National Geographic is presenting on the cover of its May 2006 edition a brief history of a recently discovered copy of the Gospel of Judas, a gnostic gospel that vindicates Judas as a hero.
How so? Judas fully knew of his participation in salvation history, and willfully betrayed Christ (and on Jesus’ orders too). The gnostic gospel presents this theme as consistent with other villans of the Bible, including Cain and Esau.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons praeched against the gnostic sect that first wrote the Gospel of Judas, known as the Cainites. His summarization of the sect is as follows:
Doctrines of the Cainites
1. 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.
2. I have also made a collection of their writings in which they advocate the abolition of the doings of Hystera. Moreover, they call this Hystera the creator of heaven and earth. They also hold, like Carpocrates, that men cannot be saved until they have gone through all kinds of experience. An angel, they maintain, attends them in every one of their sinful and abominable actions, and urges them to venture on audacity and incur pollution. Whatever may be the nature of the action, they declare that they do it in the name of the angel, saying, “O thou angel, I use thy work; O thou power, I accomplish thy operation !” And they maintain that this is “perfect knowledge,” without shrinking to rush into such actions as it is not lawful even to name.
3. It was necessary clearly to prove, that, as their very opinions and regulations exhibit them, those who are of the school of Valentinus derive their origin from such mothers, fathers, and ancestors, and also to bring forward their doctrines, with the hope that perchance some of them, exercising repentance and returning to the only Creator, and God the Former of the universe, may obtain salvation, and that others may not henceforth be drown away by their wicked, although plausible, persuasions, imagining that they will obtain from them the knowledge of some greater and more sublime mysteries. But let them rather, learning to good effect from us the wicked tenets of these men, look with contempt upon their doctrines, while at the same time they pity those who, still cleaving to these miserable and baseless fables, have reached such a pitch of arrogance as to reckon themselves superior to all others on account of such knowledge, or, as it should rather be called, ignorance. They have now been fully exposed; and simply to exhibit their sentiments, is to obtain a victory over them.
4. Wherefore I have laboured to bring forward, and make clearly manifest, the utterly ill-conditioned carcase of this miserable little fox. For there will not now be need of many words to overturn their system of doctrine, when it has been made manifest to all. It is as when, on a beast hiding itself in a wood, and by rushing forth from it is in the habit of destroying multitudes, one who beats round the wood and thoroughly explores it, so as to compel the animal to break cover, does not strive to capture it, seeing that it is truly a ferocious beast; but those present can then watch and avoid its assaults, and can cast darts at it from all sides, and wound it, and finally slay that destructive brute. So, in our case, since we have brought their hidden mysteries, which they keep in silence among themselves, to the light, it will not now be necessary to use many words in destroying their system of opinions. For it is now in thy power, and in the power of all thy associates, to familiarize yourselves with what has been said, to overthrow their wicked and undigested doctrines, and to set forth doctrines agreeable to the truth. Since then the case is so, I shall, according to promise, and as my ability serves, labour to overthrow them, by refuting them all in the following book. Even to give an account of them is a tedious affair, as thou seest. But I shall furnish means for overthrowing them, by meeting all their opinions in the order in which they have been described, that I may not only expose the wild beast to view, but may inflict wounds upon it from every side.
You can find the rest of St. Irenaeus of Lyons’ apologetic work online, entitled Adversus haereses (Against the Heresies).
The good folks at Catholic World News offered this bit of insight; both humorous and incisive:
You might be wondering, about now, why a document written in Coptic and discovered in Egypt in the 4th century is attributed to a man who hanged himself in another country a few centuries earlier. Good question. Australian newspapers have anticipated such questions; they point out that the work might actually have been written in 187 AD. All perfectly clear now?
The ‘Gospel of Judas,’ we are told, offers a sympathetic portrayal of the apostle who betrayed Jesus. If the document is authentic, then Judas is that rarest of men: a criminal who says he’s not guilty.
Heh!
I’m sure there will be plenty of neo-gnostics running amok, fresh with visions of The DaVinci Code running around in their minds who will use this new gnostic gospel (and the Gospel of Thomas) as fodder for easily impressed minds.
Still, the Early Christian Fathers beat back this same heresy 2,000 years ago. There is no reason why men and women of faith cannot combat ignorance with truth today — save for the ability to stand by and be unafraid to say what is true.