So, apparently, we have gotten all wrong. For all of these years, we have thought that Judas betrayed Jesus and now it turns out that he was not only innocent but was the hero of the story. Amazing! I know my belief system is thoroughly shaken.
Okay...pardon the sarcasm but after watching National Geographic's presentation of "The Gospel of Judas" I'm still a little 'put off.' I know it shouldn't upset me but I know that a lot of people will watch this special and assume that having 'Princeton' next to your name means that everything they say must be true. The fact of the matter is that this was an extremely slanted show with an obvious agenda tied to a multi-million dollar manuscript. I mean just look at who they interviewed (Elaine Pagels, Bart Erhman, etc) versus Robert Schuller on the other. If you saw it, you know exactly what I mean. Robert's rebuttal to the gospel of Judas was: "Well, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were good enough for me..." (at this point, I think I threw my remote control across the room)
Right.
What was lacking was a good Biblical scholar (like a Tom Wright) to put some of these issues to rest. But, then, I guess that would be counter-intuitive to a document that has a lot of money tied in to it. They gave the impression that Iranaeus laid out 30 gospels and he picked out Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and destroyed and suppressed the rest as if in a way to manipulate what people believed. The way they did this made it almost seem arbitrary. What they didn't say as much was how these other gospels came considerably later and imported ideas that would have been radical departures from first century Judaism. It doesn't take many sayings from this so-called gospel of Judas to see how foreign these ideas would have been to Palestinian Judaism. (Btw, the gospel of Judas is a great name for the document except for the fact that it's not a gospel (good news) and it wasn't by Judas, but other than that...)
Also, they were very deliberate in their attempts to try and show how the writers of the gospels changed their versions of history as they pleased. The big example given was how Judas was portrayed in each of the gospels. I'll grant that there are different pictures given of this character but that certainly doesn't mean that a writer was importing his own ideas into the story. Clearly, the writers of the gospels are working on different themes and issues and character developments will, of course, look different given how these ideas play out.
I could go on but I just needed to vent a little bit, especially since this is just the beginning of what will be an interesting year debating these issues. The Da Vinci Code will, no doubt, spark many conversations on these issues. I, for one, am actually looking forward to the opportunity to engage with people on these spiritual matters. I know that God can and will use these discussions to draw people to Himself!
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