would raise an army and overthrow the Romans. He meant it in line with his apocalyptic teaching. Jesus believed the Son of Man (not himself) was coming in judgment on the earth to bring in God's Kingdom, and he would be the one installed as the king. In this apocalyptic sense, he was the future messiah. This is not what Pilate understood when he asked him if he was the King of the Jews though. And Jesus was condemned for rebellion. But since Jesus never called himself the Messiah publically before his arrest, the Roman needed some insider to give them the charge. Judas, as one of the Twelve, was in a unique position to do it; he told them that Jesus considered himself as the King of Jews.

According to the anonymous writer of the Gospel of Judas Iscariot, Judas was the only member of Jesus' apostolic band who understood Jesus' apocalyptic message, where he came from and where he was going. Since Judas had insider knowledge, he could do what Jesus needed: turn him over to the authorities that he might be killed and escape his temporary entrapment in a mortal body and then become the King of the Jews in Heaven. In Jesus' memorable words spoken to Judas, "you will exceed them all, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."

But this account was written a century after the fact by a Gnostic who saw liberation from this material world to be the greatest good imaginable, and who told his story about Jesus and Judas in light of his own belief. Why did Judas do it in reality? It is hard to tell. It could have been for many reasons (e.g. as the other apostles, his hopes were dashed; he had enough to wait for God's Kingdom that was not coming as fast as they had liked).

Jesus' message is clear in our very earliest sources, such as Mark, Q (short for Quelle, German for "source"' a written account of Jesus' sayings, and one of the sources behind Matthew and Luke), this was the heart and core of Jesus' proclamation'that someone called the Son of Man, a cosmic judge from heaven, was soon to arrive in judgment to establish God's Kingdom 'why don't people today normally think of this as his message? The answer is not hard to find. The expected end did not come.

Jesus died. Then his disciples died. And the end never arrived. As a result, the followers of Jesus started emphasizing other aspects of his message. His proclamation was reshaped away from its original apocalyptic emphasis. The early Christian church in Rome preferred to promulgate an image of Jesus as a peaceful spiritual teacher rather than a politically conscious revolutionary; it was safer than to speak about the King of the Jews. This is why in the later sources, there is so very little of this apocalyptic message.

There is a section of the book explaining what Christians of the first centuries believed. There were competing groups within early Christianity; these different groups held different sets of beliefs and practices, and they were all seeking to win converts to their perspectives. These beliefs and practices differed so widely from one group to another that historians have sometimes had difficulty acknowledging all of them as "Christian." In the early centuries, of course, there were Christians who believed in only one God. But others claimed that there were two gods (the Marcionites); yet others said there were thirty gods, or 365 gods (various groups of Gnostics). There were Christians who maintained that this world was the creation of the one true God; others said that it was the creation of the just but wrathful god of the Jews, who was not the true God; others said it was the creation of much inferior ignorant deities who were malicious and evil. There were Christians who believed that Jesus was both human and divine; others said he was human but not divine; others that he was divine but not human; others that he was two beings, one divine and one human. There were Christians who believed that Jesus' death was what brought about a restored relationship with God; others said that Jesus' death had nothing to do with salvation; yet others said that Jesus never died. And all of them insisted not only that they were Christians but that they were the true Christians, and that all the other groups had misunderstood the teachings of both Jesus and his apostles. But only one group emerged as victorious, near the end of the third century or the beginning of the fourth. And this group began to decide what was heretic and what was orthodox (relating to, or conforming to the approved form of any doctrine, philosophy, ideology, etc.). And if you weren't with them, you were against them. And thus began the Inquisition.

Since Jesus' fundamental message was about the coming of the end of the world and the Kingdom of Heaven and that it is also the essential message of the Gospel of Judas, we are safe to conclude that this last gospel was closer to Jesus' initial message than the other gospels. But since the end of the world did not take place as announced, we can safely say that they were both wrong.

As for the winner of the religious conflicts between the different "factions" of Christianity, what it promotes (that is to say, Jesus' death to wash away our sins and his resurrection) has nothing to do with his primordial and principal message. The winner group's non-apocalyptic approach is far from the true message of Jesus.

Since the author often re-uses the same passages from the Gospels and other "orthodox" or Gnostic texts to demonstrate what he seeks to prove to us, the result is a long and repetitive book. A better edition could have shortened it by at least one third without sacrificing important information. This said, this is a scholarly and very interesting book. That's why I give it four stars.