The Gospel of Judas, 1

Last night, I read “The Gospel of Judas.”  A little bit about it.

An English translation of this mid-second century document was first published just last year.  Why not before?  Because for about 1,600 years, it was completely lost.  

It was only within the last few decades that a single manuscript turned up on the antiquities market. And by the time it was recognized as an ancient copy of “The Gospel of Judas,” the manuscript was in such bad shape it had to be pieced together again (using tweezers!) over a period of several years.  

Of course, then, for our purposes, the ancient Coptic manuscript had to be translated into English. For what it’s worth, scholars say that our one manuscript actually reflects a translation into Coptic from the document’s original language, Greek. So reading it in English, we’re actually two languages away from the original.

Anyway, for a full account of the rediscovery, reconstruction, and eventual publication of “The Gospel of Judas,” apparently the best place to go is Herbert Krosney’s book, The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2006).

I suspect that many theologically-conservative Christians will immediately want to read N.T. Wright’s new book, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006). That way they’ll have the Wright take on the whole thing. But remembering something I once heard Everett Ferguson repeat—that one word in the primary source is worth a 1000 words in a secondary source—I made myself just read the text first. You can too.  

Without having to purchase all of the debatable “Introduction” and “Commentary” sections of the print edition--The Gospel of Judas (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2006)--you may read the English translation here.

Within the next few days, I’ll mention some of my first reactions to “The Gospel of Judas” and what’s been made of it since it first came out.