Gospel of Judas

Last night I saw this feature from National Geographic Channel about a recently discovered ancient manuscript of the Gospel of Judas, written in Coptic. Judas Iscariot was rehabilitated there and he seems to be Jesus' beloved disciple, and not the traitor that we know of. As mentioned, the gospel was probably written by the so called gnostics in the early church, somewhat similar to the esoteric New Age beliefs. Jesus allegedly said that the creator of this world is not the God that we worship. What ever happened to the Genesis account where God saw that everything that he created was good? Obviously, the early church fathers were right in not including this gospel and dozen others extant at that time, in the bible.

One expert blamed St. Irenaeus for the non-inclusion of the Gospel in the New Testament. Well, St. Irenaeus lived from A.D. 125-202; born in Asia Minor and later joined the missions to Gaul. In Lyon he served as priest and later bishop. His writings "entitle him to a high place among the fathers of the Church, for they not only laid the foundations of Christian theology but, by exposing and refuting the errors of the gnostics, they delivered the Catholic Faith from the real danger of the doctrines of those heretics... His tomb or shrine was destroyed by the Calvinists in 1562, and all trace of his relics seems to have perished" (courtesy of Catholic On-line). The National Geographic feature only highlights the need we have for Church authority to preserve the bible, particularly the New Testament.

Perhaps one lesson we can get from this is that we should not judge other people, no matter how notorious they were (Hitler, Judas, Lenin, Bin Laden, etc.). Let's leave the judging to God.

Photo taken from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ courtesy of Coolbuddy.com.