I'm astonished at how gullible so many people are, how prone to wishful thinking. I keep hearing things like this (and this is from one of the document's translators!):

[Rodolphe] Kasser, who believes there are other gospels out there waiting to be discovered, says the Gnostic text removes the dark stain on Judas's name that has fuelled anti-Semitism throughout the centuries.... [Says Kasser:] ".... there aren't any major theological changes... But it lifts the scandal surrounding the name of Judas."

From what I'm hearing the "gospel" depicts Judas as acting out of altruistic motives, rather than greed, as the older biblical texts do.

Is it history?

There are a few problems with this idea, also known as facts:

* "Gospel of Judas" dates somewhere in the fourth century, probably nearer to the end of it, from what I'm hearing. That means this document was written some three hundred years after Jesus died.

* It came from Egypt, half a continent away from Israel. It's written in Coptic, and Egyptian language, not Greek or Hebrew. And we don't even have any hard evidence suggesting it was once translated from Greek.

* There is an earlier mention of a "Gospel of Judas." Main problem: The document described there appears to have had different content than this one.

* The religion "Judas" is attributed to, Gnosticism, had a long habit of putting their ideas-du-jour into the mouths of Jesus and his disciples by writing fictionalized accounts of their lives -- and each contradicts the next. Given this, treating a gnostic document as history is a bit like treating JZ Knight's channeled messages from Ramtha about Atlantis as archaeology.

I find it amusing people who won't trust the bible one bit, despite the strong textual evidence in favor of it, then readily invest complete trust into documents written much later, and having admittedly questionable historicity.

Image if a man born in 2050 wrote an account about George Washington going naked to the signing of the Constitution. Then imagine some "scholars", living more than a thousand years after that, found it, knew it dated three hundred years after the signing of the Constitution, and announced it "revealed" new things about George Washington, and the founding of our country.

No, it didn't. It revealed what some nut-case, living further away from the even than we do, wanted to say about it. Yet the media and select "experts" are acting as though such a document really would contain accurate historical information about George Washington.

Put another way, it's a bit like having two mental patients confined to a hospital room. One man is convinced he's Napolean. The other is talking with him and furiously jotting down notes -- he's discovering all kinds of new and interesting historical information nobody ever knew before about Mssr. Bonaparte!

Theological changes?

I love it where the "expert", Kasser, above, says: "There aren't any major theological changes..." I nearly lost it when he said that, because Stephen Carlson notes that the Gospel of Judas tells us:

Judas [said] to [Jesus], “I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you.

Wouldn't Jesus being "from the immortal realm of Barbelo" be kind of a new doctrine?

Stephen also notes the Gospel of Judas claims that Christ was actually an angel named "Seth", who ruled over the underworld. Again, I guess according to Kasser, that's supposed to be pretty orthodox Christian doctrine? Or might that be just a little different than being the son of God?

And hey, if we're willing to accept its account of Judas' betrayal, why not go with all this other great stuff too? For example, here's Jesus as Odo from DS9:

He began to speak with them about the mysteries beyond the world and what would take place at the end. Often he did not appear to his disciples as himself, but he was found among them as a child.

Healer, teacher, humble servant... shape-shifter. All the same, really.

Again, nothing new in there, theologically.

Well, not if you treat it as a document about Gnosticism. But it's being treated as though it were about Christianity, or as though gnosticism was the original belief of the first Christians -- despite the fact gnosticism arises from Greek philosophy, not Jewish religion, and that we have no evidence of a strong gnostic movement in the first century.

But hey, let's not a bit of evidence interfere with our desired storyline, eh?

Personal note

I know it will throw people off to hear me talk like this: "But you're a Christian! Your beliefs are all based on faith!" Speak for yourself, wise guy. I'm a Christian because I examined many alternatives and found it the most credible anwer. I may be wrong, but not for having failed to do research. If it turns out someday I indeed was wrong, it won't be simply because I believed whatever I wanted to believe.

Yet wishful thinking is exactly what drives so many other religious choices. It is the New Age, not Christianity, which treats religion as a dinner buffet where all choices are equally valid -- not as an attempt to accurately describe the universe in moral and philosophical terms. Once you don't reject the possibility of external absolutes, your beliefs must boil down to wishful thinking.

And, worse, it is often atheists, in my experience, who don't know the first thing about reason, evidence, or clear thinking. Their mantra simply boils down to asserting their beliefs are "reason" simply because they worship the idea of reason. That's not the same thing as being reasonable, yourself, or actually using reason in your thinking process. That behavior itself is a logical fallacy, an inverse ad homen argument, writ large.

I reject the Gospel of Judas not because it disagrees with my beliefs. I reject it for the reasons stated above: it was written long after the events it portrays, and while it certainly tells us how someone (an unknown Egyptian gnostic) thought, it doesn't have a whelk's chance in a supernova of telling anything about what the actual historical Judas thought or said -- in private, no less.