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The Gospel of Judas is Ideology Masqurading as Theology

  • Tony Beam Dr. Tony Beam's Weblog
  • Published Apr 10, 2006

It always amazes me how far liberal theolgians and outright pagan thinkers will go to undermine Christianity.  The Gospel of Judas, a known Gnostic and totally discredited account of the realtionship between Jesus and Judas, is making the rounds in liberal theolgical circles as if it is the Holy Grail of the 21st Century.  The document, originally discovered in 1970 and just recently translated into English, is being touted as having, "shaken up Biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs and practices among early followers of Jesus"(NY Times).  The only people be shaken up are those who do nnot understand the difference between the Gnostic Gospels and the true, eyewitness accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The Gnostic Gospels represent a body of material written at least 200 years after the four gospels of the New Testament.  The early Christian community treated these writings as heritical from the beginning and they were soundly rejected by most all of the Chruch Fathers. They are second century rantings which do not match the eyewitness accounts of the four Gospels.  There are literally hundreds of these Gnostic, apocryphal texts which tell us nothing about the Bible and much about the competing false religious systems which attempted to supplant Christianity while it was still in its infancy. 

These texts are written from an obvious theological, historical, and political agenda in conntrast to the cannonical Gospels which are eyewitness accounts of the events they describe.  There are two clearly Gnostic influences in the Gospel of Judas which pegs it as a second century attack on Christianity.  First, Jesus supposedly tells Judas a secret.  The secret is that he (Judas) is the one who will betray Him and allow Him to fulfill His destiny as the crucified One. One of the marks