Judas Dispute: One More Empty Religious Pursuit

A fascinating story on today’s New York Times Op-Ed page reveals how political motives can distort scholarship. If you’d like to read the piece by April D. DeConick, professor of Biblical studies at Rice University and author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says,” click the link at the end of this story. Here’s the main contention in professor DeConick’s Op-Ed tale:

“Amid much publicity last year, the National Geographic Society announced that a lost 3rd-century religious text had been found, the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. The shocker: Judas didn’t betray Jesus. Instead, Jesus asked Judas, his most trusted and beloved disciple, to hand him over to be killed. Judas’s reward? Ascent to heaven and exaltation above the other disciples. It was a great story. Unfortunately, after re-translating the society’s transcription of the Coptic text, I have found that the actual meaning is vastly different. While National Geographic’s translation supported the provocative interpretation of Judas as a hero, a more careful reading makes clear that Judas is not only no hero, he is a demon.”

DeConick say’s National Geographic made numerous errors, some perhaps intentional, that completely changed the document’s meaning. She speculates they might have been motivated by a desire to help heal the ancient rift between Jews and Christians, and to avoid offending mainstream believers with certain Gnostic understandings of Yahweh, Christ’s relationship to the “supreme” God, and Christian atonement theology.

If she’s right, we should feel troubled. It would be bad enough if “truth” was sacrificed for some higher “truth;” but when it give way to political expediency, then religious studies -- like politics in general -- have entered what one Iraq war commentator called the “post-truth era.”

But, what’s doubly disturbing is that this kind of dispute is the low place to which Christianity has fallen. This unfortunately is how our faith has evolved, starting with a religious outsider who by the spirit became God’s imprint on earth and, armed only with God’s values, stood up against the culture in defense of the poor and oppressed. From that beginning we come to a time when religious insiders become the focus of the faith by debating the meaning of obscure Coptic texts. I have to believe that somewhere Jesus is crying, if not vomiting.

Thankfully, for those who would practice the real Christian faith, Jesus spoke directly to vacuous religious elites who neglect “the weightier matters … justice and mercy and faith.” His disappointment is clear: “You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” That’s Matthew’s Gospel; the translation I believe is undisputed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/opinion/01deconink.html?ex=1354251600&en=91c478a2d5fb0116&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink