The Gospel of Judas

On Sunday I went to a talk by Dr. Marvin Meyer who is part of the team of scholars working on the recent find that is causing such a stir. The story of how the codex or book came to light and the work to restore it in order to translate it is a great story in itself. The Gospel of Judas is obviously one of those book that did not make it into the list of accepted book of the Bible as it was forming. It is written from a very gnostic viewpoint and casts Judas as the only disciple who really understood Jesus. Is it any wonder that an church founded on the legacy of the other apostles would be disinterested in such a text?

Dr. Meyer pointed out that the story of Judas - whose name becomes synonomous with treachery is also a way of casting blame on the Jews. The portrayal of Judas went through a progression from Mark, the earliest gospel until the writing of the latest, John. Judas becomes increasingly more demonic as his story developed over time. The names Judas and Judah are a bit too close to be easily distinguishable - possibly making the name Judas an ugly word game. This is a marvelous time to consider carefully the impact of the anti-semetic content of our scripture, to understand how some of those texts came to be there and rethink how we teach them.

Hope to get a good sermon out of this for Sunday.