SMH: Judas redeemed — A fifth gospel challenges one of the basic Christian beliefs. Basically a manuscript of “the Gospel of Judas”, a gnostic writing dated in the 300-400 AD has been released, where it stated Judas “the good guy” betrayed Jesus on Jesus’ ordered, the beloved disciple of Jesus is not John but Mary Magdalene, Father of Jesus > the Old Testament “the minor” God, etc. Don’t think it is a “challenge” at all with its gnostic/ancient greek influenced teaching, but the media loves all conspiracy (and conspiracy that surpresses other conspiracy) regardless.
Instead of “Judas redeemed”, other relevant news article titles:
- “Heresy unearthed (yeah, again)”
- “Relatives of Judas sued Dan Brown for copyright infringement”
Any others?
NYT article linky
Edit: use the HTML, Luke!
As 1:44pm, it’s the most viewed article on The Age. Do people really care??
@felixt – Of course people care!
They care about it just as much as they care about Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code. Whether they care about the truth is another matter, but people love this kind of stories, and media is happy to supply lots of them.
What a trustworthy expert says on the subject:
A spectator’s guide to the Gospel of Judas – John Dickson
Maybe a good read for us Christians to know how to deal with people who love this kind of stories?
Like the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi discoveries, this latest ‘gospel’increases the amount of new material available and makes the concept of any ‘canonical scriptures’ even less convincing. What would ‘Christianity’ have looked like if all these resources were available from the beginning? Check this link: http://www.energon.uklinux.net
I dont see what all the fuss is about! Judas, good or bad, is an intrigal part of our salvation – without him betraying Jesus, we would never have been saved. And Jesus knew in order for Gods will to be done, and our souls to be saved, that he had to be betrayed; so even if he did ask Judas to betray him, he was only ensuring that God’s will was going to be done. I dont see Judas as an evil man, only an important part of a wonderful act of sacrifice performed for us.
Jackie,
Judas betraying Jesus might be part of God’s salvation plan, but it does not remove the sinfulness of the deed he has done. He is ultimately still under the sovereignty of God, but he is also ultimately responsible for what he did.
The Bible does not play down each individual’s responsibility because of the fact that God is sovereign and he is in control of everything.
Read this article (http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/493622) the other day, and then this verse came to mind:
“For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!” (Jesus about Judas – in John 22:22)
Re my previous comment – It was meant to be Luke 22:22 – There is NO John chapter 22. Sorry. My mistake.
Another link to a good article on the subject, an excerpt from a really good book: http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/indepth/the_secret_gospels/