Transcription
How would you respond if I told you that actually Judas was the only Apostle who truly understood what Jesus was doing on Earth? What if I said that Jesus is unrelated to the deity who created the world, and that the deity responsible for creating the world is not the same as the deity who created humanity? It might surprise you to learn that these seemingly blasphemous statements were actually believed by early Christians. I've got New Testament scholar Bart Man with me today.
Hello. Hi, nice to see you, Megan. Nice to deal with this one. Always a pleasure. And Bart is going to be revealing the early Christian Gnostic text responsible for these beliefs. Stay tuned. Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Man. The only show where a six-time New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned Bible scholar uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin.
Now, Bart, today we are talking about the Gospel of Judas. When did you first hear about this gospel?
Ah, okay. So, Megan, this is going to be a long story. Excellent. It, it was a, this is like one of the weirdest things that ever happened to me in my academic life, and I've, I've had some weird things in my academic life. Nothing quite so strange. Uh, so it was actually, it was, uh, see, this is 2002. It was literally 20 years ago, maybe this month, 20 years ago this month. Um, I was sitting in my office at Chapel Hill, uh, teaching my classes at UNCC, and, um, just in my office reading a book or something, and my phone rings. And, um, uh, pick it up, and it's a woman that I know, uh, who is a, um, uh, she, she has some resources and she funds archaeological trips to Israel. And, um, we'd known each other for years, and we were, we were friends. We'd never, ever have talked on the phone before, and, you know, never called each other anything like that. But, uh, she, we, we chitchat, and I'm wondering what this is about. And then she says, "So, uh, Bart, so what, what do you know about the Gospel of Judas?" And I said, "The Gospel of Judas?" Said, uh, "Well, huh, okay." So, like, nobody, nobody knew about it at this point. And I said, "Well, you know, their Church Fathers who said that there was a Gospel of Judas, um, but, you know, we don't have it, and, uh, we don't really know what's in it, except that at least the Church Fathers who talk about it said that it was one of these Gnostic Gospels, these gospels that were, uh, applied, uh, used by these groups that didn't think that, um, the death and resurrection of Jesus is what brought salvation, but that people were saved by escaping the God of this world, who is not the God of Jesus. And so they had to escape their material world. And this gospel apparently was used by that group." I said, "But that's, that's about all I know. I, you know, I don't really know much about it because we don't have it." She said, "Oh, okay. That's fine." Uh, and so, click. Hung up. Said, "That's weird."
Okay. So about three weeks later. Yeah, what? Yeah, whatever. So three weeks later, I'm sitting in my office again. Phone rings, and it's a different woman. This one I don't know. And she identifies herself as a, um, as a person from National Geographic. And we chat for a second, and she says, "What do you know about the Gospel of Judas?" I'm thinking, I said, "Okay, so I, all right, okay." So between that time, I had, uh, I'd actually looked it up because when my first caller called, I didn't really know, but I mean, I knew something, but I decided to look it up. And, um, and the deal is this: it is mentioned by a Church Father named Irenaeus, who was writing about the year 180 in a book, Against Heresies, that we have a five-volume book, Against Heresies. And in it, he mentions one of the Gnostic groups, uh, that he calls the Cainites. He claims that they called themselves the Cainites, named after Cain, as in Cain and Abel. Now, anybody who knows their Bible knows that Cain is the bad guy. He murders his brother. And, uh, first murder. And, uh, and so they're the two sons of Adam and Eve. So they claim to be followers of Cain because they think this Cainite is a, a group that thinks that the God who created this world is not the true God. That the God who created this world is a, um, is a wicked deity, an evil deity. I mean, look around. This world's terrible with earthquakes and tsunamis and and hurricanes and volcanic eruptions and and murder. And I, it's like the world is a mess, starvation. And they thought, well, the God who created this world could not be good because the world's no good. And so they thought that there was a greater divinity above the God of this world. And that the Old Testament, uh, talks about the God of this world who created the world and called Israel to be his people. And that God gave them the law, uh, which is a horrible thing. And so, um, the people in the Bible who are opposed to the God of Israel are on the right side. They're on the side of the true God, starting with Cain. So they call themselves Cainites.
And how does this tie into the Gospel of Judas, and why were so many people calling you about it?
Right, exactly. So, so the deal is, these, these Cainites, so this Gnostic group, the Cainites, they thought that other people in history were the good guys that everybody else thought were the bad guys. The men of Sodom and Gomorrah, they really revered them, for example, these immoral folk. And, and they said they had a Gospel of Judas. And so that would fit in with their character, their car, their characteristic understanding of things, that the enemies of God are actually on the right side. So I, so I learned all that, and I'm talking to this second woman. And she, she wants to know about the Gospel of Judas. So I can lay out a little bit more detail now. And I tell her what it is. And so then I said to her, "Okay, look, what, okay, what's going on? What, what do you have?" And she said, "Well, would you think it would be significant if we found it?" "A little." "I would say a little significant, yes." "Okay." "I said, all right." So I said, "It would, I said, look, it would depend, you know, things show up on occasion." And, you know, I talked to her about the, you know, some other discoveries. And I said, "If, I said, I don't know because I don't, I don't know what's in it." I said, "But it's probably, I think, probably there are two choices. Either it, you know, it may well be a Gnostic Gospel like those found in the, uh, in the Nag Hammadi library in 19, in, uh, the 1940s. It could be that kind of thing, which is, uh, an account from a Gnostic point of view about how some other God created this world as a place of misery and entrapped sparks of the divine here in this world as punishment. And that we have to escape our bodies in order to return to the heavenly realm. That's a basic Gnostic view. And there we have Gnostic Gospels like that. And if the Gospel of Judas is like that, I said, this would be really significant for people like me who are historians of early, early Christianity. And it would, you know, presumably would help us understand Gnosticism and early Christianity better." So, so that's one option. Said, "The other option is it could be that if, if it were a book where Judas is portrayed as the good guy, and Judas and Jesus get into conversations about it, and, you know, and you actually have Jesus talking to Judas like, like he's the hero of the plot." I said, "Man, that would be front-page news." I said, "Okay, so what do you got?" She said, "Well, we're not sure what we got. We, we want you to help us authenticate it."
Oh, wow. Well, yeah. Yeah, that's exciting. So what, what happened then? Did you go ahead and, like, did you authenticate it?
Well, I, first, I said, "Well, okay." I said, "Look, tell me some things about it." I said, "First, first, I said, what do you mean, authenticate?" She said, "We want to know whether it's actually an ancient gospel or whether, like, maybe somebody forged it." Said, "Okay, great." So I said, "So, um, so what language is it written in?" She said, "It's written in Coptic." Uh, and so Coptic is the ancient, uh, Egyptian, ancient Egyptian language. And, uh, so I say, "Well, look, if it's written in Coptic, um, you know, you don't need me. I'm a, I'm a scholar of ancient Greek manuscripts, and, and Greek is my primary language." I said, "What you really, you need a, you need a good Copticist." And she says, "Okay, great. She said, "What's a Copticist?" Okay, yeah. A Copticist is somebody who studies ancient Coptic. I said, "There are, there are real experts, uh, in the world who have that as their primary language." I said, "I can, I can read some Coptic. Give me a dictionary and some time, I can probably, I can read a text, but it's not, this is not my expertise. And it's just like a very, much a tertiary expertise for me." She said, "All right. Well, you know what? We really want is somebody who can help us, uh, date the manuscript. We want to see if the manuscript itself is an ancient manuscript or maybe, you know, maybe it's modern." And she said, "Can you help us with that?" And I said, "Uh, look, no. For that, you need a paleographer." She said, "Okay. What's a paleographer?" Okay, a paleographer is somebody who studies ancient handwriting. So the way you date, uh, manuscripts is on the basis of a, of a handwriting analysis, because handwriting changed, uh, over the years when, back before the invention of printing. And so you can date a handwriting within about 50 years if you're any good at it.
Is it similar to looking at, say, a letter my grandmother wrote, and it's in cursive, and then you look at a letter that I wrote, and it's definitely not in cursive? Is it that kind of shift?
It's, uh, it's, it's that kind of shift to some extent, although some today, even still, people sometimes write in block letters and sometimes write in cursive. It's more like, you know, when you read an old book and, um, the S's look like F's. Yes. Right. And so you see a book like that and you say, "Yeah, okay, this wasn't made last year." And so it's more like that, uh, only it's so the style, the form of the letters, the slant of the letters, I mean, there are things that are different. Time and so paleographers, what they do is they get manuscripts that have dates on them, and then they know, okay, this time, this is what this hand. Like you get a bunch, 500 of those written in particular, then you have know what the handwriting is. So I tell her, I say, "Okay, look, um, yeah, you need a, you need a Coptic paleographer." Then she says, "Well, you know what? We really were thinking is we want to carbon-14 date the manuscript. Could you help us with that?" "No, no, I can't help you with that. What? I'm not a scientist. I said, you need a scientist to carbon-14 date a manuscript." Oh, God. So, so, so then I said, "Look, okay, I'll tell you what." I said, "Look, I'll, um, um, you, you find a carbon-14 expert, and I, I'll get, I'll find you a car, I'll find you a Coptic paleographer because I know people who do this kind of thing. I'll find you one of those. They can, but you don't need me. I said, I do, you know, I do work with a Greek man. I will not be helpful for this." And she said, she said, "No, no, we really like you on the project because, you know, other thing is we'd like to know, like, if it is, how it fits into the contours of early Christianity, and how it fits in with other gospels, and how it, and how it would, and I said, "Well, I do that. That I can do." Yeah, yeah, I can do that.
So, so, uh, I said, "Okay." So we hung up. We decided we're going to do this. So, so the manuscript was being kept outside of Geneva in a little town named Neuchâtel, on the shore of Lake Geneva. And so I got on the phone. I called a guy in Germany that I know named Stephen Eml. Eml is one of the world's leading Coptic paleographers. He's, he's a Copticist. And so, so I called him up. And, um, I, I had never really met him before, but we knew about each other. I called him up, said, "So, Stephen," I said, "uh, uh, you know, I don't know if you heard, but they think they found the Gospel of Judas." And Eml says to me, "Oh, yeah." He says, "You know, I saw it 20 years ago." "What?" "Say, yeah, you know, I saw it." And because he had, like, earlier, they'd been trying to like sell it or something. And as a Yale graduate student, they, he had seen it for a few minutes. And so I, so he says, "Yeah, I think I saw it 20 years ago." Said, "Really? Want to see it again?" "Yes." I said, "Okay, let's fly to Geneva." And so, so we did. So we, um, we got a team. There was a team, team of three of us: Eml and me, and a guy named Timothy Joel, who, uh, is an expert in Arizona on, uh, among other things, carbon-14 dating manuscripts. And we flew to Geneva and went to Neuchâtel. And, um, we examined it. And, um, it's clearly, clearly an ancient manuscript. So, um, this was in 2004. And then two years later, the, um, we'll talk about this a little bit more in a minute, but when it was ready for publication, there was a translation done of it. And, um, there was a big event at in Washington D.C. with the three of us and other scholars, including like Elaine Pagels and Craig Evans and some others who read papers, who gave kind of presentations. But they had like this whole core of press, you know, from around the world doing this thing. And it really, it did end up being front-page news because this was, it was a major discovery.
That's amazing. Now, my notes say that the manuscript was discovered in the late '70s, like 1978. You say the translation wasn't published until 2006. People weren't even trying to authenticate it until 2004. What on earth happened? Why did it take so long for this to get worked on properly?
Well, so the, it was discovered in Egypt, uh, in a small place about 120 miles south of Cairo by, uh, just some locals who were looking around for stuff, going through caves and things, and seeing if there was anything valuable. And they found this cave that had, uh, had some stuff in it, including a couple of limestone boxes. And in, uh, and their human remains in there. And in a limestone box, they, they found four books. And one of these, and so these books were ancient books. They saw that. And so they sold it to somebody for a little bit, you know, a local kind of person who dealt with antiquities. And he sold it to somebody else who paid a lot more money for it, who sold it to someone else who paid a lot more. People start realizing, "Oh, this is finally got it in the hands of somebody." He realized this thing's worth millions. And, um, he came to America to try and sell it, but he couldn't get buyers for it. This is why Stephen Eml had seen it. They were trying to, he had arranged through middlemen to have, uh, Yale University look at it, possibly buy it for the Beinecke Library, uh, for $3 million. And they didn't buy it. And in part, they were afraid that since it had been smuggled out of Egypt, Egypt would take it back, and they'd be out $3 million. So the guy couldn't find somebody to buy it, and he decided to put it in safekeeping. Then, now this thing had been in, this thing had probably been in Egypt, uh, buried away since the fourth century. So, and it was discovered in 1978. So, you know, been, it'd been there for 1,600 years. But the climate is so dry and the humidity is so constant that things survive there. Uh, so this person who couldn't find any place to sell it decided to put it into a safe deposit box in New York City on Long Island, where humidity is not constant. Say, slightly different climate there to Egypt. So it was years later that finally found somebody who might want to buy this thing. And 16 years it was in this safe deposit. When they opened the safe deposit box, it was turning into mush. Um, and, um, I won't go through the whole story here. I get, I give the story in my book. I've got a book on this called The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, where I talk about my involvement, but mainly I talk about this gospel and the historical Judas Iscariot, you know, which we've talked about some. But in it, I describe what the whole thing had happened. And man, it was a mess. It wasn't just that it was put in this box, it was that, um, the guy who finally, uh, bought it, and, you know, once coming out of the box, was told by someone else, like an expert, that he had to stop it from decaying. So he should put it in his deep freeze. So he froze the manuscript, which made it really brittle, so that like if you just touched it, it would turn to dust almost. And it, um, and the ink in the manuscript that had, you know, written on, you know, all those years, 1,600 years ago, the ink, ink that was used, uh, that had penetrated the manuscript, the freezing process brought, brought the ink up to the surface, blackening some of the pages, so you couldn't really read it very well. And, and the guy wanted to sell it, had apparently taken the manuscript. We know who this is, by the way, who taken the manuscript and ripped the top third of the off top so that he could rearrange the pages so the good pages would look like they're on top. And like he would re, and so, and so, so got, oh dear. Yeah. In the year 2002, it got into the hands of people who knew what they were doing, um, and, uh, and they started restoring it. And they had gotten to a restoration point by 2004 that the National Geographic found out about it and contacted us. And then that was began it. And so it took a couple more years before it was ready for public presentation in 2006.
Gracious me. That's a lot. That's a bit of a whirlwind of a journey. Yeah. So, yeah, it had been hidden away for 1,600 years. When, then, was it probably written?
Yes, this was the big debate. The first thing the National Geographic team wanted was to, uh, verify that it was an ancient manuscript. That it's, it's papyrus, so it's that ancient writing material, papyrus. And the reason you carbon-14 date something like that is because it's organic material. And, um, the carbon-14 has a, you know, a set half-life of like 5,700 years. And once, once an organic thing dies, the, uh, it starts deteriorating. After 5,700 years, it loses half of its carbon-14. And so you see how much carbon-14 it has in it, then you can see, guess, you get a pretty good estimate about its date within 60 years or so. Um, so, um, we're looking, so they wanted to know, is this ancient? Just by us looking at it. And, um, you know, I'm not an expert in Coptic manuscripts, but I know ancient manuscripts because that is one of my fields. And, and I, man, this thing's ancient. This is not, this, this wasn't produced, you know, 20 years ago. This is an ancient manuscript. And Eml looked at it. He said, "Yeah, no, this is ancient." And so we were pretty sure. And so the question was then, well, okay, how ancient is it? And to me, it looks similar to biblical manuscripts from the fourth, fifth centuries, right around in there, which, um, which we have have, uh, third, fourth, fifth century. But I'm not a Coptic paleographer. Eml thought probably mid-fourth century. And so that night, actually, at dinner, we had the whole crew there, like there were, this camera, camera people and producers and directors and the people own it and the people managing it. And like there's a big crowded room up there looking at these things under plexiglass, right? They're, you're not handling these. They've got them under plexiglass. And, um, but so we took bets that night. We had a, we all went out to dinner, the film crew and stuff, taking bets about. And I'm saying, I'm saying, I think it's 340. Dating 340. And Eml thinks this, this. But it turns out, um, the paleographical dating is probably early fourth century. The carbon-14 dating put it at 280, uh, plus or minus 30 years. Yeah, I guess so. Um, so the carbon-14 suggested an earlier date. Uh, the thing is, the date that the papyrus plant was killed is not necessarily the date that the manuscript was written. You see what I mean? So the writing you base on the paleography and the manuscript on carbon-14. So the, the carbon-14 will tell you how old the papyrus itself is, probably within like that 60-year time frame. And then the, the paleography tells you when it was written on, yeah, again, within a 60-year range or so. So, so, and the logic there is that if, if you're basing it on on handwriting, like handwriting analysis, then, um, somebody who's trained as a scribe is like, probably fully trained when they're in the late teens, maybe around the year 20. And if they're still writing 30 years later, they're still writing the same way they did before. And so you can't tell, did they make this manuscript when they're 20 or when they were 50? You see? And so, and so you, there's, there's usually a 50 or 60-year gap within, within a guess. With it's not a guess from paleographers, but they, it's pretty sure it's within this someplace or other. So early fourth century, probably. I think most people are saying early fourth century now.
Thank you. We are going to take a very brief break, but please stay with us. We're going to be back soon to dive into the surprising details of the gospel and to examine some of the revelations it contains.
How well do we really know the gospels that shaped Christianity? The New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are the cornerstones of our understanding of Jesus. But how reliable are they as historical documents? In The Unknown Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, join Bible scholar Dr. Bart Man as he takes you on an illuminating journey through these ancient texts. Across eight captivating lectures, you will explore the origins, authorship, and historical accuracy of the gospels in an online course. Are these accounts based on eyewitness testimony, or are they a mix of history, myth, and legend? What do historians see that most readers miss? This course is an opportunity to dive deep into the stories that have defined a faith, questioning their origins and understanding their impact. Ready to uncover the truth behind the gospels? Visit BartEhrman.com/gospels to learn more or sign up today. Use discount code MJPodcast at checkout for a special offer.
Welcome back. We're talking about the Gospel of Judas, a newly translated, very enigmatic Gnostic Gospel. Say that 10 times fast. After having a drink before our break, Bart gave us the details of where and when it was found. So now we're going to explore exactly what it says, and it is definitely a wild ride. So, Bart, what does the Gospel of Judas narrate?
So this, uh, this is a, it's a gospel that narrates the last, last days of Jesus. Um, it's not a complete gospel like giving like his ministry or his birth or his ministry and things. It's, it's all about the last eight days on Earth. And it is, uh, largely about his interactions, his conversations with the disciples leading up to his death. It, um, begins with him, uh, talking to them. It ends with Judas betraying him. It does not end with his crucifixion. It ends with the betrayal. Uh, Judas is the key figure in the gospel, but the other disciples also figure, uh, prominently in it. And by and large, it's a revelation of Jesus, where Jesus is revealing them to them the truths of the universe that they don't understand.
What secret information does the Gospel of Judas reveal, like about the creation of the world and about humanity?
So, you know, it starts out, um, or let me, I need to say, I need to emphasize that because of the way the manuscript was mistreated, we don't have the entire thing anymore. Uh, it looks like we're missing maybe 10% or up to 15% of it because little fragments have broken off and disappeared or got destroyed. And so we, so there are gaps in the manuscript, sometimes at places that we really wish that we did not have gaps. We'd like to know what was written there. But, um, it begins with Jesus coming up to his disciples, and we're told that they're engaged in some kind of, uh, godly exercise. So they're worshiping God in some way, and they're, they're eating their bread and they're giving thanks for the bread. And Jesus starts laughing at them. "Why? Why are you laughing at us?" And it turns out that they think that the true God has provided them with their physical sustenance, but they don't realize that this is not the true God. And so you're worshiping, you're God, but it's not the right God. And so Jesus is laughing. Jesus laughs four times in this gospel at the disciples, usually at the disciples. And one reason that's interesting is because, as you know, Jesus never laughs in the New Testament, but he laughs here. And it's because they don't understand. And so that's the beginning of the, that that starts off with this beginning of things like, "Oh my God, this is going to be different." Because they don't think the Creator, gee, this gospel does not. It thinks that the Creator God is not the real God.
And Judas is set aside from the other, the other Apostles. How does he kind of play into this? What role is he, uh, in?
Yeah, well, so when Jesus laughs at them, they, they get all upset with him. And, and, but he says, "If any of you, you know, is strong enough, stand, stand up before me." And none of them could stand because they, they weren't strong enough to deal with him in their presence. But Judas stands up. Judas stands up, but can't look him in the eye. Which shows that that he's going to be, he's going to be stronger, superior to these other Apostles. But he's not, he can't look Jesus in the eye. And, and right away, you know, this is a Gnostic Gospel because Judas says, "I know who you are. You come from the realm of Barbelo." So Barbelo won't mean things to most people, but, but Barbelo is one of the gods talked about in one of the div, one of the beings in the divine realm talked about in Gnostic circles. So the two of them then go off and have, uh, quite an in-depth conversation about the origins of, and everything, really.
What is it that Jesus reveals to Judas?
Yeah, so he tells, he says, "These, you know, these others aren't going to get it, but, you know, he'll reveal it to Judas." And that, the deal, it's this Gnostic thing that if people have read any Gnostic text, they'll know about this, but it seems really weird if you don't, that that the divine realm is not a god. There is a kind of beginning divinity of some kind who is like so far beyond what we can imagine, you can't describe this being. But this being wants other beings to come into existence. And so he starts generating other ones, one that's called the Self-Originate, the one who originates in himself. Uh, and there are luminaries, like lights that are invented, there are divine beings, and there are aeons, they're divine beings, and there are angels there. And then there, and so there are, there are all these divine beings that are created up there. And then, and, and then there's a realm of chaos and a realm of light that are created. And the realm of chaos is ruled by lower-level divinities who are not good guys. And so the, uh, uh, so the description, once Jesus gets into the description, it's just mind-blowing. It's like, for a normal human being, it's really hard to understand what in the world is going on. I have my students read this, and they just think, "Oh my God, this is crazy. I can't even follow it."
Yeah, yeah. That's the whole point. It's secret knowledge. The whole point is if it was easy, there wouldn't be any, there wouldn't be any mystery to it. And so the, the whole, so you have this divine realm created with all of these various kinds of divine beings, but then you have two that are created, one named Nebro, which is a word that means rebel, and he's said to be covered with blood. And another named Saklas, which is a word that means fool. Nebro is the one who creates the material world, and he's sometimes called Ialdabaoth, which is the Gnostic name for the God of the Old Testament. So the God of the Old Testament is a bloodthirsty rebel. And the God who creates human beings is Saklas, the fool. Saklas says, "Let us make humans in our own image." And so humans are created by a fool. The world, the material world, created by a bloodthirsty, uh, rebel. And so that's, that's the vision of the world that this complicated mythology leads up to, to show that this world is not a good place created by the one true God.
Where or how does Jesus fit into all of this? I'm assuming he is not the son of our bloodthirsty created deity or the foolish one.
No, no. So he's, in, in these Gnostic texts, when they portray Jesus, typically he is some kind of divine being who has come down from this realm of these many luminaries and aeons and angels in order to reveal the truth, uh, that is accessible only to those who are, um, who have a certain kind of divine spark within them, who are different from the rest of us. Uh, and they're the only ones who can understand what he's talking about, which makes sense because the rest of us read this, we don't know what he's talking about. So, but, but there is a thing that he calls this "other generation" in the Gospel of Judas, who are the ones who are, uh, when they die, they will go up to this divine realm and they will exist forever up in this divine realm. But everyone else will die, and that's the end of the story.
And so Jesus reveals this. Is Judas part of this "other generation," or is he being used as like an intermediary?
So, as usually happens when a new text is discovered, there are large disputes about its interpretation. When we, um, so we were, we were given a translation of this, I suppose in 2004. And so when I was reading this, I remember Chris, with Chris Clarity, reading this for the first time, and it kind of blew in my mind. And I had the Coptic there to compare it to, but, you know, the English text was really well done. It was written by, translated by a, um, a friend of mine, Marvin Meyer, who is now deceased, but he was a very fine Coptic scholar. He did this English translation. And so it was really, uh, so it was really quite stunning trying to read this thing. But when we read it, um, all of us on the team, I think all of us on the team, including others they brought in, like Elaine Pagels and others, read this. It looked to us like Judas was being portrayed as the hero of this account. And when, so I wrote my book about it six months afterwards. I was allowed to write. We, we had to sign non-disclosure agreements to see this thing. National Geographic wouldn't let us anywhere near it without agreeing we wouldn't spill the beans until they did their big thing because they were investing millions of dollars in this whole thing. And so, so, um, but I was allowed to write up my account and then publish it six months later. And in that account, and in other accounts, uh, the others wrote up too, um, we all thought Judas was the hero. And one reason for that is because, several reasons for that. One is that Judas is the only one who has an inkling about what Jesus is all about. He's the one who understands. Jesus says, "You're greater than all the others." And, uh, and so Jesus praises to some extent. And at the end, the most important thing is at the end, Jesus says to him, "You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me." And what that appears to mean in a Gnostic setting is that Jesus is this divine being that is in a human body, a material body, but he doesn't belong to the material body because the material world is created by this bloodthirsty rebel. Judas is going to make it possible for Jesus to escape his body because he will be killed. And once he's killed, his soul will be released from its prison. And so Judas then is praised for being superior to all the others because he's going, he's the one who will allow Jesus to be released. And that's why this gospel ends not with the death of Jesus, but with his betrayal, because what matters is not his death for salvation, what matters is his escape. And Judas makes it possible.
Subsequent assessments of the text kind of turned that on its head. And on its head and seen Judas as the bad guy again.
Yeah. So, so as I was saying, you know, scholars like to debate, to debate things. And every time you have somebody staking out a position, then you'll have, you know, a few years later, somebody coming along and saying, "Yeah, absolutely, that, that's completely wrong. You, it's the other way. Judas is the bad guy." And so, and so, um, there's a scholar named April DeConick, a friend of mine, who wrote a book attacking us for having this view, saying we were idiots, basically. And, uh, her view is that Judas is being portrayed as a bad guy because he's named the 13th demon in the book. And so she takes "demon" in the standard Christian view, that a demon is an evil spirit. And so Judas can't be a good guy. That's, that's kind of a shorthand way of putting what she has to argue in her, in her interesting book.
Does "demon" have a different connotation in Gnostic texts?
Yeah. Well, so this is the thing. The word "demon" in, if you read it in the New Testament, it's clearly referring to evil spirits that inhabit bodies that create very nasty things. But in the broader world of, uh, of antiquity, especially in Platonic thought, middle Platonic thought, which is where Gnosticism probably originated, "daimon," a "daimon" in the broader world and in Platonic thought, wasn't necessarily an evil divinity. It was simply, uh, a divine being that is kind of closer down to earth than the others, that is more actively involved in people's lives, sometimes for bad, but often for good. And so it's not necessarily a negative term. So she staked out the opposite position, and, uh, other people have gone that way. My view now, having, you know, read this thing for 20 years, and, this was actually, this is a view that was first suggested to me by my colleague, Zoltán Pásztori, who, along with Stephen Eml, is one of the great Copticists in the world, but he happens to teach at UN, across the hall from me, and a friend of mine. He ended up thinking that Judas is neither the really good guy or the really bad guy. The really good people are those of the "other generation," which are Gnostics who will understand the truth and escape this world and then have a heavenly life. So those are, that's the good guys. The bad, the bad people are just the people who think that the God of this world is the good God. They're going to die, and that's the end of the story. Judas appears to be in between the two, because he is definitely better than the Apostles. He's not the most wicked, he's not the enemy. He's the one who understands, and he's the one who allows Jesus to escape. So he is better. But the sad news for him is he is not of the "other generation." He will not be able to, uh, to join them in the heavenly realm. And it's, it's a kind of, you know, you're predestined to be one thing or another, and you can't really help, you know, whether you have a divine spark within you or not. Look, you know, some of us do, and some of you out there don't. And so it's like, and so that's how, you know, so some, and so he, he doesn't have the spark, but there's something about him where he, he at least understands. So he's the good guy of the story, but he's not a Gnostic.
Has the discovery and translation of the Gospel of Judas changed how scholars think about early Christianity at all, or is it very much in line with other Gnostic texts?
Um, it's very much in line with a certain form of Gnostic text, uh, that, uh, scholars have labeled Sethian Gnostics. And so Sethian, so Gnosticism was a complicated, um, uh, phenomenon. There were many religions that we would call Gnostic. Usually, we call, there are big debates among scholars even what to call Gnostic, or even to use the term Gnostic. These are, everything is debated. But the, the basic idea is that there are some groups that emphasize the importance of knowledge, gnosis, for salvation. And these groups that we call Gnostic are those who think that the secret knowledge is revealed by Christ, that this material world is, uh, is a mistake or a disaster, and it needs to be escaped by acquiring the secret knowledge that he brings about the heavenly realm. Okay. So, uh, so there's one group. There are many groups of these. We know about some of the groups. One of the groups we know best about is called Sethian Gnostics, because they, they followed Seth, um, who was the third son of Adam and Eve. Um, and so it is like that. And it helps to clarify understanding of Gnosticism. Um, so there's that. It's really, it is very helpful for understanding Gnosticism. Word, because now it's one of our principal texts. It's one of our earliest gospels, because it's mentioned by Irenaeus in the year 180. This appears to be the one he mentioned. And so it must have been written in the second century, around 50 or so. It's one of our earliest Gnostic Gospels. And so that's, that's good. The other part that's good is, man, Judas, he is not the bad guy. He's not the enemy. He's the one who, who has at least a partial understanding of what Jesus is all about. That's it.
It's an absolutely fascinating manuscript. I've been really enjoying talking to you about it, and we really have just scratched the surface. And I'm sure we're going to return to it in a future episode. But for now, we do have to move on to our highlights and upcoming events, and then we'll finish up with some listener questions.
Welcome to our upcoming highlights and events segment, where we catch up on Bart's courses, community updates, and all the latest news from the Biblical Studies Academy and beyond.
So, we are announcing today a new course. We're coming up to the Christmas season, and you're going to be doing a course called "The Painful Dark Side of the Christmas Story." That will be recorded on December 7th and will be two lessons and a question and answer session. But what, what can people expect? What kinds of things are you going to be going through?
So this will be, I'll be giving two lectures, uh, on the Christmas story. I, I, I've been doing Christmas lectures the last few years, and I decided to do something a little different this time. That I, you know, I, I love the Christmas story. You know, I love the Christmas season. I really, and I, I like a lot of what the, what the story is itself. My, just personally, just it resonates with me in many ways. I think though, it's a lot more profound than, uh, and deep than people, uh, think about. And one aspect of that is the, um, what happens when Jesus comes into the world, and what, what that, you know, what brings. We always think about the goodness of it, the happiness of it, the, the baby Jesus and Joseph and Mary. But you have this account in Matthew, for example, where, um, Herod sends out the troops to kill the children, and Joseph and Mary and Jesus escape. And we always, you know, it's always great, "Oh yeah, they get out of there. That's great." But he slaughters all these babies in Bethlehem. And I think there's got to be something to that in terms of what the story is trying to say. It's not just that they escaped. It's something about the pain that's brought into the world as well. That the Christ event is not simply this a happy, good feeling thing. It's, it's coming in the midst of misery. But why does God need to create this misery? Why do these people have to be sacrificed for his, for his son to come into the world? It's a, it's just, it's a kind of question I don't think I, I don't think I've really asked much until recent times, and I'm thinking about it. And so I thought maybe I'd give a talk about it. Not, not to make it a downer, because as I said, I love, I love the Christmas season. But, but it is worth thinking about these kinds of episodes where pain is brought, uh, in the midst of salvation. And I, I do think it's appropriately placed because for a lot of time, a lot of times, for a lot of people, Christmas is a, a painful period, especially if you're without family or if you've lost someone. Having this very strong emphasis on togetherness and family can be really hard. So I, I think stopping to consider the flip side of it is a really valuable thing.
Yeah, yeah, me too, absolutely. So, as I said, that is going to be recording on December 7th. Um, you can always, if you can't attend in person, you can always access the recordings after the fact. The regular price will be $249.95. The early bird price is $199.95, and that is good through November 23rd. So you have a couple of weeks if you would like to sign up at that early bird price. You can sign up and find more information at BartEhrman.com/Darkside. As ever, you can use your podcast code, which is MJPodcast, for a special discount. And contrary to some of the other things that we've been doing recently, this one is not part of BSA. So if you are a member of BSA and you want to join us for this, you do have to purchase it separately. I'm afraid. We'll have a little bit more information about that next week. But for now, we are going to go to some listener questions.
It's time for questions from listeners, where Bart answers real questions submitted by Misquoting Jesus fans. If you'd like to submit a question for future segments, please visit BartEhrman.com/ask.
Okay, we are starting with a question about the Herodian Temple. If Jesus never called himself a Christian or otherwise condemned Judaism while he was alive, given that he was an active Jew, how did his followers and he likely view and interact with the Herodian Temple, and how did they deal with its demise in 70 CE?
Uh, yeah, well, that's a big question, and it would take a, a long time to answer, answer it fully. Our, uh, the thing to preface it with is being a Jew did not mean that you, um, really respected the temple cult. There just like, um, today, there are Americans who, who really don't like certain American institutions. Um, uh, there were Jews who, who had varied, varied opinions about lots of things, including the, as who the ones who wrote The Dead Sea Scrolls, who were dead set against the temple and the temple.
cult and the priest running it. And so it's not that Jesus would be against all the Jews. If he were opposed to the temple, our only records of Jesus talking about the temple really are not good. I mean, he predicts it's going to, God's going to destroy it. And he goes into the temple and he, in the gospels, he overturns tables and he drives people out, and he's, he's upset with what's happening there. I think that maybe at its very heart, some of that is historical. Um, I think that Jesus did not, um, think that the sacrificial system followed by the temple priests was really what God was interested in. Like some of the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, he really thought that God was far more interested in how you behave to one another rather than, uh, in your sacrificial practices. Um, so, uh, I don't think Jesus was pro-temple. I think he was somewhat anti-temple. I think that may have been part of what got the eye up of his enemies in Jerusalem when they ended up having him turn over to the Roman authority.
When the temple was destroyed in the year 70, uh, 40 years later, Christians sometimes started pretty soon saying that the reason God destroyed the temple was as punishment for Jesus being killed. "You killed Jesus, God killed your temple." Wow, that's, that's rather extreme, but that's what Christians were saying, is that the destruction was, uh, caused by God in retribution for killing Jesus. Um, and for Christianity, in a way, uh, for Judaism, that changed everything because they couldn't have worship in the temple anymore. And for Christians, they could say, "See, you don't even have a temple anymore. So, you know, you should convert to Jesus, who's, who really is where God, God is located, not in the temple." Thank you.
Given the inconsistent portrayal of Jesus in The Book of Revelation, to what purpose do you think this depiction was chosen to close out the New Testament?
Um, I think inconsistent in the sense that it's, it doesn't seem consistent with, um, the rest of the New Testament, say the gospels. And that actually is going to be the topic of our next, uh, our next episode. I think, um, so why was it chosen, uh, to be included? You know, in, in a way, putting the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament is a stroke of brilliance because the Bible, the Christian Bible, begins with Genesis, with the creation of the world and the creation of a paradise, uh, and the, the sin of humanity who opposes God and God's punishment for sin. The, the Bible ends with God punishing sin once and for all and punishing people and bringing in a new heavens and a new Earth. And so it's a, um, you know, it kind of rounds off the entire Bible message, as you know, many people have noted. So I think that's probably, uh, the one reason. Throughout the, throughout the New Testament, there's prediction of the coming day of judgment and, uh, and what that's going to entail. And so they chose to end the book with, with a description of how that's going to happen. Thank you.
This next question is a bit of a throwback to our last episode. When would you date First Timothy, and is it Pauline? First Timothy or First Thessalonians?
First Timothy. Ah, right. So, um, First Timothy, I think, uh, among the disputed letters of Paul, the six that, uh, many scholars don't think Paul wrote, I think First Timothy heads the list as one that Paul probably did not write. Uh, for lots of reasons. There are lots of differences from Paul, lots of disagreements with Paul, different vocabulary. Sometimes they, they'll use the same words that Paul uses, it means something different. Like a word like faith, faith means something different in First Timothy from what it means in Paul. So they're all sorts of reasons for thinking Paul didn't write it. It presupposes a church situation where you have a very, a fairly structured hierarchy where you've got, uh, leaders of the churches and you've got people under them, you've got people serving in the churches in various offices. You don't find that in Paul. Uh, it's a later development. I, I don't know exactly when it was written. I, I suppose most scholars date it to the mid-90s or so, and that seems plausible to me. It's probably written sometime in the mid-90s, maybe 30 years after Paul had died. Thank you.
Why did the author of Revelation use Hebrew numbers to calculate the number of the beast when he was writing in Greek?
So, as I'll point out in my, in our next episode, I wrote this book called Armageddon about, about all about the Book of Revelation where I go into all of these kinds of detail. And the, the question is asking about the, the number of the beast, 666, and, um, he doesn't, in the book, it doesn't use Hebrew numbers per se. It just says that the number of the beast, the, the Antichrist figure, it's a number of a human being, and his number is 666. And scholars have long recognized what that means. I talk a lot about modern theories about that and stuff. It's, you know, Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler or Mao, or, you know, pick whichever political person you don't like, that's the one. Um, and you can figure out ways to make it add up to 666. Um, scholars have long recognized, going back to the second Christian century, that if you, that the main enemy of the Book of Revelation is the city of Rome and its emperor, the emperor Nero. And if you spell Kaiser Nero, Caesar Nero, in Hebrew letters, it adds up to 666. Uh, the letters, each letter has a numerical equivalent in Hebrew and in Greek. And so each letter, you can just add up the letters. And so it's 666. Why did he use Hebrew instead of Greek? The whole point of Revelation is that it's all mystical. It's not easy to figure out. The author keeps saying, you know, yeah, if you can figure this out, you know, the wise one can figure this out. If you got any wisdom, figure this one out. So you got to figure it out. So it's not easy. But yeah, that's how it is. It's, it's a way to make you a little bit more mystical. Thank you.
Now, our final question for today is again a language question. Jesus spoke and taught in Aramaic. He did not speak or write in Greek. The books of the New Testament, however, are written in Greek. How can we trust the meaning of any of the sayings of Jesus since they are subject to the lost in translation phenomenon? And when Jesus was on trial, would he need a translator?
Well, if Jesus had an actual trial where they were talking to each other, yes, he'd probably need a translator. Um, or Pilate might have had the trial. We don't really know what happened in the trial. There was no ographer. And so the gospel writers might just be taking their best guess. If there was a trial and Pilate might have just said, "What, he's calling himself the King of the Jews? Crucify him." Might have been just one of those things. Um, so, uh, how can you trust any of the sayings of Jesus? Well, real experts, uh, translate the Greek sayings of Jesus back into Aramaic to see if they make any sense. And so, uh, there are scholars that could do that kind of thing, you know, philologists. And, and it actually makes a big difference in places. Let me give you one example. Um, the saying where Jesus says that the Sabbath was not made, I'm going to use the word man here in a, even though I think it makes better sense in this saying, uh, "Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath." That saying is in Mark chapter 2. And very few people notice that it makes no sense. "Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath." So I always tell my students, you should always ask, what's the therefore? Therefore, why does it say therefore? So, so the Sabbath day, the idea you should rest on the Sabbath, was created to help humans out. Humans weren't created to help the Sabbath out. But why does that make Jesus the Lord of the Sabbath? Therefore, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. It doesn't make any sense. I'm just, logically, it doesn't make any sense. And so, uh, you can try to make sense of it, but it doesn't. So the thing is, that when you say that in Aramaic, the word for man and the word for Son of Man is the same word, *bar nash*. "Sabbath was made for *bar nash*, not *bar nash* for the Sabbath. Therefore, *bar nash* is Lord of the Sabbath." Now it makes sense. More humans have, yeah. So you put it back in Aramaic and you got it. And so that suggests, number one, that it probably was originally spoken in Aramaic, and that it got mistranslated by somebody, either Mark or someone else, who wanted to emphasize Jesus' lordship instead of following the logic of the saying. Number two, if it's in Aramaic, that's more likely something that would go close to the time of Jesus because it started out in Aramaic, Jesus' language. So, you know, it wasn't made up somewhere in the Greek-speaking diaspora or something. So, um, so there, so you have, you know, everything is lost in translation. Um, and we have the Greek New Testament. The sayings of Jesus are translated from Aramaic. And when you read it, you're reading it in English translation of the Greek. And the, the ultimate reason for that is so that, uh, you can have scholars who get employed to tell you these things. So otherwise, you wouldn't need us. We have to find a purpose somewhere. Yes. But thank you for your answers.
Audience, thank you so much for sending in your questions. If you do have a question for Bart, you can submit it at bart Ehrman dot com slash ask Bart. Now, Bart, before we finish for the week, would you mind summarizing what we spoke about today?
Yeah, so we've been, we've been talking about this fascinating Gospel of Judas, which is one of the Gnostic Gospels. It's the most recently discovered major text of Christianity, uh, that was published under 20 years ago. And it's the most important discovery in my lifetime of a Christian text. Uh, and it's fascinating on its own terms, and it's fascinating for what it can tell us about how Gnostic Christians were understanding Jesus. Thank you so much.
Audience, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you did, please subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Remember that you can use the code MJ podcast for a discount on all of Bart's courses over at www.bart Ehrman dot com. Misquoting Jesus will be back next week. But what are we talking about next time?
Um, we're going to the Book of Revelation that somebody just, uh, had asked about. And we're talking about how the message of the Book of Revelation aligns or does not align with the teachings of Jesus himself. And if it doesn't align, what's it doing in the New Testament? Some excellent questions there. Join us next week. Thank you all and goodbye.
This has been an episode of Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. We'll be back with a new episode next Tuesday, so please be sure to subscribe to our show for free on your favorite podcast listening app or on Bart Ehrman's YouTube channel so you don't miss out. From Bart Ehrman and myself, Megan Lewis, thank you for joining us.