The Gospel of Judas

The New York Times. The British paper The GuardianThe Lost GospelGod's Problem (HarperOne, 2008), which questions how a loving God could permit human suffering. Ehrman is one of those rare scholars who has managed to parlay his expertise into mainstream success. He's good on TV.

Ehrman was among the first to be contacted by National Geographic. It was, as he recalls, an odd conversation. He had to explain that, in order to translate the Coptic, the organization would need to hire a Coptologist, which he is not. That Coptologist would turn out to be Marvin Meyer, who was hired after someone from National Geographic heard him speak at a conference. Also brought on board was Elaine H. Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University and the kind of academic celebrity who gets asked what's in her fridge by The New York Times MagazineThe Arizona Republic's headline. USA Today said the gospel "recasts" Judas. The Austin American-StatesmanNew York TimesAgainst Heresies, written around 180. Irenaeus was not a fan of the Gospel of Judas, which he deemed a heretical text (though it's not known whether he actually read the gospel or had only heard rumors about it). Until the Coptic manuscript surfaced in the 1970s, Irenaeus' mention of the gospel was the only known reference. Irenaeus wrote that the gospel portrayed Judas as "knowing the truth as no others did." It was an intriguing statement and suggestive of a more positive Judas.

DeConick thinks the translators were overly influenced by Irenaeus and read the gospel with his interpretation in mind. If you come to the gospel free of preconceptions, she argues, then it's clear that Judas is evil and cursed, not holy and chosen. DeConick lays out this argument at length in The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really SaysThe Chronicle, despite multiple requests over several weeks.

King did agree to talk about the book. She, too, regrets that translation. "'God' was pushing it far over the top," she says. But there were no particularly good options, and leaving that word untranslated (the option Pagels says she now prefers) presents its own problems, especially in a book intended for a general reader. As for whether the National Geographic team's interpretation led other scholars astray, King is unwilling to point fingers. "Did they get it wrong? I don't know," she says. "There's probably no one who agrees completely with Bart Ehrman's or Marvin Meyer's essays," she says, but she adds that's not unusual with early interpretations of new texts.

The fiercest criticism of the National Geographic team came in the form of a New York TimesThe New York TimesThomas Bartlett is a senior reporter at The Chronicle.

"Jesus that hypocrite, I'll learn him not to sell the foot-oil..."

Seriously though, digging it. Damn moral absolutists - folk think the moral high-ground is kryptonite. I think the same thing about my car, but it's a valid generalization - it's a very facilitative machine.