The Gospel of Judas expounds the same message as other gnostic tracts: salvation = secret knowledge available to only a few privileged mystics.

Yeah, Crossan is brilliant. Brilliantly wrong, and Brilliantly paddling his own boat, but brilliant. Wright hauls Crossan in on a couple of points in JVG, but every clock is right twice a day.

The fact is that no matter what pitches these guys occasionally hit, their scholarly METHOD is dumbfounding cavalier. What Crossan does to the study of historical sources ought to be illegal. He believes the insights of a sociologist on brigands in first century Judaism tell us far more about Jesus than the New Testament. Huh?

All these people, at the end of the day, have two axes to grind: Jesus is really a _________________________ (insert their latest politically correct interest) and evangelicals are the devil incarnate: Jew haters, etc.

Giving them some credit is appropriate. Looking past their blatant agendas and bias is not possible, however.

Hmm. This is a common evangelical stereotype, but I’m not convinced it’s really true. I’m no fan of the Jesus Seminar generally, but it’s not true that the individual scholars involved are regarded by other scholars as mavericks. Even Wright treats their work seriously and extensively.

It’s just a little too easy to write them off as loonies on the fringes of “real” scholarship, but many of them are not. That’s not to deny the Jesus Seminar was a piece of slick marketing, but these scholars and their work go beyond just the Seminar.

The sad thing is that “discoveries” like this and The DaVinci Code often get Christians confused and caught up in it. It is really sad that we do not search out truth better than we do. Too many people take CNN’s word for stuff and move on…

It brings to mind the Bereans… We need to search out the truth and help others do the same. Thanks again for iMonk and the thought provoking articles you bring us!

It is quite a hilarious read. It seems to randomly jump to various bits of “secret knowledge” that Jesus was sharing only with Judas. Surprise surprise the Gnostics are behind all this.

My favorite part was the fact that apparently Jesus would appear as a child to his disciples randomly. I wonder if there is some link here between modern Hollywood’s fascination with children as a source of great wisdom and the ancient Gnostics.

I’ve only seen one actual news article on the Gospel of Judas (and I avoid Faux News, so I don’t know how badly they reported this), and it didn’t present it as anything that would turn Christianity on its head. It was discussed for what it is: a Gnostic document that sheds light on some of the beliefs that were part of the milleau of the first couple centuries of the early church. It presents a different take on who Judas was and how he’s understood. And that take is not in itself heretical (Judas as a trusted friend doing what was necessary is an idea that’s been around long before the discovery of this parchment). In fact, one scholar was quoted as saying that there is very little in this parchment that presents any real conflict with the accepted Gospels (only with ideas about Judas that developed later in Christian history).

So, basically, it isn’t going to change or even challenge anyone’s understanding of basic Christian theology. For scholars it’s an exciting discovery, but for the average guy in th pews it has little meaning.

Rants about Fox News aside, I love the post.

I’ve been dealing with a lot of idiots lately who have been conditioned, thanks to an American educational system that doesn’t teach critical thinking, to believe anything they find in print. Unfortunately, this now also extends to fiction. So if The DaVinci Code says it, they reason there must be some truth behind it, otherwise it wouldn’t be convincing fiction.

And following that logic, Martians are real and they landed in and attacked Britain in the late 1890s. H.G. Wells said so. Convincingly. After all, at the time, most people actually believed there was life on Mars. Reputable scientists like Percival Lowell said so and even drew maps of the canals. The radio version War of the Worlds even caused panics in New York 40 years later. The only reason people don’t take it seriously anymore is that the idea of life on Mars has been completely debunked by our space probes.

If only we had something analogous for spurious gnostic documents… but for now we have to use reason, which is seriously lacking because few are trained to use it.