The Lost Gospel of Judas: What Does it Say?

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Dr. Bman, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Who was Judas Iscariot?

Ah, right. So Judas Iscariot was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. His name was Jude or Judas. We don't know what "Iscariot" means. It wasn't a last name. People in that world didn't have last names unless they were upper-class Roman elite. And so scholars have debated for a long time what "Iscariot" means. There's a huge range of views, from everything that means that he was a redhead, to meaning that he was an assassin, to meaning he came from a town named Kerioth. And that's that's the, I think, the normal explanation. The more common explanation is that "Iscariot" stands for a Hebrew word, a Hebrew term, *ish Kerioth*, man from Kerioth. The difficulty being, we don't know of a village like that.

Right, right. But it's more likely than a lot of the other options. So he, he was one of the 12 people that Jesus picked to be part of his inner circle.

Well, he said maybe an assassin. Yeah, yeah. Because, um, I know so, I know that'd be, that would be interesting, wouldn't it? Yeah. So it's because there, at the time of, uh, when Jesus was ministering and, and afterwards, there were groups. There was a group of, um, Jewish rebels who were called Sicarii. Uh, they're called that from the Latin word for dagger, *sica*. And they were, uh, they're reported by the Jewish historian Josephus as people who were trying to disrupt the Roman government. And what they would do is they would come up to either a Roman official or to a Jewish official collaborating with Romans, with a dagger hidden underneath their tunic, and they would come up to them in a crowd and dagger them, kill them, and then put the dagger back and escape through the crowd. And so they were called Sicarii. And that sounds like Iscariot. And so it's, so people say, well, maybe he was, maybe he was one of the Sicarii.

Yeah, I mean, he was an assassin of a kind.

Well, that's right. That's what makes it an attractive theory. The problem is that the, um, there are problems with it. One being the Sicarii is a Latin phrase, and, uh, you know, the New Testament is written in Greek. And it, and there's nothing to suggest he's going around killing people. But, but it does feed into the idea that some people have had that, uh, Judas Iscariot may have been, uh, what sometimes people call a Zealot. That's another problematic term, but, but people often use as a blanket term for somebody who wanted to overthrow the Roman government for religious reasons, that they were zealous for the land of Israel and wanted to, uh, wanted to have a military intervention. Uh, and, uh, and so, so it would support that view that Judas was a, was a Zealot.

Now, we're here broadly to talk about the Gospel of Judas, which we, we'll get to eventually, I promise our listeners. Um, but this, this character of Judas, I think, is quite important to understand in the canonical tradition. Yeah. To understand why it was so radical and so monumental when this Gospel of Judas is discovered, that's supposed to give us new insight into this particular character. Judas is famously the person who betrays Jesus in the canonical gospels. But how much information do we get about Judas in the canonical tradition?

Uh, so Judas is mentioned, you know, several times in the gospels. In all four gospels, he betrays Jesus. Uh, the gospels present different reasons for this happening. They, they portray a view that's become the standard view, that what he did was, they, he told the authorities where Jesus could be found without any crowds around, and so he disclosed his location so they could arrest him without starting a riot. Some historians have doubted if that's really what he did. We might want to get to that later. But the gospels all recount that's what he did. They recount different reasons for him doing it, and none of them gives us a clear indication of why he did it. But he is, he is famous as, as the betrayer of Jesus that led to his crucifixion.

Now, that's, I mean, everybody will know the story that Judas kisses Jesus when he greets him in order to, in order to indicate to the Roman soldiers who it is that's this, this Nazarene rebel that needs to be crucified, that needs to be arrested. But let's talk about that motivation. Yeah. Like, like you say, it's a little bit mysterious why it is that Je, that Judas chooses to do this. There's some indication that he takes some money for doing this. There's also a lot of indication that afterwards he felt very guilty. He'd also been a follower of Jesus for a long time. So what do the different gospels imply about why Judas betrays Jesus?

Yeah, this is, this is one of those places where it's very important to understand that each gospel has a different message, generally different portrayals of Jesus, different understandings of what he taught, different understandings of this, that, and the other thing. And you can see that in their portrayals of Judas, because, uh, the gospels, they all portray him as a betrayer, but they also have different ways, different reasons implied for doing it. So the first gospel we have is Mark. And the gospel of Mark actually doesn't say why Judas was doing this. Not, not at all. No. It, what happens in, in Mark, our first gospel, is, uh, Jesus is in Jerusalem to celebrate a Passover meal, and there's an unnamed woman who comes and brings a, a precious jar of oil and anoints, anoints him, uh, as a sign of honor. Uh, and the disciples are upset because this was expensive oil, then it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. And that's where Jesus says, uh, "The poor you will always have with me, but me you will not always have." Uh, and so, uh, right after that, then the next, the next thing that happens in Mark is that Judas then, uh, decides to betray Jesus. And so the implication is that he's upset about something involving with this woman. Jesus, Jesus says that the reason she did this was to anoint my body for burial. And so one interpretation of this is, uh, that that Judas is upset that Jesus is planning to die. Uh, for example, like one way to explain that is if, if he were a Zealot, for example, suppose Judas was somebody who wanted a military overthrow, and he thought that Jesus was the future Messiah who's going to lead the troops against the Romans.

Yes, because to be clear, a lot of Jews thought that's what the Messiah figure was going to be. And Zealots were particularly people who wanted this military leader to, to overthrow the Roman Empire. That's right. The word, the word Messiah, our word Messiah comes from the Hebrew word *Mashiach*, which means anointed one. Uh, and the anointed one, uh, in Jewish thinking, was the king of Israel. So in, in antiquity, when a king became king, when King David became king, when King Solomon became king, there is a coronation ceremony where part of the ceremonies, they'd have oil poured on their head in order to show that they were the one chosen by God to be the ruler of the people. Yes. And indeed, that still happens today in, in our own British tradition, when the chrism oil is rubbed on King Charles's chest in the coronation. Of course, chrism. Yes. Shares a root with the Greek word for Christ, which is the same, the same term for anointed one. So the chrism that gets rubbed on our own King is the same, same word for Christ. Interesting implication. Still, still continues. And, and so it, you know, one implication, kind of a side note, is so Messiah and Christ are not synonyms, but Christ, Christos, is the Greek translation of the, uh, Hebrew word Messiah. So when somebody says Jesus Christ, um, they're saying Jesus is the Messiah. Yes. Um, I tell, I have to tell my students this because my students, my undergraduate students assume that, you know, Jesus Christ, that's his last name. Right. Born to Joseph and Mary. Christ. It's also sort of got a sort of theological, a theological problem arises when, you know, like you might not believe in even the existence of a particular character, but you call them Judas Iscariot, that's his name. Yes. Whereas if a Jew, for example, says, "Oh, this Jesus Christ," yeah, there's sort of, maybe without realizing it, referring to Jesus as the Messiah there. Yeah. It's, yeah, it, it can, it can make some people, you know, a little nervous. I'm talking about Christ. And so, so, um, right. So, so Jesus gets anointed. Yes. And, um, Judas, if Judas were somebody who thought, who believed in political overthrow, um, and so we've been calling these people Zealots. Zealots is an anachronism. They, there actually was a group of Zealots decades later that were actually called Zealots. And so in Jesus' day, this isn't like a designation per se, but it's, but if he was somebody who wanted the overthrow of the Romans, and he sees Jesus getting anointed, and then Jesus says, "I'm being anointed for my burial." The theory is that this upsets Judas, uh, because he thought he's being anointed to be the king, and he decides that all of his hopes are, are being, are vanishing, and out of despair, then he betrays Jesus. That's, that's the theory.

Sure. But Mark doesn't say that. It's just that he, he puts his decision right after this anointing where Jesus says it's so because he's going to be buried soon. Um, and so that's Mark. And Judas agrees to betray Jesus with the, uh, Jewish authorities, and they agree to give him money. But it doesn't say anything about him doing it for the money. He agrees, he decides to do it, and then they decide to give him money. Okay, that's Mark. Yes.

In, uh, in Matthew's gospel, the reason Judas does it is because he wants the money. Um, he's promised that he'll be paid. He wants the cash. And so he does it for 30 pieces of silver. And that's to fulfill a prophecy of scripture. Uh, and he quotes, Matthew quotes a scripture about receiving 30 pieces of silver. So Matthew, in Matthew, he does it for the money. In Luke, he does it because the devil comes into him, uh, and sort of possesses him, and, and, uh, and then, uh, it drives him to do it. So the devil makes him do it. When you get to the Gospel of John, it's, uh, because he himself is a devil. Judas is an evil, inherently evil person who's a child of the devil. And so he does it because he's an evil person. So these aren't contradictory explanations, but Mark doesn't have any. Matthew says it's for the money. Luke, because he's, he's driven to do this by the devil. And John, because he is a devil. And so, so, you know, so then, of course, historians want to know what really happened. And what, you know, can we figure out what motivated him? And the answer is no. I mean, we, we don't know what's in his head. Right. We don't know what's really motivating him. But scholars have had a number of theories over the years.

Seems to vary the culpability of Judas as well, depending on if he did it for money or if he was possessed by the devil. That seems to take away some of his, some of his power.

Yeah, that's right. And, um, it, and that's part of the, part of the point of looking at these different gospels, that it isn't just the different actions are being described, but they're like understanding this in a different way. Yeah. Uh, and so, yeah, that's, I think, one of the most interesting theological questions is what happens to Judas. Does he end up in heaven? Does he end up in hell? You know, because Judas, even before we get to the Gospel of Judas, having this strange undertone that he had a secret mission to fulfill God's plan or whatever, there is a sense in which if the crucifixion of Jesus is a pre-ordained plan from heaven above, that Judas, by betraying Jesus, is actually, even if he doesn't realize it, contributing to the fulfillment of the divine will, which makes us think that maybe he's doing a good thing here. Yeah. However, we have at least some indication, don't we, that that Jesus himself didn't think that the person who would betray him would be entirely morally inculpable?

Well, in the gospels, he, he, uh, he, yeah, he's, he, Judas is not portrayed well in these gospels. So, and so the gospel writers certainly thought that he'd done a bad thing. And in early Christianity, he was seen as the worst of sinners. It'd be comparable today, you know, sometimes you have people today, some theologians who say that, you know, in the end, God will save everybody, their universal salvation. And almost everybody, almost always someone will say, "Yeah, except for Hitler." Right. They'll have like, they'll have like the exception. And in early Christianity, Judas was the exception. Yeah. Judas is like the Christian Hitler. But, but, you know, in modern times, people have made this point that you're making. And it, it makes its way into film. Jesus Christ Superstar, which is one of my favorite Jesus movies, is all about it. It's really more about Judas. And it's about how, you know, "Why are you making me do this, God? I'm gonna be dragged through the mud for something you're making me do. That doesn't seem right." And, yeah, yeah. I'm, my my brother once played Jesus in a, in a sort of school production of Jesus Christ Superstar. And most people don't have the privilege, I would say, of watching their brother get crucified on stage. It's quite an experience. But I also went to a, to a, to a Christian school. And so I remember them adding in a resurrection scene at the end of the musical in order to sort of, yes, it's very controversial. You know, when you see the movie, though, there's actually a scene that, no, that very few people notice. When G, when, um, when they're getting on the bus at the end after Jesus is dead, notoriously, there's no resurrection in the movie. But if you look at the bottom of the screen, there are these shadow figures. There's a shepherd leading the sheep across the screen at the bottom, which is often taken to be a hint, yeah, of a resurrection. So we'll get back to Bart Man in just a second. But first, all this talk about different sources and different reporting on the same kind of story got me thinking. Trust in our news media is at an all-time low. And that's partly because we have a bunch of different sources with obvious bias trying to support a particular message reporting on the same story. That's where today's sponsor, Ground News, can help. Ground News has supported the channel for a while now, and with good reason. They aggregate thousands of local and international news outlets all in one place, so you can compare reporting across the political spectrum for every story. They give you some context, as well as a brief overview of the political leaning of the sources reporting on the story, as well as a reliability rating for those sources, and even information about who owns the sources. And with that blind spot feature, you can see news stories that you would otherwise miss, specifically selected to cater to the news outlets that you wouldn't usually read. So if you tend to only read left-leaning sources, then it will specifically select right-leaning sources to show you, and vice versa. Take a look at this story: "The Ten Commandments Must Be Displayed in Louisiana Classrooms Under Requirements Signed Into Law." The left-leaning MSNBC says, "Why Louisiana's Radical New Law on Ten Commandments Schools Matters." Whereas the right-leaning Federalist runs with the line, "Displaying the Ten Commandments in Classrooms Isn't Enough." Ground News collects these differing perspectives in one place so you can see how the same story is being distorted by media bias. Try it out for yourself at ground.news/alexo, or by scanning the link that's currently on your screen. Subscribe using my link to get 40% off their unlimited Vantage plan. So thanks to Ground News for sponsoring this video. And with that said, back to Bart.

So this, um, Jesus Christ Superstar depiction of Judas as this, you know, suffering servant who, who's sort of doing the right thing but getting lambasted by history. Yeah. I mean, how, how correct do you think this can be? Jesus himself says, "I can't remember where, the person who betrays me, it's better that he never be born." Yes. So it seems like it's not, I mean, there are some indications where maybe the gospel writers thought a particular thing, but oh, we don't have Jesus's own words. But Jesus himself seems to condemn, condemn Judas.

Well, he does. I, I mean, my my view as a historian is that Jesus did not think he was going to get crucified. So I don't think he predicted in the gospels. He predicts his coming death, yeah, three times in Mark explicitly. "I'm going to Jerusalem, they're going to be rejected, be executed, then raised from the dead." And you get this in, in Matthew, you get it four times in Luke, John, same thing. Jesus knows he's going to die. That's why he's here to die. Uh, I think historically, that's not why Jesus went to Jerusalem, and I don't think he was expecting to die. So I don't think he expected to be betrayed.

What do you think Jesus was expecting then?

Yeah, right. That could be a whole new episode, I suppose. Yeah. So, um, when, if you look at what Jesus is preaching during his lifetime, what is his message? His message in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, our earliest gospels, is consistently that the kingdom of God is coming. People need to repent in preparation for it, so that they'll survive the coming onslaught. God's going to destroy his enemies, and those who follow him will be, will be saved and enter into the kingdom of God. Uh, and there's, there's good reason for thinking that Jesus himself thought he would be the king of the kingdom. That is why he was crucified. Pilate, uh, came to think that he was calling himself the king of the Jews. Well, he's obviously not the king now, he's talking about being the king of the future kingdom. And Jesus tells his disciples, "You 12 will be seated on 12 thrones, ruling the tribes of Israel." And so I think Jesus thought that the kingdom of God was soon to come, and that he would be the king. And the reason he went to Jerusalem for the Passover feast was because he'd spent all his time up in Galilee, this rural area where hardly anybody was in villages, in towns. He never goes to a big city, it's always just small areas or outside of the, outside of town. And at the end, he, he wants to bring his message to a large number of Jews. And where, how do you do that? Well, Jerusalem during Passover is when Jews from around the world come together in Jerusalem. I think he went there to proclaim his message. Uh, and because of what he did, probably because of the action he took in the temple, he offended the local authorities, and I think they decided to take him out of the public view, and that led to his crucifixion. So I don't think he went there to die, and I don't think he expected to die.

So then do you have a historical hunch yourself as to why you think this historical Judas might have betrayed Jesus?

So there are, there are a number of explanations that people have have given. I, I think the idea that he did it for the money is probably just something later to show that he was a thief, you know, to kind of to put him in a more negative light, or to say, you know, "He's filled with the devil." You know, I think that's a theological explanation because he, he did something so evil as betray Jesus. Historically, um, you know, I think it may be, I, I mean, there are various options. What, one option that I think is fairly attractive is that he did, in fact, think Jesus was going to bring in this new kingdom. Yeah. Sure. I think that, um, I think the saying of Jesus that, uh, you find it in both Matthew and Luke, where Jesus says, "You 12, he's talking to the 12 disciples, you 12 will be seated on 12 thrones, ruling the tribes of Israel when the when the Son of Man is ruling." You 12 will rule the 12 tribes. I think Jesus imagined that he would be the king and he'd have his 12 disciples serving under him in this kingdom. So when you read a saying like that in the gospels, what historians always have to do is ask, is that something Jesus really said, or is that something somebody put on his lips later? That's just because we know that that that happened. And so in this particular case, I think Jesus must have said that. And it's because of Judas Iscariot. Jesus is talking to the 12 disciples, including Judas, and he tells them, "You will be ruling in the future kingdom," which is an odd thing for him to say if he knew that Judas was going to betray him. Yeah. And it's not something that a later Christian would make up and put on his lips, because it shows that Jesus. And so I think Jesus really said, "You 12 will be ruling the 12 tribes." And I think they probably expected it. You know, they're looking for the glory to come any time now. And if Judas expected it, and then Jesus starts talking about getting crucified, you know, or if Jesus says, "You, it may not end up that way," or, you know, "Maybe this isn't what's going to work out." Maybe it may be that Judas is disappointed, or he's upset, or he thinks he's been misled. We don't know. We can't get into his head. But that would make sense that something disappointed him about the direction things were going, and so he, you know, he turned rebel to the cause.

Luckily, of course, with all this ambiguity about who Judas exactly was and why he betrayed Jesus, lucky us, because now we have access to the secret conversations that Judas and Jesus had with each other around the time, or just before the crucifixion. Yes. Quite recently is discovered, is rediscovered, I should say, an astonishing text called The Gospel of Judas. What is The Gospel of Judas?

Um, so The Gospel of Judas, that we now have, is not a gospel written, uh, by Judas. So it doesn't claim to be. Judas doesn't claim to be written by him. It does not claim to be written by him. Uh, the title of the gospel is "The Gospel of Judas," meaning, uh, that it's the gospel that's focusing on Judas in relationship to Jesus. Um, it was, it was recently discovered, as you said, and we'll talk more about that. But in modern times, it first came to light, like publicly to light, 20 years ago, in 2004. Um, and it's a gospel that, that is an alternative gospel, uh, that is Gnostic in its orientation, supporting the point of view that of Gnosticism, which we'll be talking about, that is an alternative form of Christianity. And it portrays, does not portray Judas in a negative light as the one who is the arch-enemy. It portrays Judas as the one of the disciples who actually had an inkling of understanding of Jesus, as opposed to the others who are completely clueless. And so this is, this is the gospel portraying the gospel story, especially Jesus' death, from Judas's perspective in a positive way.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, hopefully people who've been listening to a few of the episodes we've done on the, on the Gnostic or apocryphal gospels will have some idea about what Gnosticism is. Interestingly, a lot of texts, a lot of gospels that didn't make it into the New Testament are called Gnostic Gospels, when really they don't have a Gnostic theology. But Judas's gospel is one that I think we can quite squarely say is actually a Gnostic Gospel.

Right. I think so. Yeah, absolutely. So there, Gnosticism is a hugely debated area among experts, with experts taking different views of this, that, and the other thing. Um, so, um, I can explain Gnosticism if you want.

Well, why don't you give us a thumbnail sketch of what it means to have a Gnostic, yeah, Christian theology? What is that?

So Gnosticism, the term comes from the Greek word for knowledge. The Greek word for knowledge is *gnosis*, spelled with a G. Um, *gnosis* means knowledge in Greek. There were a number of Christian groups in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, especially, starting out probably somewhat after the New Testament period, who maintained that Jesus brought salvation not by dying on the cross and being raised again, but by delivering the secret knowledge that was necessary for people to learn so that they could escape the material trappings of their body to go to a spiritual, heavenly realm. The idea, the basic idea behind this is a kind of a dualism where, uh, there's a spiritual realm that is good and positive, and there's a material realm that is really quite awful. And so our suffering comes because we're material beings. And so our bodies can get injured, we can starve, we die, we, you know, bad things, we get diseases, bad things happen to us because of our bodies. And so the material world itself is a problem. And so in these Gnostic religions, the material world did not come into existence by the creation of a good God. The material world came into existence because of a cosmic disaster. And before the cosmic disaster, there was only a spiritual realm with divine beings. But because of things that happened in this, this realm, eventually there was a disaster that happened that led to the creation of of the material world. And it led some elements of the spiritual world to be trapped here in human bodies. So some people have a divine spark within them, a part of the divine within them. And the goal of the Gnostic religion is to allow them to escape their material trappings to return to their spiritual home. And that can only happen if they receive correct knowledge, *gnosis*. And so these Gnostic texts are largely about, um, the revelations of the secret knowledge that can bring salvation.

Yeah, interestingly, interestingly, a lot of these non-canonical gospels don't really, don't even mention a crucifixion, a resurrection, which in the canonical tradition is the story of Jesus that's the most important thing. And these don't even contain their stories, their stories.

Well, some. And that's right. Some of them, such as, uh, the Gospel of Thomas, I think you've done a thing there's questions about whether to call that Gnostic or not. But, but The Gospel of Judas does not have a death and resurrection. There are other gospels that are even more interesting, which, um, in which the crucifixion happens, but it's not at all what you think. And so there's one that's called The Apocalypse of Peter. Uh, there, there are actually two Apocalypses of Peter, but this one is a Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter that is, uh, Peter looking at the crucifixion from a hillside, talking to Jesus or talking to Christ who's next to him. He's talking to him, and he sees down below Jesus being arrested and crucified. He says, "What, who am I seeing? Who's that on the cross?" And, and he looks closer, and there's a, there's another figure above the cross, which is also Christ, who's laughing at the person being crucified. What is going on here? And so Peter, then Jesus explains to him, "Well, you know, the one above the cross is his spiritual being, and the one on the cross is the fleshly being." And he starts explaining that the, that Jesus Christ is two things. Jesus is the man who can get crucified, that belongs to the God of this world. Christ is the spiritual Christ that has temporarily filled Jesus and has now escaped before he dies, because the spiritual realm can't suffer. Yeah. It goes on like this, but he's seeing Jesus crucified, and he's not, and Christ is not crucified. The man Jesus is being crucified. It's so easy to see why people are attracted to these texts because they're just so phenomenal. And I mean that in the literal sense, they they are just filled with these unimaginable images of of that they completely transform the way that would think about, yeah, theology, cosmology, and the person of God. People, people have this kind of draw to this kind of Gnostic thing in my experience. What people are drawn to is kind of the summary of the basic ideas. Like, what I, you know, I could take about maybe 10 minutes to lay out what happens in this Apocalypse of Peter, and that would sound really interesting. But when people try to read it, the details are so mind, they're so mind-boggling, they just don't make any sense to people. And so people kind of love to talk about it in general terms, uh, which is so do I. But, but when you actually dig into these texts, sometimes they can really get confusing, including this Gospel of Judas. There's a section of it that is wo, oh, yeah. Like trying to read this text. I mean, it's so, it was almost disappointing when I finally sat down, relatively recently, and decided to read through the whole thing. You know, let's, let's actually go in order. Let's read. And it's, it's not long. You know, it takes what, half an hour, maybe to read? I'm, I'm a slow reader. Yeah. Um, and I must say that it was almost as disappointing in the sense that I, I, I couldn't understand a blind word of it half the time. It was just completely over my head, which is part of the reason why I wanted to sit down with you and talk to you about it, because to me, this is an impenetrable text in, in many ways.

Well, it is. And it's, and even scholars have to read and reread it. And, but, you know, it's one of these kind of weird phenomena. We get this in other realms of knowledge where the, when somebody explains the kind of the basic thing, it sounds amazing. But like, actually looking at how they get there, I mean, it's like, you know, quantum physics or something. Explains how quantum mechanics were say, "Oh, man, that's really interesting." But then you try to read, like, what, like one of the experts is talking to another expert, you say, "Oh, my God, I have no idea what you're talking about."

In the Gnostic tradition, you've spoken about this idea of the sort of real heavenly realm and this, this terrible or evil or accidentally created earthly material cosmos. What are some of the ideas about how this beautiful, perfect divine realm gives birth to this horrible, evil material world? I mean, it sort of almost in these texts, we'll talk about this, you get the idea of there being like different gods or or like a different creator of the material universe. Yeah. The creator of this material universe, if it's so bad, is that creator evil? Incompetent? Is it the same creator? Is it a different creator? Like, what's going on there?

Yeah, so they're different. So when, when people have told you that, like, such and such a text is probably not Gnostic, like if someone says, you know, "The Gospel of Thomas was not Gnostic," what they, what they typically mean by that is it doesn't lay out this kind of foundation of what's going on in the divine realm and how this world came into being. It doesn't lay out that. And that's always expressed in Gnostic texts by myths. They tell myths, stories about how all this happened, how the divine realm came into being, and then how this material realm came into being. And these are complicated myths that are just mind-numbingly dense. But their basic idea is that, um, in the basic Gnostic myth, if you have to kind of summarize it and kind of simplify it, but summarize it, is Gnostics maintained that the ultimate divine being is completely spiritual, nothing material at all about this thing. And it's, this is not only a God that nobody knows, it's a God that nobody can know because there's nothing physical about him. It's, you know, you, you can't see him, you can't touch him, you can't hear him, you can't, I mean, there's nothing. There's so you can't know him. But the, but then once they say you can't know him, they start describing him. It's just like, you know, when I was a, when I was a fundamentalist Christian, we'd say, you know, "God is far beyond anything we can imagine." Yeah. And these are his attributes. It's kind of like that. So you have this God, you have this divine being who, for one way or another, for some reason or another, starts emanating other beings who are also spiritual beings. And sometimes these are called Aeons. Yes. And these Aeons start getting emanated from him. Sometimes they can be things like his, his characteristics. So like, this, this God is eternal, and so eternality becomes a kind of a being. This God is life, and so life becomes the thing. This God is spirit, so spirit becomes its own thing. This God is truth, and so truth becomes its own thing. And so you have these kind of things that become sort of like new divine beings that that come off of this other being. Okay. So this entire, there's an entire realm that comes into existence, a divine realm with different numbers of these Aeons or and other divine beings, luminaries, and angels and things. Um, the entire realm is called the Pleroma. Pleroma is a Greek word that means the fullness. So it's the full, everything. It's everything, everything that's full, it's full that thing. So, um, what ends up happening in these, in these myths is that one of the divine beings, one of these Aeons, that is far removed from the true God, has some kind of disaster. And some of these texts, a lot of these texts, this, this divine being is called Sophia, which is wisdom. Wisdom. Sophia. It's a female name, so it's a female divinity. So we get philosophy, the love, philosophy, yeah, wisdom. Sophia. Sophia. Love of. So love of wisdom, right? The, um, so this, this wisdom is, you know, trying to grasp for knowledge. And so in some of these traditions, what happens is Sophia, this female divinity, reaches for knowledge of the entire Pleroma, and she, she overreaches herself, and she falls on a tree. And you over, and you fall. When she falls, she falls out of the Pleroma, and she then leads to the formation of other divine beings who are generated outside the Pleroma. And one of them, one of them is named Yaldabaoth. These texts, these, these texts always have these like weird names. They're weird words for. But Yaldabaoth sounds kind of like Yahweh, Lord of Sabbath, which is a term for God in the Old Testament. Okay. Yaldabaoth is is this kind of malformed being who's either evil or ignorant, or, but he decides to capture his mother and he and his minions and to trap her and to imprison her. So what they do is they create the material world as a place of imprisonment. And they, they capture Sophia, they divide her up into a million pieces, and they put, put her in human bodies. And so this world is created by Yaldabaoth, this malformed, ignorant being, who is the God of the Old Testament. This is the Jewish God. And then the Christian God. So yeah. And so the point of this religion is to escape the prison that the Creator God has put you in.

Well, um, and there's, there's the plot twist. Here's our God of the Old Testament. A great deal of our, of our sort of early Gnostics seem to have this not so pleasant view of the God of the Old Testament. Famously, the first, I think the first attempt to, to sort of canonize, uh, the New Testament scripture ends up with this, this is Marcion's famous, uh, famous Bible. Ends up with sort of one gospel account and a few of the letters of Paul, completely omits the entire Old Testament, thinking this God to be this, this evil demiurge. So for a long time, Marcion, he was a second-century thinker. For in the 19th century, up through the 19th century, people would talk about Marcion as a Gnostic because of that. You know, and these days, they don't talk about him as a Gnostic because he, he doesn't have, not only does he not have the myth, but he has a very different view of things. But it's the same motivation. The God of the Old Testament cannot be that good. I mean, look at this world around us. Yeah. He created this. Floods, droughts, epidemics, this is like hurricanes. Yeah. You only really need to sort of stub your toe to, to sort of think, really, like, this is, this is, this is what it's all about. So these systems, both Marcionite and the Gnostic systems, are really trying to explain why life is so miserable here, and what, what we're doing here, and what we can do about being here. And the Gnostic view is quite different from the view that developed within Christianity with other kinds of Christianity in what became traditional Christianity. The idea is, yes, God did create this world, but he's not the one who messed it up. You know, either, you know, the devil messed it up, or humans messed it up, but God's going to redeem it. God's going to redeem this world. The material world was created good, and it will end up good. The Gnostic view is, no, the world is a cosmic disaster, and the goal is not for it to be redeemed somehow. The goal is to escape it. And so the Gnostic religions are about escaping the material trappings of the body to return to the heavenly realm, and that comes by knowing the secret knowledge that Jesus reveals.

Yes. And I promise we'll get to Judas here and the secret knowledge that's given to Judas. But what is the role of Jesus then in this Gnostic theology? You sort of painted this picture of the spiritual realm, the evil material world, and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. What does Jesus do? How does he help us?

So I'll say there are some Gnostic groups that are not connected with Christianity, but have a very basic same view. Um, the view, the Gnostics that are connected with Christianity have Jesus as the key figure. Um, the problem is, people have to have the knowledge of how this material world came into existence and what the Pleroma is and how they can escape. But this is not knowledge you can figure out by just looking around. I mean, you can't, you can't reason it through, because your, your knowledge is coming to you through your senses in one way or another. You know, you can come up with thoughts inside your head, but you've got, you've got to have something to base on, and it's based on our senses. This, and so you can't figure out the secret. So the only ones who know the secret are the ones up in the Pleroma. And so in the Gnostic tradition, what happens is one of the, one of the Aeons in the Pleroma comes down in order to reveal the secret knowledge. To reveal the knowledge, he has to be in human form. And so there are, there are two major ways that Gnostics do this, both of them involving Jesus. One is that Jesus, uh, is an Aeon who's come down who only seems to be human. He can't really be a flesh and blood human, because that would make him material, would make him trapped in this evil world. He can't participate in this evil world. So he only seems to be human. So he looks like a human, he talks like a human, and feels like, you know, he's seems to be human, but it's an all in appearance. And when he reveals the secret knowledge, then he just returns. That's, that's one view. And it's, that's called Docetism. Docetism comes from a Greek word *dokeo*, which means to seem or to appear. Jesus seemed to be a flesh and blood human, but he wasn't. Okay. So that's one view about how the knowledge comes. Jesus brings it in the appearance of human. The more common way Gnostics did it was to say that there was a man, Jesus. He was born to Joseph and Mary. They had sexual intercourse, the child is born. It's a, it's a person. He's very righteous. So he's the one that the Aeon decided to come down and inhabit temporarily. And so, for example, at some Gnostics thought when Jesus got baptized, the man Jesus, very righteous man, he's the one chosen, he gets baptized. And in the gospels, the spirit of God comes upon him. Or, and in the Gospel of Mark, it actually says the spirit of God comes into him. And Gnostics, this is when the divine Aeon came into Jesus, and that's when Jesus became the Christ. Which also helps us clear up some of these troubles about the young Jesus. In that you sort of have these questions, well, if Jesus is this spiritual being, maybe God himself, like, is this a, is this a baby that's crying and doesn't know how to do his time tables, you know what I mean? Sort of, it's a little bit weird to imagine young Jesus in that way. And this would help to clear that up as well. And that's why you have later Christian gospels, other gospels that are not Gnostic, that are portraying Jesus as a, as a wonder worker, as a five-year-old Son of God. But it's partly to counter this idea of the Gnostics. It's not until the baptism, you know, that that the Christ comes into him. So once that happens, then he can start doing his miracles and he can do whatever, you know, he can, uh, deliver his teachings. And for the Gnostics, what really matters are the teachings. And so Jesus then starts delivering his secret message to the disciples. And at the end, uh, when Jesus is crucified, uh, that's when the divine element leaves him, because the divine cannot suffer. So the Aeon can't suffer. And so again, from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is dying and he cries out, "My God, my God, why have you left me behind? Why have you forsaken me?" And so literally, another great mystery, another really confusing, yeah, moment for the canonical tradition. Yeah. Why, why would God forsake Jesus? And people have their explanations, of course, you know, he takes sin into himself, and so they have their other theologies are available. Yes, are available. The Gnostic idea is that Jesus had left him, that Christ had left him, and so he dies by himself. And that's, that's this teaching of this Apocalypse of Peter I was talking about, because Peter actually sees it happen when Christ leaves him. So, um, that prevents G, that prevents the Aeon from having to be a human being. Both of those, the Docetism and this other view where Jesus and Christ are separate beings, uh, so Jesus then is the one who delivers the secret knowledge. And in many of the Gnostic traditions, he actually, the body of Jesus is brought back from the dead, and the Christ comes back into him, and now in the resurrection, he really delivers the secret knowledge. Yep. So during the lifetime, he was teaching the crowds stuff, and now he's got the disciples to himself, and he spills the beans. What's really going on? And they're the only ones who know it. Right. Okay. So again, this is our broad picture of Gnostic theology, which we could talk about for hours and hours, and every different Gnostic text has a slightly different interpretation of the story. So let's talk about one of them. Yes. The Gospel of Judas. I remember exactly where I was when I was first told that there existed this gospel. I, I had an idea that there were these Gnostic Gospels, and in my mind, there were slight variants on the Christian story. They had these things that Jesus did as a kid. I remember where I was. It was, it was Phil Halper, if you're watching, Phil. And he said, "What happens near the beginning of this gospel, The Gospel of Judas?" Alex, Jesus's disciples are praying with each other, and Jesus comes over and laughs at them for praying. And the disciples say, "Why are you laughing at, you know, why are you laughing at us, Lord? We're doing what you want." And, and Jesus says, "You're serving your God by doing this." And I was like, "Okay, that, I'll, I'll give it to you, Phil. That is a bit weird." And he says, "But then he pulls Judas aside." Or, you know, Judas is sort of selected out as the person who seems to understand the real Jesus. And Jesus says, "You know where I've come from." And Judas says, "Yes, I know where you've come from. You come from the realm of..."

barbello, and I'm not fit to utter the name of the one who sent you. And I nearly left the dinner that I was at there and then to run home and read this gospel. What on Earth is going on at the beginning of the Gospel of Judas? I know, yeah. And how badly have I just butchered it? You didn't butcher it badly at all, and it's one of the most understandable parts, I have to say. That's the worst spot, isn't it? It's so, if you understand the kind of Gnostic system, it makes perfect sense. Um, the, the, the author begins by, by introducing, by saying that, that he's going to talk about the secret revelation that Jesus gave to Judas. And so you start out, secret revelation, okay, this sounds Gnostic right at the beginning. And is a secret knowledge he's going to give. So, and then right, the disciples are gathered together, so they're praying. But the, the key element of this is they're praying over their, their food. Yeah. And so it's a Eucharist. It's actually uses the term for the Eucharist meal, in other words, the communion meal. Uh, and so they're having a, they're giving thanks. Eucharist in Greek means, Eucharist means to, to give thanks. And so they're thanking God for the food. Well, the God who gave them the food is the God who created the material world. The food is material substance, and they're thanking God for this material substance. Jesus comes in and sees them thanking God for the food, and he starts laughing because they think that the God who made the food is the true God. They think they're worshipping the true God. So Jesus thinks this is funny. Yeah, because in fact, the whole point is the God who made this world is not a good God. Uh, later we're going to find out in, in this gospel that the God who created this world is a bloodthirsty rebel, and the God who created humans is a fool. And so they're actually given that those names. And so, um, uh, so it starts off with him laughing. Jesus laughs four times in this gospel. Uh-huh. On four occasions, he laughs. And it's, uh, and it's partly interesting because, as you know, Jesus never laughs in the New Testament. He does laugh in Gnostic Gospels, though, on a number, number of occasions. Four times just in this gospel. And it's usually because he's laughing at the ignorance of people who think they know the truth, who are just completely off base. Not like they're getting something, like they're getting a detail wrong, but their foundation of their understanding is completely off base. And so he, he finds that a little bit, um, a little bit humorous. Yeah. I mean, it's got to be pretty wrong, not just to be corrected, but to just be laughed at, right? It has to be something that's almost comically backward.

Well, and then so they, what, and they, they get upset with him when he laughs that time. And they say, why are you laughing at us? And, and he says, you know, and what you said, you know, you, you think you're worshipping the god, the god you're, you know, it's, you're worshipping the wrong God, basically. And they take umbrage. And, um, and Jesus says, well, if any, if any of you, um, you know, thinks you can stand up and, in, in my presence, you know, and because he's the one who, he's so far above them, they can't even stand. And none of them can stand up except for Judas. Judas stands up, but he can't look Jesus in the eyes. But he, and, and so he, he's the one who kind of knows who Jesus is. And he does say, you, you're the one who comes from the realm of barbello. And that is the, for scholars who are reading this thing for the first time, within these first few verses, boom, scholars have it. This is a kind of Gnosticism that we know about. Otherwise, it's called Sethian Gnosticism. It's named after this figure in the Old Testament, Seth, who is the son of Adam and Eve. After Cain kills Abel, they have a replacement son, Seth, who is the good guy. Well, Seth becomes the hero for this Gnostic, these Gnostic groups. And so they're called Sethian Gnostics. And the reason we know that this is a Sethian Gnostic text, because in other Sethian Gnostic texts, Barbello is one of the major divine beings in the Pleroma. You just refer to Barbello as a, as a being. Yes. So, um, in these, um, in the Gnostic traditions, the Sethian Gnostic traditions, you have this first spiritual being, sometimes called the Great Invisible Spirit, that is the ultimate divine being. And in some of these traditions, the first of these aeons that he emits is called Barbello. And Barbello is, um, the, she's the mother figure, the mother of all creation. And so, and then there's another one that's called the, the self-generating one, or the self-original one, or something like that, that is the three of them form a kind of a trinity. And so you've got the Father, who's the invisible Spirit, you've got Barbello, who's the, who's the, the wife, and the self-originating one, self-generating one, that is the, the Spirit, the Son. Yeah. Okay. So we've sort of got this Gnostic cosmology, and we've got an indication at the beginning of the Gospel of Judas that we're dealing with a Gnostic text. So Judas is the one who stands up and says, you know, I know where you've come from, Lord. You've come from the realm of Barbello. I'm not fit to utter the name of the one who sent you.

Um, this is probably the most famous part of the Gospel. What happens next? You know, where does this gospel take us? So what happens is, um, the, uh, disciples and Judas have a number of conversations with Jesus. Jesus kind of comes and goes, uh, and they're mystified wherever he goes, but he comes and goes in this, in this thing. And when he comes, he has discussions with the disciples, and more commonly, just with Judas. And they involve his, uh, involve revelations that he's giving. They're, uh, a couple of times they're based on visions that the disciples have. A vision Judas has a vision. They want to know what it is, and Jesus explains it. And at every point, he's explaining something about how they're getting everything wrong in their understanding. And that the reality is, they don't belong to the group of people who have divinity within them. They don't belong to the group of people that are going to return to the spiritual realm. He, he differentiates between this generation, he calls it by generation, people who were born into this world. And that generation, that generation consists of people that we, we might call Gnostics, who are going to go to the heavenly realm after their deaths. The disciples are not among that generation. Um, Judas is the only one who, who has an inkling of an understanding of Jesus. He is ahead of all of the other disciples, but he also is not in that generation.

So, let me, let me just, let me explain something. This has to do, kind of, the history of the scholarship on the Gospel of Judas, just very briefly, because it can be kind of confusing if people read, read anything on it. So when it was first made public, when, when we first got a hold of it, um, the, so I was, I was one of the first people asked to, to look at this thing. And so when we looked at it, we had a team of people who were looking at it. We all thought, reading it, that it was portraying Judas as the hero of the story. That he's the one who gets it. Nobody else does. And so we were thinking of him as the Gnostic figure. Yeah. And this was the big headline at the time as well. It was like, new gospel that tells us Judas is actually the good guy. Yes. Uh, and so we, this team of people that National Geographic got together to authenticate the gospel, we all thought that. And, um, the, what happens in scholarship, if you, you know, if you're around humanity scholarship, especially, the pendulum always swings. Somebody will say something, then somebody will say the opposite thing, then somebody, the kind of the pendulum's always swinging. So the pendulum swung a few years later, after we had all written about this, by, uh, by a Gnostic scholar named April DeConick, who said, they have completely misread this thing. Judas is the demon in the story. He's like, awful, he's horrible, you know. And she's, and she's claiming this on the basis of her reading of the Coptic text. It's written in Coptic, which is an ancient Egyptian language. And so, and some people, so the, these days, what I am sure is the interpretation, which I think is probably the major interpretation now, is that, is that neither of those extremes is right. He is a hero in the story. I think he is a hero in the story, and he is, he's definitely said to be ahead of the other disciples. He's the only one who gets it. He, but he doesn't get the whole thing. That's why I've been saying he has an inkling of understanding. He is not a Gnostic who's going to go to the heavenly realm, but he's far ahead of everybody else. And so he has this kind of middle thing in between. He's definitely the hero of the text for a reason we'll talk about in a second, but it's not that he himself is going to has the full knowledge necessary for to return because he, he wants to join that generation, but he can't.

Well, what, what is this talk of generations that that crops up? I know you mentioned it a moment ago. What do we mean by generation? Generation is a term that Gnostics use. When, when the, Great Invisible Spirit started creating, these all these aeons, these are generations. He generates them, they come, they come from. So it's, they're connected to him generationally. And in the human race, there are, there are two generations. One generation in, in some of these Gnostic texts are generations of people who are just animals, like other animals. They're, they've got bodies, uh, they have, you know, they have spirits. When the spirits leave, they die. So the spirit doesn't live on, the body, the body dies, they're just dead. There's another group of people who have, who have spirits, but they also have souls and bodies. And what happens to them is when their spirit dies and their body dies, the soul lives on and returns to the heavenly realm. MH. So the people who are Gnostic have a spark of divine within them, call it the soul, uh, they have a spark that will return. That's that generation, the Gnostics who have the knowledge, who return to the heavenly realm. And this generation are the humans, including the disciples, who think that this world was created by the good God. Yes.

Um, I want to continue talking about where, where we've got up to in the story. I, I want to give people an idea though. I thought it would be interesting. I mean, we've spoken about the text. I've just opened the Gospel of Judas onto a random page. And this is, you know, just one translation. But just to give you a feeling of the kind of stuff we're talking about. A random page. "Truly I say to you," replied Jesus, "when the stars over them have all completed their courses, and when Saklas has completed the times which have been appointed for him, their leading star will come with the generations, and what has been spoken of will be fulfilled. They will then they will commit sexual immorality in my name and will kill their children and and then there are parts missing, evil and..." The aeons which will bring their generations, presenting them to Saklas after that, and then more missing, "Ra, something Ra will come bringing the 12 tribes." You know, just this sort of, yeah, all these terms and names. And you're trying to read through this, especially given that there are fragments missing, partly perhaps due to the fact that the Gospel of Judas spent about 16 years in a safety deposit box in New York City. We'll talk about more about that in the moment, too. And, and like, you know, Nimrod, which interpreted means apostate. Others call him Yaldabaoth. How do you say it? Yaldabaoth. Yaldabaoth. "Again, another angel called Saklas came forth from the cloud. Nimrod created six angels for assistance, as did Saklas, and they generated 12 angels in the heavens and took a portion in the heavens for each one. The 12 archons said to the 12, 'I know.'" And so, you know, we could sort of, I, I could, I usually encourage people, well, you know, go and read the text. It's quite short. Find it online. In this case, I'm almost like, maybe don't. Maybe instead, at least before you do that, try and get some indication of what's going on. So, so where, where do we hold up to? And, and, and so where do we get all this stuff from? Yeah. So this is what I mean about like, you know, when you summarize it, it sounds pretty interesting. But when you actually read it, you say, what in the world's going on here? I genuinely could not understand it. I, I just, I, I was reading it in a cafe and just, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I have my students read this text for my undergraduate students, and we spend, you know, we spend a class period where I take them through it point by point to show, okay, this is what this means, this is what this means. And you really need a guide because if you don't have a guide, I mean, it's just like, you're not gonna, you're not gonna, you're not gonna figure it out. Um, but once you kind of see how it starts fitting together, all of a sudden you realize, wow, you know, actually, you know, there's a lot of these details, they're probably meant to confuse you in some ways. It's secret knowledge. It's not for everyone. Oh, yeah, quite right. Yeah. And so that's, it has to be mysterious knowledge. But when you see what it's about, you start realizing, oh, actually, the basic point of this thing is really pretty interesting. So, the, so, for example, the, the disciples, I said earlier that the disciples have a vision. They want Jesus to interpret. So, um, they see, so the disciples see a house, and inside the house is an altar, and there are 12 priests who are sacrificing cattle at the altar. And, uh, and the disciples, and but these, these priests are also, um, killing children and committing sexual immorality. And they, like, they're doing awful things to other human beings. And, and the disciples don't, can't figure out what's going on. So they ask Jesus, what, we have this vision, what is that? And Jesus tells them, yeah, actually, those 12 priests, those are you, the 12 disciples. And the, the cattle you're slaughtering are the people you're leading astray. So you're killing them, you're not helping them, you're actually killing them. And because you have the wrong idea of what this world is, you're behaving completely against the, the morality of the true God, you know. So you're, and so, and so they're on the wrong side, even though they think they're on the right side. This is a kind of a jab at the Christian Church, like the, the regular Christians who think, you know, they've got the answers to everything, they've got the right ethics, they've got the right beliefs. And these Gnostics are jabbing at the, at these other Christians because, man, you are just completely off base. Uh, so, yeah, so you get the, you get the vision, you get the explanation, and if you understand kind of the Gnostic context, then it makes sense.

And Judas has a vision of his own, doesn't he? That he, that he asks Jesus about? So Judas has this vision. He sees this house, and he sees these people going in and out of it. It looks like this fantastic house. He says, "Lord, I want to go into that house." And Jesus says, "Yeah, sorry, it's not going to happen because that's the house for that generation. Uh, and you're never going to go into that." So Judas is the one who sees about this other generation. The other disciples don't even see it. Judas sees it, but he's still not allowed in because he's not of that generation. "Your star has deceived you." "Oh, Judas," Jesus answered, "no progeny of any mortal man is worthy to enter into the house which you saw. For that place where the sun, the moon, and the day will have no dominion is kept for the holy ones. They will stand for all time in the aeon with the holy angels. Behold, I have spoken to you the mysteries of the kingdom and I have taught you about the deception of the stars." And there's a few bits missing over the 12 aeons. I, I found it quite interesting at the beginning of this, this section, Judas's vision. The first thing that happens is Judas says, "Master, just as you have listened to all the others, listen to me as well, for I have seen a great vision." When Jesus heard this, he laughed. "Why do you struggle so, O 13th spirit or 13th aeon?" he answered Judas. Yeah, but speak, and I will be patient with you. He, he refers to Judas as the 13th aeon or the 13th spirit. Yeah. What's this? Um, so this is, this is the phrase that, that scholar I said who decided that Judas was actually not the Hebrew, the demon, this is what really set her off. Because her view was, demon, demons are bad, and 13, that's the unlucky number. Mhm. And so that's, you know, it's a good argument, but it hasn't convinced most people. Because I don't think it's convinced most scholars of this text, because the number 13 doesn't necessarily have a negative connotation. It does in the modern age, but 13 can be used either positively or negatively in different texts from antiquity. And even in Christianity, Jesus has 12 disciples, and he's the 13th. And so, so the number 13 has taken on the suspicious kind of this negative thing precisely because Judas is the 13th. And later tradition, that, that tradition with the 13 with Judas comes in after this gospel. So 13 can have positive connotations. And the word aeon does not mean what we think of as a demon. So aeon is a very common term in, uh, ancient Greek thought, both philosophical thought and in religious thought. Daemons, daemons were, um, a kind of divine being who were below the great gods of Mount Olympus, and below the gods who are in charge of your city or your state or your your forest or your stream. They're, they're below the, they're, they're low-level divinities. They might be good, they might be bad, but, you know, they're often good. Uh, Socrates's, um, guiding angel, his guardian angel was, he calls him a daemon. And so it's, daemon does not have negative connotations inherently. And so the debate is about that. And so you have to look at the rest of the text to figure out whether, you know, Judas is being portrayed as the most evil one, as in the New Testament, or as, uh, or as something else. So in this vision, Judas says, "I saw myself in the vision, and the 12 disciples were throwing stones at me." Yes. That's a little strange too, isn't it? Because isn't Judas one of the 12? Yeah. And it is strange. And so I think, um, this is a problem you have throughout early Christian texts. Sometimes the 12 are called the 12, even though there aren't 12 of them. Uh, but in this case, I think it's sometimes thought that in the Book of Acts, after Judas dies, in the Book of Acts, they elect a 12th member. Yes. And it may be that this author is thinking that after that happens, they disparage Judas and they malign him. And so it's like them stoning him.

There are a few more things to cover before I, I suppose we talk about the actual discovery of this text, which I think is also incredibly interesting. Um, I want to go back to the beginning of the text. Um, this is like the, the very first part, the, the same part where you say it opens, "The secret message of the revelation which Jesus spoke to Judas Iscariot in the weeks, in the week leading up to the third day before he celebrated Passover." And says the following: "When he appeared upon the earth, Jesus performed signs and great wonders for the salvation of humanity. Familiar enough, since some were walking in the way of righteousness and others were walking in their transgression. The 12 disciples were called. Jesus began to speak to them of the mysteries beyond this world and about what would come to pass until the end. On some occasions, he did not reveal himself openly to his disciples, but was present as a child among them." So the Coptic word that's translated child there is a difficult word. It could mean phantom as well. Um, we have other Gnostic texts, we have other texts that may not be Gnostic, um, that where Jesus shows up sometimes to his disciples as a child. Um, and so there's one of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles where, where two disciples are actually looking at Jesus, and one of them sees an old man, and one sees a child. Um, and so, uh, this is one of those passages that people debate, you know, what is it, child? Is it phantom? If it's child, why does Jesus show up as a child? You know, what's, what's it trying to say? Is it innocence? Is it, they, they, they don't think that he's knowledgeable, like he's ignorant? Is it, I mean, what does it mean he shows up to his disciples as a child? And, yeah, and we don't really know. Well, there's that, that's all we have. The verse is all we have. So, so what people do, of course, is you look at other passages like these other things where Jesus shows up as a child in other texts, or where he shows up as a phantom in other texts, and try to figure out what it, what it means.

I also find quite interesting, right near the end, Jesus refers a couple of times to the person who carries me around. He talks about the person who's going to be crucified or sacrificed is the person that carries me around, or the body which carries me around. Yeah. Which again, is another indication, yeah, that we're dealing with Gnostic theology here, because at first glance, it's a bit of a weird phrase, you know? Yeah. Um, he's saying, "But you will be greater than them all, for you will sacrifice the man who carries me around." What on Earth does this mean? Oh, I think that's the key verse, actually, for this entire gospel. That verse, I think, is the key. Because, so he's talking to Judas, and he's explaining that Judas is superior to all the other disciples, because "you will sacrifice." It's translated in different, different ways. "You will sacrifice the man who carries me," or "and so," does that give an alternative translation? Actually, I think it's sometimes translated, "You will sacrifice the man who bears me." Yes, yes, yeah. Yeah. So the reason that's the key is because one thing, it shows that it has this understanding of Christ that I was mentioning earlier, not the Docetic view that he only seems to be human, but the separationist view that the Jesus and the Christ are two different things. The body is a man, and the element within him, the divine element in him, is the divine, the aeon from above. He has to escape his body. He escapes his body when his body dies. Right. Judas is superior to all others because he's the one who makes it happen. He's the one who makes it possible for Christ to escape his body, because Judas's betrayal will lead to Jesus' death. And so that's a good thing here, not because it's an atonement for sins, it's not because it brings about salvation, it's because it allows the aeon to escape. And so Judas is the good guy because he betrays Jesus.

Now, just before we talk about the very end of this, of this text, we were sort of giving a run-through of what happens. And there was sort of a narrative near the beginning, and then Jesus starts explaining things to Judas, and we talk about these visions that the disciples have, Judas talks about his vision, and then Jesus gives us an account of the creation of everything, and also an account of the destiny of the cosmos. So he sort of gives us a cosmological account of the origins, which we've already basically talked about and covered the sort of generations, this kind of stuff. We then get something about the creation of Adam and Eve, again, another familiar story, but here recounted in the Gospel of Judas. So, so maybe, I don't know, you can maybe tell us about the Gospel of Judas's depiction of Adam and Eve, and where they come from. Well, so the, um, well, the, the key to this is who's doing the, who, who's creating what in this. Um, and so there are all these aeons and luminaries and firmaments and things in this, in the, in the story about the creation of the Pleroma. But then there are two gods who, who appear, who are going to be the creator gods of the Bible. And one of them is, um, is called Yaldabaoth. And the other is called Saklas. Yaldabaoth is a, uh, means rebel. And it says that he is covered with blood. And Saklas, the name Saklas means fool. And so, so the, so the world and Adam and Eve created by this bloodthirsty rebel and this fool. And the fool. Yeah. And so Adam and Eve, Adam is formed before this. There's one of the, these early aeon figures that's called Adamas. A-d-a-m-a-s. Adamas. And the idea is that Adam is in, kind of like the likeness of this, this figure, but it's a material representation of it. And so, and so it's acknowledging that, uh, the material world comes into being, but it's not because of the, uh, of the Great Invisible Spirit. It's because of these evil, evil divinities. "Then Saklas said to his angels, 'Let us make man according to the likeness and according to the image.' And so they created Adam and his wife Eve, who in the cloud is called Zoe." This is, this is what it says in the text. So, so Saklas, you've already mentioned, he's the one that says to his angels, let's, let's create Adam and Eve. And they create Adam and his wife Eve, who in the cloud is called Zoe. Okay. So the cloud, early on, when you got the Great Invisible Spirit, there's, there's this cloud appears. And so in the cloud means up in the Pleroma. And the things on Earth are being created as a physical kind of representation of what's going on up in the, up in the Pleroma. And so one thing we haven't mentioned here yet is that, um, it looks like a, these Gnostic religions are not only related to Christianity, but related to a lot of other things. We've mentioned the Old Testament, but they're especially closely related to a particular area of philosophy in the ancient world that's going around at the time. It's a form of Platonic thought, a form of the thought of Plato that's, it's usually called Middle Platonism, which is very becoming very popular in the second century. And Middle Platonism is informing a lot of what's going on in this text. So if people know about Plato, they, they would know that in Platonic thought, Plato thought that there is this world of forms or ideas that is like pure existence, and the world we live in is kind of a vague shadow of that. That there, that the, that the things here, like we're sitting on chairs, there are all sorts of chairs of all types, but there's this like, this thing, this form chair, that everything is kind of a false representation of, like a shadowy representation of. That's what's going on in this text. Zoe is one of the aeons up in the cloud, and Eve is Zoe's represent, kind of shadowy representation on Earth. Adamas is up in the Pleroma, Adam is the, is the material representation. Okay. So a slightly different cosmology and a slightly different account of, of what's going on with Adam and Eve there.

Jesus then tells us about the destiny of the cosmos, where it's all heading. And it's actually the part that I quoted at random earlier came from this section. "And your star will rule over the 13th aeon." After this, Jesus laughed again. "Master, why are you laughing?" asked Judas. "I'm not laughing at all of you," he said, "but at the era of the stars, because these six stars were deceived with these five warriors." And all of these will perish with their creations. So this comes after some account of what happens with the cosmos. So what does Jesus tell us is going to be the future of the cosmos, and what does he mean at the end there? Yeah. So stars in this text represent what we might call something like guardian angels who are guiding us on our way. And the stars that the disciples have and the Judas have are stars who are do not belong to the spiritual realm, they belong to this realm. And so they're leading them astray. These stars are leading them astray, and these stars are going to lead to the destruction of the material world. So basically, this material world is going to undo itself. It's doomed to do that. And so, uh, so that it's talking about the destruction of the material world, and the, the cosmos in this text, cosmos is actually called chaos as well, as a kind of a synonym. And so the chaos here is going to get even more chaotic. And so this is kind of like, it's kind of like the apocalyptic message that you find in Jesus and other teachers, that, you know, the world's going to come to kind of a wild end. Yeah. This is, I mean, Judas has asked Jesus just before this, "What then will become of those generations?" Presumably the generations that don't make it into the, the house of the holy. "Truly I say to you," replied Jesus, "when the stars have over them have completed their courses." This is what I, uh, quoted earlier. "And Saklas has completed the times which have been appointed for them, their leading star will become, will come with the generations, and what has been spoken of will be fulfilled. Then they will commit sexual immorality in my name, they will kill their children." Uh, it sort of misses a bit. "The aeons will bring their generations, presenting them to Saklas." And so we've got this kind of apocalyptic imagery. After that, something Ra, so presumably Israel will come to bring the 12 tribes of Israel from. And then a bit missing. And so, it's a bit tricky because there are some bits missing, but we basically got a sort of apocalyptic, it's like, yeah, it's an apocalyptic message and kind of a Gnostic guy. Yes. Yeah.

So then after this, Judas inquires further, "What will become of those who have been baptized in your name?" Um, and again, some bits missing. "Truly I say to you," replied Jesus, "this baptism bit missing, my name bit missing, not bit missing, it will destroy the whole generation of the earthly Adam." Whoa. It will destroy the whole generation of the earthly Adam. So the, the material world and all the people in it will be, will disappear ultimately at the end. It'll be like the beginning. It'll just be the, um, the, uh, divine realm, the spiritual realm. And then, "Tomorrow, the one who carries me about will be tormented," or "the one who bears me will be tormented." Um, and again, another reference. "You will sacrifice the man who carries me around," or "you will sacrifice the man who bears me." "Already your horn has become exalted, your anger has burned, your star has passed overhead, and your mind has." And then a little bit missing. So was seeming sort of congratulations to, to Judas? I mean, he's, he's exalting Judas. And, you know, he's, he's not, he's not in the generation that will return to the Pleroma, but he's, you know, he's doing a good thing. He's on a right, himself. You've done all right. And after some, after some few more, a few more comments, "Behold," says Jesus, "everything has been told to you. Lift up your eyes and behold the cloud and the light which is in it, and the stars which surround it. The star which is the leader, that is your star." Judas lifted up his eyes and saw the cloud of light. Then Jesus entered it. Those who stood underneath heard a voice coming from the cloud which said, "The great generation." A bit missing. And then more missing. And, and then a bit missing. "And Jesus stopped looking at Jesus." It's a, I don't know who did this particular translation, but, um, it's, it's a complicated passage. I believe that this is Simon Gallow. I mean, it's Simon Gallow's edited collection, so it may have been him that. Yeah, I think he translated these texts. Okay. So I'm sure he's, he's a very fine scholar. Um, he did take a liberty there, when he translated that line that Judas saw this cloud and Jesus entered into it. The Coptic says, "Judas saw the cloud, and he entered into it." Ah, that's why one of the reasons we thought originally that Judas, in fact, was one of the saved souls, right? It says he, and it's unclear. The closest antecedent is Judas. Okay. Interesting. If you translate Jesus, then it clarifies it in a particular way of interpreting it. Right. So that's an interpretive decision, then, to say that J, that Judas lifted up his eyes and saw the cloud of light, then he entered it. He entered it, as the translation says, Jesus, but it could have been Judas. Could have been either one. But, yeah, could be either one. But the natural way reading is it's closest antecedent. But you might think, well, that doesn't really make sense of everything else. And so you, and so, so readers won't get misled, he translates to Jesus, but that's not the word that's in it. It's, it's so. But, I mean, what is this cloud of light that that Judas? It's the cloud. That, the cloud. It's the, yeah, it's the cloud that, um, that is there at the beginning in the Pleroma. So he sees the, so it's a way of describing the realm of the, the divine realm, the spiritual, where the spiritual beings are. And it's, it's okay. I mean, I found it quite interesting that sort of Jesus goes up into this cloud, but maybe he doesn't. We, we, I suppose we, we don't know. Especially because then Jesus sort of has to come back down. At least if he did go up, it happens a couple of times in this text, actually. He disappears. He's off with that generation for a while, then he comes back. He comes back down, and then he's up and down. Because we're now at the very end, the epilogue.

The betrayal, the famous part. "Just then, there was a disturbance amongst the Jews. Their chief priests were angry. 'Rejoice,' that Jesus had gone to his lodging place to pray. Some of the scribes were there, looking to arrest him at prayer, for they feared the people, because the people all held him as a prophet. They approached Judas. 'Why are you here?' they asked him. 'You are Jesus's disciple.' He answered them according to their wish. Judas received money and handed Jesus over to them." The Gospel of Judas. Period. That's, that's where it ends. It ends. It's fantastic. Amazing. He turns them over, and that's it. That's the end. I know, because again, there's sort of, there's no crucifixion, there's no resurrection, there's nothing like that. The whole point, what matters is not that, what matters is Jesus escaping his body, and Judas makes it possible. So it seems strange, like we were talking earlier about the Gospel of Mark, and how we don't know exactly why Judas did this. But Mark places the story just after the woman anoints Jesus with expensive oils. And so maybe there's some indication that it's got something to do with this. Here again, we've sort of got Jesus just explaining the history and the future of the cosmos to Judas, and then right afterwards, Judas just betrays Jesus. Yeah. What, why do you think, in this Gnostic text, is Judas doing this? So if you think about, well, even in Mark, the last, the last public teaching Jesus has is the apocalyptic discourse in Mark chapter 13. And after that, you start getting the passion narrative, which climaxes in Jesus' death and resurrection in Mark. And so here, Jesus gives the apocalyptic discourse that it's all going to, the cosmos is going to be wiped out. And then you get the climax of this too, which is the betrayal. And so it's, it's, it's emphasizing in this kind of startling way that what matters is not Jesus' death. It's not an atonement. His death doesn't matter. His resurrection matters. What matters is his escape that Judas makes possible. And so that's why, I mean, I think it's certain that Judas, then, is being portrayed as doing the really good thing here that Jesus wants. And we, we still get the indication of money here. So that's still there, still the mention of the money. But it's not implied that this is a motivation. No, it's just, yeah, just kind of, you know, at that point, it's so much a part of the tradition, I think, that Judas gets the money. And so they do the, the Jew gets the money, and boom, that's it. So there we have it, the Gospel of Judas. So once again, I, I recommend to people watching to go and read this text. You can find it online. You can find nice, you know, additions and, uh, collections of apocryphal gospels. But do bear in mind that if you are confused or put off, I think that's totally normal. Don't think that you're sort of, you know, missing something, or you're being a bit stupid, or, or you're, you're not understanding the text, because I think that's probably the case with most people who read this. Yeah. You, so I wrote a book about this, as you know, and, and in the book, I, I give an explanation of what's going on, and I do with some of the hard parts and try to explain it. And so if they don't want to, you know, look at my book on it, there are other things out there. You need to get, make sure you get a competent scholar, though, who who does this. There's a very good commentary on it. Like the major commentary on it is by David Brakke, B-R-A-K-K-E. It's fairly recent, and he'll disagree with me on some things. We all disagree with each other, but he's the, he's like a bona fide scholar on this. Yeah. I'll be, I'll be linking your book down in the description as well. It's called The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot. That's right. And, um, again, sort of gives an introduction and overview, a lot of what we've been talking about here, but in, in more detail. Um, you mentioned earlier that you were one of the first people to, to lay eyes upon this text. I wanted to talk a little bit about the text itself, which I find just as interesting as its contents. We've only, I mean, this has only been publicly accessible, like the average person has only been able to read the Gospel of Judas since what? 2006. 2006. Yeah. 2006. And when we consider just how ancient this text is, yeah, we'll talk about exactly how ancient it might be. 2006. Yeah. It's absolutely astonishing that this has just come to light. So before we talk about exactly how it was rediscovered, just how ancient is this text, and how can we go about dating it? Um, well, it almost certainly had to be written in the 2nd century. Um, probably sometime in the middle of the 2nd century. So around the year, you know, we can't put an exact date on it, uh, but around the year, like 150 or so. Uh, uh, the reason we know that is because there's a church father, Irenaeus, who was writing his five-volume book, Against the Heresies, as it's called, uh, in which he mentions the Gospel of Judas, and he, he gives a description of it, a brief description of it, that completely coincides with what we've got. And so, uh, he was writing in 180. He knew about this, so it had to be written before that. Um, it embraces a Gnostic view that, um, we don't have evidence of before about the year 130 or so. And so people tend to date it between 130 and 180, somewhere in there, for when it was originally composed. It would have been composed in Greek. What we have is a Coptic version of it, a Coptic translation of it, but it, it was a Greek composition. And so it has to go. It's one of our earliest gospels. How do we know that it was originally in Greek if we only have a Coptic translation? Um, well, Irenaeus would not read Coptic, uh, and so he would have had to read it in its original, you know, about in the original language. The people who are using it were Greek-speaking folk. The, the other thing is there are a lot of, there are linguistic indications the philologists look at to see is this a translation document or is this, you know, original thing. We don't have original Coptic gospel compositions. Uh, we have a lot of Coptic translations of of Greek things, including including the Nag Hammadi library. The so-called Gnostic Gospels, Gospel of Thomas, and all these things that are in Coptic are have linguistic indications they originally were. Oh, yeah. Crucially, um, I've been speaking a lot about apocryphal gospels recently, and I'm constantly referencing the Nag Hammadi library. Crucially, the Gospel of Judas is not discovered with the Nag Hammadi library. People listening might feel that already familiar with the story of the, the, the desert and the sort of dubious circumstances of somebody digging in the desert and finding a jar. This is not discovered with those. Where is the Gospel of Judas first rediscovered? Well, so like the Nag Hammadi library, it was disc, is discovered about, what would it be about, uh, 30 years after the Nag Hammadi library, which is discovered in Egypt, uh, near a village named Nag Hammadi in Egypt. This is in a different part of Egypt. It's in Middle Egypt, the Al-Minya, uh, province, and it was, um, kind of similarly, in a sense, it was discovered, uh, by people who weren't looking for manuscripts. They were, uh, they were, and they weren't scholars, they weren't archaeologists or anything. They were local people who were, um, who found a burial site of some kind and were looking for, you know, goods they might sell. And they found some, they found some jars of things. And they, but they found a couple, there were a couple of boxes there, a couple of stone boxes. And one of them had four manuscripts in it. So this is in the year 1978. Which is going to be the question of why did we, why was it published in 2006? It was discovered 1978. And but discovered in 1978 by these locals who, uh, they found a box. The box had four manuscripts in it. And this is just one of the manuscripts. And this is part of one of the manuscripts. So there was also a manuscript that was a Greek mathematical treatise, a copy of the Book of Exodus in Greek, one that was a partial copy of Paul's letters, um, and then this manuscript, which was a small anthology of four texts. So the Gospel of Judas is one of the four, four texts that's discovered in this thing. So as you say, 1978, some locals discover this text. Do they immediately realize what it is? Do they know how important it is? What, what? No, they have no clue. They don't. No, they have no clue. They, but they realize, you know, it looks like an old text. And so they're, you know, in Egypt, a lot of these things, you know, these things turn up on occasion, uh, manuscripts of some kind or different kind of discoveries, antiquities, old things. And there may often be somebody locally who is like a middle person you can sell things to. You don't know what it is. Yeah, I mean, even if it is just an old copy of Exodus, you know, we've got the story of Exodus, but it's still an ancient manuscript. And they won't even know it's, what it is. Know what it is to know that it might be worth. They'll find, they might find a Roman vase or something. They find something and they sell it to this person, and he'll have a contact who is more involved with antiquities dealers. And he also won't know what it is, but he'll sell it for something. And then, and eventually, it kind of goes up the line, and somebody gets their hands on it and says, "Whoa, wait a second. This is a gospel we don't have." You know, at some point that happens. Yes. And then the.

The price jacks up rather significantly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. So that's, that's what happened in this case. It, it went up kind of through the line until somebody got it who realized this is an ancient text that might be worth something. Yeah, and realizes that it's something that hasn't been seen before. Yeah.

And so this is part of the reason why, you know, it would be nice if we lived in a world where, in 1978, it's discovered and motivated by, you know, the maxim that truth is the universal possession of mankind. Yes, it just gets shared instantly for the edification of all. But unfortunately, that's not quite what happened with this text. Yeah. No, that's not what happened.

So, um, you know, we live in a capitalist world, not just a capitalist society. And hey, who said we don't get fiscal on this show? I'm, I'm, I'm not coming out forward against it. It's the reality that, um, somebody who makes a discovery like this, or who it ends up in their hands, they want to make significant money. Yeah, off of it.

And it finally ended up in the hands of somebody who wasn't an expert in manuscripts, but somebody else looked at it and told him it was really valuable. Who tried to sell it, the manuscript for $3 million. MH. And the ins and outs are pretty interesting, but just a couple of the highlights are that, that this, uh, eventually, um, the person trying to sell the manuscript could not find a buyer in Egypt. Or he smuggled it to the, we think he smuggled it to the United States. He, I don't think he had permission to take it out of the country, and it was against, you can't do that, but he did. Uh, I tried to find a buyer in New York. Uh, in, sorry, he tried to find a buyer in America. And, uh, some people were interested, but nobody was sure. Uh, tried to sell it to Yale University, and they were very, very interested in it. But they thought that maybe it'd been smuggled out, and if it came, and they'd want to advertise they had this thing, and then turned out that it'd been smuggled, they'd lose it and their money. And so eventually what happens is this person decides that he's not going to be able to sell it right away. He decides to put it in storage.

And he happens to know somebody on Long Island. And so he goes to Long Island and he hires out a, uh, safe deposit box on, in at a bank at a City Bank in Long Island. And he puts the manuscript in there, you know, for safekeeping. So 16 years later, uh, somebody else has found out about this thing and wants to buy it. And, uh, is going to buy it. And so they go to the safe deposit box and they get it open. And it's a big problem.

So this thing has been, this thing has been for, you know, 1,600 years in Egypt, in a box, but in Egypt where the climate doesn't change much and humidity is constant. And, uh, it's hot. But it's not the heat that helps, it's the fact there's no change, no real change in the humidity. Now it's been on Long Island and the humidity is going all over the place all the time. And, and this destroys a manuscript. And so they open this box and some of it is mush or it's like, and they touch it like a, it's just like it's falling apart. And oh my God, they had no idea.

But the person still buys it and it starts circulating hands again as they try and find someone else to buy it. And it kind of goes around like, finally get a buyer in Ohio who's going to buy it and is going to publish it or have somebody publish it. But he's concerned about the state of this manuscript. And somebody tells him, you know, you need to put it in your deep freeze to stop the deterioration. And so he does. He puts it in his deep freeze. Uh, which turns out to be just about the worst thing he could do. I mean, so in the deep freeze, what happens? It has all this humidity in it now, all this moisture in this thing. And it, so it crystallizes and, and it makes the papyrus really, really fragile. And the ink that has kind of sunk in because of the humidity now rises to the surface. So you can barely read some of the pages now.

And so, so, so all right. So he ends up, it ends up in the hands of somebody who knows what to do with it. It is now, it's also been torn, by the way. It's like, uh, two fifths of the way down the pages, they've all been torn. And the pages have been rearranged. And the thinking for that is that somebody, when somebody was trying to sell it, they wanted the best pages at the beginning and the end because the buyer would look at the first couple pages, say, yeah, that's great. So they, they took some of the really juicy stuff and put it on top and at the bottom. So now, so they, they, this thing now is, um, most of the pages are completely fragmented. There are like a thousand little fragments of this thing. And it's all scattered. The pages are in the wrong order. The ones that, but it finally gets in the hands of a manuscript store in Geneva, outside of Geneva. And a really top-level Coptologist, an expert of Coptic language. And they spend three years restoring it. And they, uh, let National Geographic, National Geographic comes to know about it. And that's how it starts.

Coptic is an ancient Egyptian language. And like, like you say, this was probably originally written in Greek. Yeah, this is a Coptic translation. Yeah. Coptic is a, is when they turned Egyptian language, which starts out in hieroglyphics, but eventually they turn it into an alphabetic language. They keep the ancient grammar, but they, they use Greek letters, actually, for this language. Just like, you know, French and English both use the same alphabet, but they're different languages. Coptic is a different language, but they used Greek letters with six additional letters to represent sounds that cannot be made in Greek for Coptic. And so you can recognize whether it's Coptic or Greek, whether it has these other letters. Plus, you know, either language, you do that. Yeah.

So this particular manuscript, bearing in mind, of course, this is the only copy of the Gospel of Judas, yes, that has been discovered. Which is why it's just so comical that it ends up going through these series of events which almost completely destroy it. The good news about it is that the manuscript we have, that's been restored as well as it can be, has a beginning and an end that are intact. And most of the middle. But we're, because of this mishandling, we're missing 10 to 15% of it. That's, that's why earlier when I'm quoting some parts, I'm sort of dot, dot, dotting because there are bits that, that simply aren't there. And who knows, maybe we'll discover another, another copy somewhere at some point to fill in the gaps.

Um, this particular text, this Coptic translation of the text, how do we know, like, how old this text is? I mean, do we have any idea of, of, of when that was produced? So that's why National Geographic, uh, got a team of people together. So I, I got a call from National Geographic and somebody asked me, do you know about the Gospel of Judas? I said, well, we don't have one. And she says, well, would you think it'd be significant if we found one? My God, are you kidding me? So she told me, she wanted, and I said, well, what do you have? She explained what they had and asked me if I would help them authenticate it. And I said, well, what language is it in? She said, it was Coptic. Well, you need a Coptologist then. She said, okay, great. What's a Coptologist? Somebody like an expert. And she said, we really want somebody who can date it for us. We want to know the date because we want to know if it's a modern forgery or, or it's a medieval forgery, or if it's an ancient manuscript. Uh, can you do that? I said, well, uh, what you really need to do that is a paleographer. I said, I've got some training in paleography, but I, I wouldn't be able, I'm not a Coptic paleographer. She said, well, what, what's a paleographer? I said, okay, so the way you date manuscripts is by handwriting analysis. Because handwriting changes over time. And so if you know, if you're an expert, you know what time period this handwriting is. And a good paleographer can date something within 50 years or so. So she said, okay, but we want a carbon 14 date the manuscript. Uh, she said, can you help us with that? No, I can't help you with that. I'm not a scientist, I'm a scholar. I said, look, my primary language is Greek. I look, work with ancient Greek manuscripts. Coptic is not my main thing. I'm not, I said, like, I'll tell you what, I'll get you a Coptic paleographer. You get a carbon 14 guy. And, and she said, great, okay. But then she said, well, we want you too, because we want for the historical information and stuff. I said, okay.

So we get this team together. And so, uh, so I was kind of the history of early Christianity person. And Stephen E. Emmel in Munster, Germany, he an American scholar, teaches in German, as one of the leading Coptologists in the world, paleographer, he was on the team. And then they, they had a guy named Timothy Joel, who is a scientist in Arizona, who does carbon 14 dating. So they brought us all together. And they flew us to Geneva to look at this thing. And, um, Emmel and I knew right off the bat, this thing is an ancient manuscript. Who, they showed it to us. And by the way, they show it to you in an apartment above a pizza shop. Yes. Well, we find, we, you know, we do. So he flies from Germany. I fly. I do a red-eye from North Carolina. And show, they take us, they drive us outside Geneva to this little town called Nyon. And they pull up in front of a pizza shop. What in the world? But above the pizza shop, freeze. Yeah, right. But above the pizza shop, they have this really high-level, somebody, this person, uh, has this, uh, Florence Darbar, has this really sophisticated restoration studio. And they've been spending, she and, um, a, uh, a Swiss scholar named Rudolph Cassar, who's a, is a senior Coptic paleographer guy, have been spending three years restoring this thing and figuring out how these thousands of pieces all fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. And, and, but they put it all, everything's under glass, like they've got glass on the manuscript. So, you know, they're not handing it around or anything. Um, but so we go there and we're looking at this. And Emmel and I are looking at this thing. Yeah, well, this is an ancient manuscript. And what, one of them says, this is, but is it the Gospel of Judas? And Emmel looks around and, and he points to me. Said, and at the bottom of the page, it says in Coptic, the Gospel of Judas. Yeah, yeah, this is the Gospel. Yeah.

So anyway, but the dating of it, Emmel thought that it would dated probably sometime in the 4th century, based on the, a brief analysis. But he was going to do a fuller analysis later. And, um, the carbon 14 dating got done, which is complicated. They normally don't carbon 14 date manuscripts. It, you can only carbon 14 date organic material. Um, and it dates when this organic material died. Um, but to, to carbon 14 something, you have to destroy the specimen. Yes. And so they chose five, carefully chose five places that didn't have any writing on them of the manuscript, but five places to make sure that it was consistent. And Joel, uh, to, this, this fellow, to took it back and, uh, carbon 14 dated it. And the, uh, it was, I think he ended up with a date of 280, uh, CE plus or minus 60 years. And most paleographers think it's 4th century, so on the later end of that. So it's not a forgery. It wasn't an ancient forgery. It's a copy done in the 4th century of a second century original. Now, bearing in mind that, as you say, we've known about the existence of this Gospel of Judas since Irenaeus wrote about it. And so when you got this, cool, and you'd heard of the Gospel of Judas? Yeah, I've heard of the Gospel of Judas, but we, we, we don't have one. Yeah. And then you travel to Geneva, you lay your eyes upon this manuscript, you know that it's ancient, and then you realize, oh, this is probably it. This is probably actually the ancient Gospel of Judas. What was the first thought that you had? Oh God, no. I mean, you know, there, so I'm a manuscript guy. I mean, I, I mainly, most my most of my early research was was on early New Testament manuscripts of the New Testament, the first three or 400 years. And so I'm really passionate about manuscripts. But with New Testament manuscripts, you're reading manuscripts of a book that you know has been around forever and you've known about. And it's very rare for anybody to have a chance to look at, you know, for the first time. And you're standing there with this thing in your hand, you're thinking, wow, this is, this is really special. And, um, and then, um, you know, we weren't able to, you know, we weren't able to examine it for length. We there only for a few hours. But then, uh, uh, one of the team, Marvin Meyer, produced a translation of it. And we're reading this translation and we're saying, man, this is the first time anybody's ever read this thing since, you know, whenever, 4th century, probably. And so it was really, really quite stunning. And then when you see what it is, you know, it could have been, it could have been anything, right? We had no idea what was in it. Yeah.

And for National Geographic, when they first talked to me, they wanted to know, is this, you know, how important is this? You know, and I hadn't seen it. And I said, well, it depends what it is. I said, if it's one of these Gnostic Gospels, like the other Gnostic Gospels, it would be fantastically important for people like me. I mean, this is what we study. But if it's like, it has an alternative understanding of Judas Iscariot, where like Jesus and Judas have conversations and stuff, whoa, that's, that'll be front page news. And so said, well, okay, let's see what it is. And, and, and that it was. Yeah, I mean, it was. They have these conversations and it's a different portrayal and it's completely. Yeah, it was really. So it's both things. It's, it's a Gnostic Gospel, but also is unusually fascinating. Yeah.

I can, I can hardly imagine what that must have been like. Presumably the people who owned the manuscript at the time needed to show you enough of it that you could analyze it and date it, but didn't want to show you all of it because you hadn't bought it yet. That's right. The, the National Geographic, um, who was sponsoring this trip and were wanting to authenticate it because they, they were, uh, going to purchase it so that they could, uh, display it, write, you know, have, put it in their magazine and have specials on it. They did TV specials and stuff. And so they're going to make an investment in it. And they weren't willing, of course, to do an investment unless they knew that, you know, it's not that they wanted to make money per se, but they didn't want to throw away a couple million dollars, you know, for, for something that was a forgery. So they definitely absolutely wanted it to be as well verified as they could.

So presumably you and the team then run back to National Geographic and say, buy it immediately. I mean, what, what happened? I mean, what year is this that you, uh, this 2004. And, uh, we, National Geographic went with us to the pizza shop. And so they had a crew. They, the vice president for outreach of, uh, uh, Terry Garcia was with us, uh, for National Geographic. And they had a film crew from National Geographic. They filmed everything from beginning to end. Can we see that somewhere? The, the video footage? That's a great question. They did a, they did a special documentary on it, but I'm not sure how much of that actually moment they showed. Because that is extraordinary. If that hasn't been released, if they've got that sort of tucked away somewhere, I think that's an extraordinary bit of footage. Yeah, yeah.

It was pretty exciting. And the, the funny thing was that, you know, I was standing next to Emmel in there. And, and he's the Coptic guy, right? I'm just kind of the guy, the early Christianity guy there. But he's, but, and he's there. And they're having these speeches to begin with, like the person who owns the manuscript gives a little speech, the guy who's been restoring gives a little speech, the guy, the, the person who's, I mean, these speeches. And Emmel just starts quivering. He's just like, when can we see it? And they're kind of reluctant. Okay. So they bring out a couple pages, you know, for us to look at. But they are, they're not gonna show us the whole thing for this reason. They don't want to.

Didn't we already have a fragment of this Gospel of Judas that was discovered earlier, but we didn't realize it was the Gospel of Judas? No. What happened was, as it turns out, this is kind of one of the ironies, is that Emmel had seen this manuscript 20 years earlier. So when the person had come over trying to sell it from Egypt, yeah, there was a small team of people who were, uh, brought together to see if they would be willing to purchase it. And Emmel was a graduate student at Yale, but he was this really, really bright Coptic scholar who could read the stuff and date it. He was already at that stage of his life. And so he had seen it. So, uh, that, that's what had happened earlier. But when it, when we were getting the team together, um, when they, when I told them I'd find a Coptic paleographer, Emmel's the guy I called. So he was in Germany. I said, Steve, and I said, I don't know if you've heard of this, but, you know, they think they found the Gospel of Judas. And Emmel says to me, oh, you know, I saw it 20 years ago. I said, oh, really? Want to see it again? I, yes, okay, let's go to Geneva.

But wait, so he'd seen it before. And, and, and did he not sort of make a, oh, no. He, he, so what he had seen is, they showed him the manuscript. They, they wanted to sell this. And so there was a, there were three people that they were showing this to. And Emmel was one of them. He was kind of the Coptic expert. They didn't allow them to have take notes. They didn't allow them to take pictures. They didn't allow them to have anything in it. Just they're going to show them a bit of it. And he saw enough of this manuscript to realize there were there were several documents in them. And on the spot, he correctly identified two of these other Gnostic texts that are in the same manuscript, The Apocalypse of James and, uh, Peter's Letter to Philip. And he recognized that there's this gospel. And that it's about, uh, it's a gospel related to, uh, to Thomas. Judas Thomas. And he thinks that this is the Thomas like for the Gospel of Thomas. Not realizing that this is Judas Iscariot. Because he's just brief, he's looking. But he, he re, he really was good. He realized that. But he didn't know it was the Gospel of Judas because they didn't give him the title page or anything like that. They're just having. Yes.

People who've listened to my episode on the Gospel of Thomas will know that Thomas is referred to as Judas Didymus Thomas. And so when you see Judas written down, it would be easy enough to think, oh, this is, especially if it's amongst a collection of, you know, already known about Gnostic texts, you'd say, oh, well, you know, Jud, there it is. That's that name again. Because we have several, we have several books, two of them discovered at Nag Hammadi, the Gospel of Thomas, but also a Book of Thomas the Contender, and we have an Acts of Thomas. And we have, and it's, you know, his name is Judas Thomas. So you see Judas, you just assume that's who it is, because it's a common name.

So was this event, you know, Yale graduate student seeing the text, was this before or after it ended up in that safety deposit box? And it was, it was before. Because they, the guy wanted $3 million for it. And, uh, just one of the people there was a Coptologist from the University of Michigan, Lunsford, who, um, who, and someone else, David Freedman, was there. David, no, Freedman, who's a very famous Old Testament scholar. And Freedman thought they could, they could manage to come together with $300,000. The guy wanted $3 million, right? And so like, no way. And so that's when he put it in the safe deposit box. So had, had they shown, what was the, what was the guy's name, this Coptic scholar? Stephen Emmel. Steven Emmel. Had they shown Dr. Emmel a little bit more of this text, and had he realized that it was this lost Gospel of Judas, then perhaps he would have been able to alert somebody early enough that it would have avoided this, this possible near destruction? Yeah, well, that would have been good. But the problem, I think, is that most people probably would go to university used to try and buy something like this. You really needed the funding of somebody like National Geographic. Mhm. And I think scholars usually are kind of reluctant to go that route. So I don't know. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened. We'd have the whole thing now. Yes.

I mean, you know, a few years after this, I got a call from a banker in Ohio. A bankruptcy banker. The guy who had put the thing in the freezer, apparently hadn't given over the entire thing to the person who was getting it restored, and kept fragments of it, and had gone bankrupt. And he'd put his manuscript collection up as collateral. And this banker in Ohio calls me out of the blue and says, we think we've got parts of the Gospel of Judas here. I said, what? Said, would you look at them? I said, yeah, I'll look at them. So I went there. And you pull this in these fragments. And you know, it looked like the stuff, you know, it looked like the manuscript I'd seen a couple years before. But I'm not a Coptic expert. I said, well, I said, look, you really need somebody to show this. And I told them who to contact. But so they, you know, they're still. And was, well, there are apparently debates about whether these actually were part of that thing or not. But they were Coptic fragments. And, you know, so, and the, you know, looked to me about the same dating and stuff. So I thought they were close enough. I don't know. But they're apparently debates about whether they are. But they, they have found fragments since we first saw it. And so even the translation you're reading, there was a verse or something in there that wasn't in the original that I, I had seen. And so, so it's still, you know, it's, there's still some things maybe that might show up to complete it.

And so finally, National Geographic buys the manuscript. They translate and publish, yeah, the Gospel of Judas for the first time in centuries. Yeah. And 2006. And they had a big, there's a big event in Washington DC where different people on the team gave little talks. Um, and so Elaine Pagels gave a talk, and I gave a talk. People gave talks. And then, but this, and so that's when it was released. And media frenzy. I mean, what was the, the reception? No, media from around the world were there. And they were, yeah, because, you know, National Geographic, and they really played it up. And, um, and they, but it hadn't been studied yet. You know, we had, we had read it, and we had, um, we had commented on it, and we had ideas about it, but we, there hadn't been any in-depth. And so the point is, you release it so people can have. And so it got released in the Coptic, you know, in Coptic as well, so scholars could actually read it and evaluate it. And that's absolutely how it has to happen. But a lot of scholars were really ticked off about this entire procedure. Oh, yeah. Especially April Donahue. Wrote a book really kind of blasting us because we had to take, we had to have non-disclosure agreements to even see the thing. Yeah. And which makes sense if it's a, you know, if you have this in $3 million manuscript, $3 million manuscript, you don't want people leaking it. And it looked like it had been leaked actually before, but it turned out it hadn't. So people, scholars were upset because, you know, you're publishing this stuff, we have a chance to evaluate it for ourselves. And so that's, that's understandable. But, you know, also you've got, you've got this material and you want to let people know about it. So you, yeah, you tell them.

Well, like you say, it's an indictment of the world that we live in, this this evil material world of material fragments created by the, the Demiurge. Well, the material world is materialist. And, yeah, so thank the Demiurge for that. And now the, now the secret knowledge of Jesus isn't so secret anymore. Well, it's, it's not secret, but most people can't figure it out, as you, as you, you said, yeah. Well, like I say, I can only recommend that people go and, and read it for themselves and see if they can make head or tail of it. Hopefully now, after listening to this conversation, they'll have a better chance to do. Dr. Ehrman, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. If you want to get early access to these videos and get them ad-free and support my channel at the same time, as well as getting access to my exclusive writings and Q&As, you can do all of that by going to Alex O'Connor dot com and subscribing to my new Substack. Check out one of my earlier episodes with Bart Ehrman by clicking the link on your screen. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one.