I re-read the wikipedia article that says that most of the Gospel of Judas is missing. I still hold the original claim, because I am not making it up -- Wikipedia is telling me all about it! It's had 100's of edits to it -- ARE YOU SAYING ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE WRONG?
You can check out the Gospel of Judas yourself and see how incomplete it is. http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/GospelofJudas.pdf
[sigh]
There are so many lines missing! Most of those Gnostic documents have deteriorated really badly like this [stupid] one...
Gospel of Judas
by Phil 18 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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inquirer
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Narkissos
Inquirer,
The Wikipedia article (now) actually reads:
The Gospel of Judas was first found in the Codex Tchacos, which also contains Letter of Peter to Philip (a variant is in the Nag Hammadi collection), the First Apocalypse of James (also known from Nag Hammadi). Up to a third of the codex is currently illegible.
I am actually surprised at the good conservation of the text, as compared to many other Gnostic treatises in the Nag Hammadi library.
Now to consider it as "stupid" depends on your value judgement of Gnosticism as a whole. There are good reasons to think that early Gnosticism was a significant part of early "Christianity". Some of the more ancient proto-Gnostic works made their way into the NT, although they were modified and adapted to orthodox thought (e.g. the Gospel of John). Others were rejected and most of their copies destroyed -- which explains why only a few copies in more or less good condition have been found in the last 150 years or so. Prior to that we only knew Gnosticism through the eyes of its detractors (e.g. Irenaeus).
It always amuses me when orthodox Christians reject Gnosticism as the ultimate abomination yet wonder at the "spiritual" character of John's Gospel -- not knowing where the "light" they enjoy so much comes from.
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Leolaia
You can check out the Gospel of Judas yourself and see how incomplete it is. http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/_pdf/GospelofJudas.pdf
As I said, about 15% is missing. Those lacunae are the 15%. Most of the text has survived and the lacunae do not compromise the overall narrative (as they often do in, say, the Dead Sea Scrolls). I should also note that the manuscript itself was remarkably well preserved when it was found, possibly the entirely of Judas; the manuscript was destroyed by mishandling after discovery....exposure to seasonal cycles in the SDB, disintegration at a medial fold, reshuffling of pages and separation of the top halves from the bottom halves, and most of all by Ferriri's catastrophic attempt at freezing the codex, which forced the moisture out of the papyrus...making the paper incredibly brittle and making the ink illegible in places.
I re-read the wikipedia article that says that most of the Gospel of Judas is missing. I still hold the original claim, because I am not making it up -- Wikipedia is telling me all about it! It's had 100's of edits to it -- ARE YOU SAYING ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE WRONG?
As I said in my last post, you're confusing the gospel with the codex as a whole. The Wikipedia article does not say that most of Judas is missing. Moreover, as I also pointed out, that information is old and does not pertain to the present conserved reconstrued text which has restored much of the text.
The part of the codex that suffered the most is the Book of Allogenes, which is indeed largely missing.
Rather than go by your misreading of Wikipedia, let me cite Kasser's most recent statement: "Judas has endured the dogged ignorance of some of our contemporaries. It has suffered a material loss by erosion estimated at 10 to 15 percent. However, its message has survived largely intact" (Rodolphe Kasser, "The Story of Codex Tchacos and the Gospel of Judas," The Gospel of Judas, ed. by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, & Gregor Wurst [Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2006], p. 75)
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inquirer
Narkissos
Inquirer,
The Wikipedia article (now) actually reads:
The Gospel of Judas was first found in the Codex Tchacos, which also contains Letter of Peter to Philip (a variant is in the Nag Hammadi collection), the First Apocalypse of James (also known from Nag Hammadi). Up to a third of the codex is currently illegible.
I am actually surprised at the good conservation of the text, as compared to many other Gnostic treatises in the Nag Hammadi library.
Now to consider it as "stupid" depends on your value judgement of Gnosticism as a whole. There are good reasons to think that early Gnosticism was a significant part of early "Christianity". Some of the more ancient proto-Gnostic works made their way into the NT, although they were modified and adapted to orthodox thought (e.g. the Gospel of John). Others were rejected and most of their copies destroyed -- which explains why only a few copies in more or less good condition have been found in the last 150 years or so. Prior to that we only knew Gnosticism through the eyes of its detractors (e.g. Irenaeus).
It always amuses me when orthodox Christians reject Gnosticism as the ultimate abomination yet wonder at the "spiritual" character of John's Gospel -- not knowing where the "light" they enjoy so much comes from.
__________
A lot of people say the Bible contradicts itself... think that Noah couldn't have brought those animals in, saying that Jesus used magic (the Jewish Encyclopedia says that, doesn't mean that all Jews believe that though, Mordecai Vanunu for example is Christian) So people criticize the Bible, why not criticize New Testament Apocrypha Gnosticism? You are free to like it, but I am free to criticize it. We are all entitled to think what ever we like.. -
inquirer
Narkissos says 33% your source Leolaia says 10-15%... But then in another part of your post it seemed like your are saying "10-15%" as a whole. Your last post was very confusing, and it makes it more confusing when Narkissos says it's 33%. It doeesn't really matter really. I don't want to argue about this. All I know is 7 pages for a Gospel (with the translators' credit given at the top, written in 14 point) feels very incomplete to me! The 4 Gospels written: Matthew, Mark, Luke and even the very abbreviated John are heaps longer than this Gospel of Thomas. NO DOUBT in the 2nd century it was a lot longer than what it is!
I don't know if you read the GoT, but it's pretty imcomplete. There are many elipses and a couple of times it says "15 lines are missing."
Narkissos, I forgot to say this before, but it seems pretty damn strange how Judas is almost made out to be a saint for Jesus' destiny, whereas Jesus knew "from the beginning" (in the 4 accepted gospels) he was going to betray him! Even the King James Version calles him a "devil!" Why do the gospels make him look really evil but the Judas gospel makes him to be saint like? Why does Jesus distance himself from the disciples in the "Judas" gospel?
I much prefer Old Testament Apocrypha -- Even Tobit... For some reason I liked that "long walk in the park" feel it had.
A lot of New Testament Apocrypha have a lot of weird ellements -- in the Gospel of Thomas for example, it says that women won't inherit the Kingdom of God!!! I love the company of women! Come on man! :D LOL (I am not suggesting something to anyone in particular, just objecting to the verse that excludes women! [cry.] -
Narkissos
Narkissos says 33%
I just pointed to your source and how you did misread it (and still do). The point being x % of the codex, while GJudas is only one part of the codex (and apparently one of the best conserved). Plus, that was before restoration etc. (what Leolaia said).
Moreover, you seem to be confusing the Gospel of Judas with the Gospel of Thomas, limiting the definition of "Gospel" to a narrative of Jesus' life, etc.
As to GThomas 114, (1) it is probably a late addition into the Gospel and (2) the idea you mention is placed on Peter's lips, not Jesus'.
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Dr Jekyll
But if anyone read this would think Jesus was arrogant by his intimidating laugher and rude derogatory comments against his enemies.
Oh it must be a fake then, everyone knows Jesus (and therefore his followers) never laughed, or even smiled. -
Leolaia
Narkissos says 33% your source Leolaia says 10-15%... But then in another part of your post it seemed like your are saying "10-15%" as a whole. Your last post was very confusing, and it makes it more confusing when Narkissos says it's 33%.
For the third time, you're confusing the codex with the gospel itself. To use a more familiar example, suppose you found a Bible which had pages torn out so that 33% of the whole Bible was missing. Some books like Zechariah were entirely missing, while others were less affected...with about 15% of the book of Genesis having been lost. Saying that Genesis had 15% of its text destroyed does NOT mean that only 15% of the entire Bible was lost. It's a part of greater a whole. Do you get it now?
The 4 Gospels written: Matthew, Mark, Luke and even the very abbreviated John are heaps longer than this Gospel of Thomas. NO DOUBT in the 2nd century it was a lot longer than what it is!
It's a gospel of Judas, not a gospel of Thomas. And the length of the gnostic gospels were often pretty short. The Secret Book of James, which is almost entirely intact, is about 12% the length of Luke, the gospel of Thomas is fairly short compared to canonical gospels, etc. The length of the gospel of Judas is fixed by the page numbering on the MS itself...the incipit is on p. 33 and the title of the gospel that ends it is on p. 58. Thus we know what the original length of the MS was, whatever the amount of damage that has since occurred to it.
I don't know if you read the GoT, but it's pretty imcomplete. There are many elipses and a couple of times it says "15 lines are missing."
I think you mean the gospel of Judas....It is missing a total of 67 lines (you can count them yourself from the translation). That sounds like a lot, until you realize that each line only holds about 3-5 Coptic words and that the MS runs 26 pages with about 26 lines per page, a total of 676 lines. That amounts to 9.9%. The smaller lacunae of individual missing words would push the total up to 10-15%.
Even the King James Version calles him a "devil!" Why do the gospels make him look really evil but the Judas gospel makes him to be saint like? Why does Jesus distance himself from the disciples in the "Judas" gospel?
Because the character of Judas Iscariot in the gospel of Judas is the only one who correctly discerns who Jesus really is...in a scene very similar to Matthew 16 (in which Peter is the only one who discerns this) and Thomas 13 (in which Thomas is the only one who discerns this). In Matthew, Peter is given special privilege and status as a result of his intuition (cf. 16:19), in Thomas, apostle Thomas is given the privilege of secret gnosis, and in Judas, Judas Iscariot is given special gnosis plus a unique role in the betrayal and special status over the other apostles. Judas has this intuition because like Jesus he is "from above," from the eternal generation; the other apostles are creations of the demiurge and fail recognize any inner divinity. The other apostles would curse him for the betrayal because they do not understand the purpose of the Jesus' death. They thus are slaves of "their god" (i.e. the demiurge) and worship him sincerely, while they fail to comprehend why Jesus laughs at their error. Within the logic of gnosticism, Judas is the only one who can help Jesus do what he needs to do to return home and divest himself of a physical body; thus Jesus asks him to sacrifice the man that clothes him. The other apostles do not see this as a good thing at all; they curse him because they lack understanding. This is a clever device for the gnostics to explain why orthodoxy exists and why there are other gospels attributed to the other apostles which construe the betrayal differently.
The gospel reminds me of the original Matrix movie in a way. Morpheus is the one who taught Neo the truth about the world and helped him realize who and what he really is. But in the second half of the movie, Morpheus enters the Matrix and is trapped there, he cannot "return home" and he needs Neo to rescue him and bring him out. Of course, in this movie Cypher is the true Judas figure and Neo does not hand Morpheus over to Agent Smith....but suppose the logic of the movie was that the only way to get out of the Matrix was to have Agent Smith kill Morpheus, well, then the analogy would work better....
A lot of New Testament Apocrypha have a lot of weird ellements
That's certainly true. On the other hand, there's a lot of weird elements in the Bible as well (see the book Strange Acts by Rick Strelan, for instance).
So people criticize the Bible, why not criticize New Testament Apocrypha Gnosticism? You are free to like it, but I am free to criticize it.
Of course. Saying that the text is significant for understanding the history of Christianity does not exempt it from criticism and analysis, just as biblical texts are not exempt from such analysis as well....
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Axelspeed
I find this whole Gnostic area very interesting to say the least, and would explain a few things for me. This coupled with learning a little more about the Semitic system of mythology goes a long way in my own 'de-mystification of religion'.
btw...if anyone happened to catch the remake of the Ten Commandments (I only caught the second half), it seemed to portray the Yahweh god in a way closer aligned with the OT text...very demanding with a very short fuse. There was one scene after they defeated a rival tribe (Amalekites I believe) when they were told by Moses to kill everybody, men, women and kids. I you saw it, it spoke for itself.
Axel (of the 'excuse me for getting off topic class')