I can feeel a rant coming…. I’ve just watched The Lost Gospel of Judas on Channel 4 (a UK TV station). I thought this could be a really interesting program, examining the evidence for it being true or not. Instead it was 60 minutes of speculation, tension-building (”Could this be…”) and tedious reconstructions.
Why is it that whenever there is a question up for debate, the lone voice against perceived wisdom is given as much airtime and weight on TV than the generally held viewpoint? In this case a lady from an American university, going against 1700 years of Christian tradition, was given a prominant position to put the view that the gospel of Judas was another valid telling of the gospel story with equal weight of that in Mark or Luke - that it should be read alongside them but had a different role, being advanced level material (ie if you were a clever Christian you’d read and understand it).
Bollocks to that. While their main thrust appeared to be that “There were many different Christianitys around following 30+ gospels and they were slowly crushed”, there was no weight given to the fact (yes this is one of the few facts around!) that the gospel of Judas was written by gnostics. Well to be fair to them one male scholar commented on how gnosticism was considered heresy by Christians, however this lady continued to push the point that they were just another branch of Christians, who Irenaus was jeleous of and so wrote out of the Christian story (one man’s heresy is another man’s choice, implying that therefore Christianity today is not valid and yadda yadda yadda).
Now I am not theologian or old testament scholar, but to have gone on the wrong track for nearly 2000 years seems pretty damn impressive. There’s plenty of evidence that gnostics were considered heretics by the mainstream Christian church back at the start as well; not that there was an equal split and both were compatible. Most scholars consider gnosticism not the be part of Christianity but its own sect.
Oh, and Happy Christmas all 
3 comments ↓
Was the lady you are referring to Elaine Pagels?
it’s been too long since the documentary to remember who the lady was, but I think it was her.was.
Certainly her name crops up in Tom Wright’s excellent book “Judas and the gospel of Jesus”, a book I highly recommend for its lucidity.
This is similar to Protestants claiming that Catholics were wrong for 1600 years. Many of them don’t read the writings of the early Church because they are too Catholic.
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