I'm rather surprised...

[sturgeonslawyer]

...at how little I'm seeing on my friends' LJs about the "Gospel of Judas" foofaraw. Only ursulav seems to have said much about it so far, and she mostly spends it busy being her usual clever and funny self.

Comments

[captainsblog]

Judas was in fact the best loved of the disciples.

Four words:

Brokeback Mount of Olives.

::checks to be sure forwarding order on mail is properly addressed to hell::

[sturgeonslawyer]

Did you go look at ursulav's piece? She's all about J/J slash and like that.

[amydmartin]

Ok, finally read it. Very well done. Have to say, though, that
Ursalav's was way funnier. The long-lost gospel of Snape. Hee! I swear, if I wrote fan fiction, I'd use that. I'm laughing myself silly all over agaian.

[sturgeonslawyer]

Funnier than what? Mine wasn't intended to be funny. Ray's (captainsblog) was just a tossedoff quip. ursulav is pretty funny most of the time, though.

[supergee]

You're picking on the extreme Gnostics. Some of us just want to make matter less oppressive: find tech solutions, separate sex from breeding, stuff like that.

Other than that, excellent essay.

[sturgeonslawyer]

I don't want to have sex with someone who has no breeding.

You're right, I am "picking on the extreme Gnostics;" this is something I learned a while back -- the way to determine whether a "heresy" is dangerous is to apply "if this goes on--" to it. Orthodox theology (as opposed to the crazed conservative gibberbull that passes for Orthodoxy in modern America) tends to walk a Middle Path for just this reason.

Why I put "heresy" in quotes: Gnosticism is only a heresy when it's Christian Gnosticism; the word "heresy" is only meaningful within a belief-community.

[supergee]

Which reminds me...

A leftist friend once told me that Norman Mailer had said, "The class war is between those who have class and those who don’t have class."

I replied that this was the best thing I’d heard Mailer say in years. He was shocked and sputtered, "But it isn’t true!"

I still like it. If Mailer did say it, it puts him a bit further above the blind pig/acorn level. If he didn’t, I may get away with trying to claim it.

[wilhelmina_d]

Very interesting essay. Thanks for it. I wanted to comment on 7, 7.1 and 7.1.1. There is also a tradition or interpretation that says that St. Peter (I think it was him, been a loooong time and a loooong way from Sunday School) didn't deny the Christ because he was weak and afraid, but that Jesus told him to do it so that he could live and continue teaching/preaching. Jesus wasn't foreseeing, but was issuing instructions when He told Peter that before the cock crowed he'd deny Jesus three times. Just something else that seems to me to be very similiar to the whole Judas' motives issue.

[sturgeonslawyer]

That is interesting. A priest friend of mine observed that Peter gets a bum rap for denying the Lord quite aside from this speculation -- he may have been afraid and said "I don't know the guy," but when the gang scattered after the arrest at Gethsemane, Peter was the only one with the cojones to follow Jesus and see what happened.

[wilhelmina_d]

Hmm... interesting point, that. But, someone had to witness it. It's just good storytelling. :)

[mister_wolf]

Very nice. I'm always annoyed that people tend to believe anything non-cannonical, and nothing cannonical (or vice versa, depending on where you go); but I'm not smart enough to be persuasive about it.

[barondave]

I think Jesus wanted Judas to betray him is already a bit misleading; spin control as it were. It's pretty clear -- to me, anyway -- that what Yehoshua (aka Jesus) wanted was to bring his revolution to a crisis point and have all Israel rise up with him. He didn't want to be betrayed, he wanted to confront the Romans occupying his country. For that, he needed Judas to arrange his capture. It didn't work out as planned. When the uprising actually happened, some 40 years later with the death of his brother James, the Roman Empire needed half its army and three future emperors to put it down. As a political strategist, Yehoshua accurately assessed the mood of the people but his timing was off.

I haven't read the Gospel of Judas the Knifeweilder either. It's not high on my list.

[sturgeonslawyer]

Well, I guess I know which particular brand of revisionism you subscribe to... As an orthodox Christian I of course don't believe for a moment that Jesus* was into the political revolution thing, nor do I know of any ancient document (including that of Josephus) that supports the idea. YMMV, of course.

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*I think Yeshwa is a better translitation than Yehoshua, but I'm writing in English, and for better or worse we're stuck with the Latinized version of the name, which through various missionary movements gave us versions like Japanese "Jizo")
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[barondave]

To those of us who are Jewish (eg Yehoshua/Yeshwa), Christianity can be described as revisionism. I've long held that it's very difficult for any non-Jew to understand the actions of the Jews as written (and heavily edited) in the New Testament. Not impossible, but very difficult. This is a pretty clear example. If you don't understand the Macabees, who successfully kicked the Greeks out of Israel, then you will have a hard time understanding the orthodox Jews who were trying to kick the Romans out of Israel.

[sturgeonslawyer]

Actually, Dave, I'm half-Jewish on my Dad's side. (Which, I know, means that legalistically I'm not Jewish at all, but wha-tev-er.) I've read all four books of Maccabees, which most Jews of my acquaintance haven't; I grew up celebrating Channuka with my neighbors; I've studied the post-Exilic period fairly deeply, if not at great length. I've even taken the trouble to figure out the difference between Pharisees and Sadducees (not to mention Zealots and ... uh, blanking on the name, but you know who I mean: the quasi-hermitic group that John the Baptist may have been one of?). I know what the Messiah was supposed to be, according to the standard Second Temple period understanding: in brief, a descendant of David the King, who would lead Israel to a military victory over all its foes, and establish a new Golden Age.

I realize, also, that this is what Jesus's contemporaries thought He was setting Himself up as. But I see nothing in any contemporary or near-contemporary record that suggests that Jesus thought this or was trying to