From Father Jones

I found this on Father Jones. His comments and the article are worth a read.

Chris+



Gnostic Modus Operandi
The surge in popularity of Gnosticism in recent times is in my view evidence of the "Let's Make Up Our Own Religion" impulse. Many have tried -- whether in pop-historical-fiction like the Da Vinci Code -- or in pop-theology like Elaine Pagels' work -- to argue that the faith claims of Christianity are no longer tenable in light of 'discoveries' of numerous texts long suppressed by the Church.

Most of this speculation, however, simply does not stand up to scholarly scrutiny. The facts continue to reassert that apart from the conviction of Christians and Jews that our canons of Scripture contain definitive texts written, edited and preserved under sacred inspiration, those works are also extremely fine examples of writing. While it is not the ultimate value of "the Bible" for believers - nonetheless we can also take great intellectual joy in the exquisite literary value of the Good Book.

Conversely, as intriguing and artifactually important as the many Gnostic texts are -- they generally read like the rantings of Creation-despising anti-Semites at worst, or bundles of fortune cookie sayings -- which, at best, aren't all that great. Truly the best feature of the Gnostic texts is that they are historically interesting and shed important light on other ideas floating about in the first few centuries of the Common Era. They simply do not have the horsepower of content, construction or continuity with living faith communities across time and space to make a single dent in the heart of the Jewish or Christian faiths.

Moreover, as in their own time, many now most vested in publishing the Gnostic writings widely take liberties with the texts in what they even say on their own. Just as the Gnostics themselves would freely change received texts as it suited them, so to the neo-Gnostics (like Pagels and others) are doing likewise.

The following piece from the New York Times indicates how skeptical we should be about so many of these hyped up 'discoveries' of anti-Church texts:


December 1, 2007
By APRIL D.
DECONICK
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.
Several of the translation choices made by the society’s scholars fall well outside the commonly accepted practices in the field. For example, in one instance the National Geographic transcription refers to Judas as a “daimon,” which the society’s experts have translated as “spirit.” Actually, the universally accepted word for “spirit” is “pneuma ” — in Gnostic literature “daimon” is always taken to mean “demon.”
Likewise, Judas is not set apart “for” the holy generation, as the National Geographic translation says, he is separated “from” it. He does not receive the mysteries of the kingdom because “it is possible for him to go there.” He receives them because Jesus tells him that he can’t go there, and Jesus doesn’t want Judas to betray him out of ignorance. Jesus wants him informed, so that the demonic Judas can suffer all that he deserves.

Perhaps the most egregious mistake I found was a single alteration made to the original Coptic. According to the National Geographic translation, Judas’s ascent to the holy generation would be cursed. But it’s clear from the transcription that the scholars altered the Coptic original, which eliminated a negative from the original sentence. In fact, the original states that Judas will “not ascend to the holy generation.” To its credit, National Geographic has acknowledged this mistake, albeit far too late to change the public misconception.
So what does the Gospel of Judas really say? It says that Judas is a specific demon called the “Thirteenth.” In certain Gnostic traditions, this is the given name of the king of demons — an entity known as Ialdabaoth who lives in the 13th realm above the earth. Judas is his human alter ego, his undercover agent in the world. These Gnostics equated Ialdabaoth with the Hebrew Yahweh, whom they saw as a jealous and wrathful deity and an opponent of the supreme God whom Jesus came to earth to reveal.
Whoever wrote the Gospel of Judas was a harsh critic of mainstream Christianity and its rituals. Because Judas is a demon working for Ialdabaoth, the author believed, when Judas sacrifices Jesus he does so to the demons, not to the supreme God. This mocks mainstream Christians’ belief in the atoning value of Jesus’ death and in the effectiveness of the Eucharist.
How could these serious mistakes have been made? Were they genuine errors or was something more deliberate going on? This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer. Admittedly, the society had a tough task: restoring an old gospel that was lying in a box of its own crumbs. It had been looted from an Egyptian tomb in the 1970s and languished on the underground antiquities market for decades, even spending time in someone’s freezer. So it is truly incredible that the society could resurrect any part of it, let alone piece together about 85 percent of it.
That said, I think the big problem is that National Geographic wanted an exclusive. So it required its scholars to sign nondisclosure statements, to not discuss the text with other experts before publication. The best scholarship is done when life-sized photos of each page of a new manuscript are published before a translation, allowing experts worldwide to share information as they independently work through the text.
Another difficulty is that when National Geographic published its transcription, the facsimiles of the original manuscript it made public were reduced by 56 percent, making them fairly useless for academic work. Without life-size copies, we are the blind leading the blind. The situation reminds me of the deadlock that held scholarship back on the Dead Sea Scrolls decades ago. When manuscripts are hoarded by a few, it results in errors and monopoly interpretations that are very hard to overturn even after they are proved wrong.
To avoid this, the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution in 1991 holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business. It’s a shame that National Geographic, and its group of scholars, did not follow this sensible injunction.
I have wondered why so many scholars and writers have been inspired by the National Geographic version of the Gospel of Judas. I think it may stem from an understandable desire to reform the relationship between Jews and Christians. Judas is a frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all and yet
betrayed God to his death for a few coins. For Jews, he is the man whose story
was used by Christians to persecute them for centuries. Although we should
continue to work toward a reconciliation of this ancient schism, manufacturing a
hero Judas is not the answer.
April D. DeConick, a professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, is the author of “The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.”