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Sunday, April 23, 2006

The Gospel of Judas

The key issue here is that Jesus actually asked Judas to betray him inorder to fulfill His mission. The NT gospel - Matthew, Mark, Luke & John, did not tell us why Judas betrayed Jesus. The gospel books also did not give us any instruction given to Judas' mission however, in the discovery of 'The Gospel of Judas', it answered the missing link why judas did what he did and about the special arragement Jesus had for him.
The society has already revealed the text of a second-century papyrus copy of the document on their website. As described in a New York Times article, the Gospel of Judas is 26-pages in length and a Coptic translation from the Greek in which it's thought to have originally been written about one-century before.
As reported by both the Times and on NPR's Day-to-Day, this is seen as some bombshell revelation. The Times, for example, claims that, "The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today."
Times also stated that "Unlike the accounts in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the anonymous author of the Gospel of Judas believed that Judas Iscariot alone among the 12 disciples understood the meaning of Jesus' teachings and acceded to his will. In the diversity of early Christian thought, a group known as Gnostics believed in a secret knowledge of how people could escape the prisons of their material bodies and return to the spiritual realm from which they came."
But frankly, there's nothing new here and certainly nothing that undermines the credibility of Biblical teaching about Jesus Christ.
The term, gnostic, comes from the Greek word, gnosis, meaning knowledge. Gnostics said that Jesus gave certain secret knowledge to various people--who differed from one gnostic group to another. This secret knowledge, it was taught, gave those who learned it special insight or special wisdom not possessed by others.
But of course, while Jesus did sometimes teach only three or twelve of His disciples, that teaching was always an explication either of long-known Old Testament truth or of teachings which in some form, He shared with large numbers of people. This is the point behind Jesus' remark to His accusers, "I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret." (John 18:20)
And once, when asked to account for his faith by King Herod Agrippa, the apostle Paul recounted Jesus' life, death, and the Christian assertion of His resurrection and observed:
Indeed the king knows about these things, and to him I speak freely; for I am certain that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this was not done in a corner. [Acts 26:26]
There were many "gospels" floating around in the first, second, and third centuries. One reason that gnostic gospels like the Gospel of Judas or the documents that lay behind Dan Brown's novel, The Da Vinci Code, didn't make it into the Bible we have today is that there are no secrets with Jesus Christ. He's been revealed to the world. And so has the way of eternal life He grants:
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." (John 3:16)
We must remember that Jesus is consistent with His teachings regarding His mission. In Luke 22:3, Luke recorded that 'Satan entered Judas, called Iscariot, on of the Twelve. And Judas went to the chief priests...and discussed with them how he might betray Jesus. " The other gospel books also clearly suggested that Judas' preparation to betray Jesus seem to be directed by his own greed.
We must be alert therefore that the new discovery of the "lost gospels" may undermine the reliability of the Bible as the very Word of God because they have discovered some important facts in which the Gospel Books did not explained. As such, we must always be ready to give an answer to our faith. We must continue to remain firm, responsible and steadfast to the Word of God.

from Pastor Wilson Tan's blog (refer to my links)

Last edited 12:25 AM

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