Gospel of Judas being translated......

[equinox2]

Another of the thirty or so known gospels is being translated into english. According to this new story:

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/culture/?id=13097

it is supposed to be released next spring.

The only information we have on it now is from the early Catholic Bishop Irenaeus, who writes (around the year 180 CE):

(copied from www. earlychristianwritings.com)


Here is the Roberts-Donaldson translation of this section from Irenaeus:

Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.
So it sounds like a Gnostic gospel, probably written in the middle of the second century (so probably not by the actual Judas). That of course isn't much of a surprise, since even the 4 gospels in the Bible don't appear to be written by anyone who saw Jesus alive. It'll be interesting to tack it in there with the gospel of truth and such.

So, any Gnostics out there, or others with some thoughts on this?

Have a fun day-

[Morr]

oooooooowwwwww!!!

this sounds exciting!!! :D

hee hee hee...
so very looking forward to this!!

:fprtyman2

[Valentinius]

Another of the thirty or so known gospels is being translated into english. According to this new story:

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/culture/?id=13097

it is supposed to be released next spring.

The only information we have on it now is from the early Catholic Bishop Irenaeus, who writes (around the year 180 CE):

(copied from www. earlychristianwritings.com)

So it sounds like a Gnostic gospel, probably written in the middle of the second century (so probably not by the actual Judas). That of course isn't much of a surprise, since even the 4 gospels in the Bible don't appear to be written by anyone who saw Jesus alive. It'll be interesting to tack it in there with the gospel of truth and such.

So, any Gnostics out there, or others with some thoughts on this?

Have a fun day-

sure does sound great.
nevertheless I've got a few questions :
I've typed in the name of the foundation and everything on google and got quite a few links that seem to mention the fact that the maecenas foundation in basel seems to be translatting a gospel of judas. I actually live relatively near to basel so i'm quite interested but the thing is when I search for the foundation itself I can't find anything.

I've not gone through a lot of trouble yet but I've gone to see on www.basel.ch which is the official site for the town and done a search on that and it doesen't seem to come up with anything. Has anyone else gone in to more detailed research about it and found anything? I'll keep looking but if anyone else has any news about the foundation itself I would be more than glad of hearing about it?

I sure would be interested to know the "traitors" point of view on things.

by the way I would clearly doubt (like you) that judas was the real author of the text. not only because it was written to century's latter but more simply because believing the other gospels judas should have been dead more or less at the same time as jesus. That leads me to further questionning, usually it is bellieved that the gospels would have been written by the disciples of the disciples of the disciples, or something like that.

did judas have many disciples that listened to him hanging of a tree?

love,
val

[orgtigger]

Gospels? Please educate me, I had the fortunate experience of a tolerant family that was too poor to be really noticed by the church. It is like a new chapter of the bible?

[Valentinius]

Gospels? Please educate me, I had the fortunate experience of a tolerant family that was too poor to be really noticed by the church. It is like a new chapter of the bible?

Hi there, I'me not sure i'm getting the question:
do you mean what is a gospel?
if so, here goes the lesson about gospels. The new testament as we know it nowadays is made up of four different types of scriptures:

1) gospels (retracing the life of jesus)
2) the acts of the apostles (after the death of jesus)
3) lettres (mostly written by paul, he may well have been in prison when he wrote them but to be totally truthfull I'm not totally sure about that)
4) revelations (by john give us an idea of what the apocalypse is supposed to be)

Gospels : are books supposedly written by jesus's disciples giving us an account of the "messiah's" life. there are gospels of two types:
- narrative gospels presented as a biographical story
having a chronological structure.
- compilations of sayings out of narrative form. By
that I mean out of context with no chronoligical
detail to them. (these form's of gospel's are most
likely of an antherior style to the narrative gospels
who often reuse the same saying's but put them
in to a context which simplifies the
understanding)

The new testament as we know it, starts with four gospels. All of these in narrative form :
Matthew, Marc, Luke and John.

the oldest of these gospel's is Marc and as far as I understand the gospel of marc was used in the redaction of matthew and luke. John on the other hand is a whole new matter the miracles mentioned and their order are different than in the three other's. M,M and L follow a clearly chronological order where as John follows a order based on the importance of the miracles accounted. going from the simplest to the most amazing.

I have divergent information about the dates of composition of the gospels. one source tells me that they were written minimum forty years after death of jesus another tell's me that the earliest texts of christianism are the lettres of paul who were written in 50-56 common era. nevertheless all of the gospel's were written relatively late after the death of jesus. One life time at least. it rellatively naïve to believe that the gospels were actually written by the apostle they are related to. it is more likely that they were text's in use in a congregation that had received teaching's or affiliated to such an such disciple. After the death of these it became necessary to put the account's down in writting so as not to forget them.

Appart from the four gospels in the new testament there are a multitude of other gospel's affiliated to other disciples. they are not contained in the christian bible because they were considered as not relliable enough sources. this decision was taken quite a while later (a couple hundred years or so) at the council of trent. (i'm not actually sure of the date) nevertheless the relliability is more of an excuse because none of the texts are realy reliable. the selection was probably made for more practicle reasons. the early church chose texts which were conform with were conform with the message they wanted to pass. They also needed to consolidate there institution, so other texts that were less favorable to the idea of a church were put aside.
they were probably chosen also for a reason of comprehension. As I have said earlier there were different forms of gospel's : narrative or not. ttexts were the sayings were put in context were clearly more practicle for teaching's than text's without were the signification can remain obscure.

the gospel's not contained in the bible are what we call apocryphes. you can find a gospel by thomas, mary of magdala or phillipe for example. The gospel of judas which I had not yet heard of would be put in the same bag of apocryphes.

hope that helped,

read you soon,

val

[equinox2]

1) gospels (retracing the life of jesus)
2) the acts of the apostles (after the death of jesus)
3) lettres (mostly written by paul, he may well have been in prison when he wrote them but to be totally truthfull I'm not totally sure about that)
4) revelations (by john give us an idea of what the apocalypse is supposed to be)

Valintinius, thanks for summarizing that and saving me some time. Most of that post is correct.

To help clarify a bit, the gospel dates of writing are: Mark, 65-70 AD, Mt 75-85, Lk 80-90, John 90-100.

The pauline letters actually written by Paul (1&2 cor, gal, phil, Rom, 1thes, Philemon) were written around the 50's. The likely forgeries of Paul later, and the well-known forgeries of Paul (Titus, 1&2Tim) as late as the 2nd century.

Acts was written as part of Luke, by the same author.

Revelation probably around 90-100, who knows who the author was (not John since he died well before then).

The other letters are spread out all over, with 2nd Peter being the latest, probably around 120 to 160 AD.

A good resource for all this is www.earlychristianwritings.com

non-canonical gospels - Thomas & Peter could date as early as 70, Mary as early as say 120, but most (not all) others probably date much later, and are irrelevant if you want to learn about Jesus.

I highly recommend a relatively inexpensive university course on tape (or CD) that you can buy for just $35 here:

http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/coursedescriptions/656.asp

The teacher is a world class scholar who isn't preachy at all, and who is fun to listen to (makes jokes and such). Just getting this allows you to know a lot about the Bible, especially about how the books were chosen and when the bible was put together.

Valintinius wrote:


did judas have many disciples that listened to him hanging of a tree?

Well, who knows? Mt says that he hung himself, Lk (acts) says he died from "falling headlong and his guts bursting out" and Papias says that he died in traffic accident (hit by a chariot).

Some Christians will try to combine these so they can all be true, saying someting like "he hung himself, then after decomposing fell and burst open, and that he fell on a road where he then got run over by a chariot" or some such. They do that to try to make every word of the Bible literally true.

To me, since different parts of the Bible say he died different ways, I think it is more likely that the authors of the Bible felt they had to have something bad happen to him since he betrayed Jesus, and they each made up something different.

Anyway, I hope those resources are useful. Have a fun day!

[Pilot]

Sounds like it could be really interesting

[CleftOfLight]

Oh I cant wait,I love things like this.