Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity

by Elaine Pagels, Karen L. King

The instant New York Times bestseller interpreting the controversial long-lost gospel

The recently unearthed Gospel of Judas is a source of fascination for biblical scholars and lay Christians alike. Now two leading experts on the Gnostic gospels tackle the important questions posed by its discovery, How could any Christian imagine Judas to be Jesus' favorite? And what kind of vision of God does the author offer? Working from Karen L. King's brilliant new translation, Elaine Pagels and King provide the context necessary for considering its meaning. Reading Judas plunges into the heart of Christianity itself and will stand as the definitive look at the gospel for years to come.

Genres: Religion, History, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology, Spirituality, Gnosticism

198 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2007

About the author

Elaine Pagels is a preeminent figure in the theological community whose scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, she was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim & MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years.
As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. Known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library, the manuscripts show the pluralistic nature of the early church & the role of women in the developing movement. As the early church moved toward becoming an orthodox body with a canon, rites & clergy, the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were suppressed & deemed heretical. The Gnostic Gospels won both the Nat'l Book Critic’s Circle Award & the Nat'l Book Award & was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th Century.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dying for Faith: The Pauline Tragedy

The author of the Gospel of Judas was an angry man. What he was angry about is the fundamentalism of his fellow Christians who considered that it was necessary to die resisting Roman authority in order to be a Christian. It is no exaggeration, I think, to say that he was spiritually traumatised by the religious world in which he found himself. He reacted much like a child who has been abused in a manner which is too subtle to articulate fully; so he casts blame about in many directions, trying desperately to make his point.

The Gospel of Judas was written in the middle of the 2nd century, that is perhaps 50 years after the last-written official Gospel of John and 80 or so years after the first-written Gospel of Mark (Pagels book is among other things a good introduction to the development of the New Testament and the motives of its authors). The authors of all the Gospels, including the twenty or so non-canonical documents discovered over the last 150 years, attempt to establish their credibility by claiming apostolic sources. However, historical evidence clearly shows these claims to be false. Each is written out of a different tradition and for a distinct audience of contemporary Christians.

It is clear that the tradition out of which the Gospel of Judas emerged had a problem with the so-called Fathers of the Church - Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr in particular - who ultimately won the battle of consistency of belief among dispersed Christian communities. The tool by which the Fathers accomplished this was language. By formulating creeds containing fixed interpretations of scriptural records and demanding their formulaic expression, church officials like Irenaeus sought to simultaneously unify Christian identity and create a hierarchy by which to maintain that unity. Affirmation of a fixed formula of belief approved by church authorities served both purposes.

But the author of the Gospel of Judas, and presumably his audience of Christians, had a very different idea about the nature of the religious legacy of Jesus. For them Christianity was a spiritual state and way of being, not the expression of a formula of words. There was no need, as far as they were concerned, to pursue a linguistic path to Christian unity. The followers of Jesus were already united in their own knowledge and understanding of his message. To formulate such precious and delicate understanding in language, and then to demand its expression by others was exactly contrary to what Jesus had to say. If there were four gospels, why could there be not hundreds?

What bothered these Christians most, however, were the demands by church officials that it was necessary to prove their commitment to Jesus by expressing these creeds. According to Roman law, such flagrant disrespect for the prevailing civil religion was a matter of utmost seriousness. For the author of the Gospel of Judas, the insistence by someone like Tertullian that their Christianity depended upon verbal assertions likely to enrage civil authorities was mere idiocy. It was what they were and what they did, not what they said, which was important. And since whatever they might say was inadequate as a spiritual description, it was certainly not worth dying for.

What the author of the Gospel of Judas was fighting against, in vain as it turned out, was a specific strain of Christianity, that emanating from Paul of Tarsus, the so-called Apostle of the Gentiles. Not really an apostle, and never having even met Jesus, Paul wasn’t able to tell his followers much about Jesus except that he lived, ate a meal, and was killed as a criminal by the Romans and his fellow-Jews. What mattered to Paul was not the facts of Jesus’s life or his admonitions about how life should be lived correctly. Rather Paul’s message was his own, and something entirely new in the world of religion. What counted in Paul’s religion was not knowledge of spiritual truth, not obedience to divine dictates, and not behaviour shown toward one another. What counted was one thing alone: Faith.

This Faith went beyond belief in the earthly existence of Jesus, which was of marginal significance to Paul. Pauline faith referred to the heavenly Christ, the eternal ruler of the universe who was, he reckoned, to reappear imminently to pronounce judgement on all human beings. Those who acknowledged this Christ, the Lord Jesus, would be spared. The rest doomed. That this Second Coming didn’t happen required an explanation. This explanation, the beginning of Christian theology, recognised that Pauline Faith was necessarily faith in an idea, that is to say, an expression of the ‘lordship’ of Christ, not the life and death of Jesus. This meant words, and further the definition and interpretation of words, and finally the establishment of a clerical hierarchy to define and interpret words.

Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr are direct intellectual descendants from Paul, as are all those who subsequently declared themselves ‘orthodox,’ that is right-thinking, Christians. Only today is it possible to recognise these people and their collaborators for what they actually were: terrorists. They were not only prepared to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of arbitrary verbiage, they also insisted that others do the same. And many followed their instructions. Their legacy is visible in the Christian fundamentalists who insist on their fixed, typically hateful, interpretations of scripture provided to them by clerical organisational climbers. But it is also apparent in the behaviour of Islamic extremists who inherited the concept of Pauline faith with much else of Christian and Jewish tradition.

This is the tragedy which the Gospel of Judas tried and failed to avoid. A doubled tragedy therefore. The further paradox - that the author is seduced into using a language-based response by declaring his own brand of faith orthodox - is perhaps the most tragic twist of all. Faith is reputed to be incomprehensible by those who lack it. This is probably true. But those who possess it are in no better position.

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think Karen L. King has been good for Elaine Pagels's prose. I strained thoughout to hear Pagels' distinctive voice and could never quite locate it. Instead the tone seems a little rushed, a little shrill almost, as opposed to Pagels's much more relaxed and considered pace. Second, while the arguments broached here are compelling enough they never seem to go as deep as Pagels' on her own seems to go when writing without a collaborator. If you want to start with a great Pagels book try The Gnostic Gospels. This is an astonishing work. It looks at some of the gospels that were not made canonical by the early Catholic Church; that is to say, gospels that did not make it into the New Testament because among other things they supported a non-clerical based view of Christianity. These gospels were found in Upper Egypt in 1945 buried in the sand near a place called Nag Hammadi. The Gnostics, basing their faith on these texts before they were expunged, preached an "inner way" to Jesus Christ that required neither priest nor institution. For this reason they were branded heretics by early Church zealots and persecuted. The second book I would recommend as a possible starting point for those not familiar with Pagels's work is Adam, Eve & the Serpent. This volume tackles the question of why we in the West consider sex sinful today. Pagels's argument is fascinating. It turns out that it was St. Augustine of Hippo, the 4th century theologian, who pretty much single handedly created original sin--a concept, it should be emphasized, that Christians were unburdened with before his writings changed everything. Augustine, you see, was quite the rake and libertine in his youth who became guilt-ridden by his (healthy) sexuality and came to see it as a curse. Both books are must reads, which you start with is up to you.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beyond Anger To Revelation

In April 2006, the National Geographic Society published an ancient text, the "Gospel of Judas" that had been discovered in the mid-1970s in Egypt. The original Greek text dates from about 150 A.D., although the version recovered was a Coptic translation written several hundred years thereafter. The publication of the "Gospel of Judas" excited a great deal of scholarly and popular interest due, in part, to the light it might cast on the early development of Christianity.

In their recent book, "Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Early Christianity" (2007), Elaine Pagels and Karen King offer early thoughts on the Gospel of Judas and its significance. Pagels is Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University and the author of several books on Gnostic Christianity, including "The Gnostic Gospels". King is Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Harvard Divinity School, and she has also written several books on Gnosticism.

This short but difficult book is in two parts. The first part, "Reading Judas" consists of four chapters jointly written by Pagels and King examining the Gospel of Judas in the context of the traditional New Testament canon, the history of early Christianity, and other Gnostic texts. The second part of the study consists of an English translation of the Gospel of Judas by King together with her detailed commentary on the translation. Interpretation of this newly published text is difficult. It is obscurely written with names and characters that are unfamiliar. Extensive and important passages of the text have been lost over the years. It should also be remembered that the text of the Gospel of Judas is itself a Coptic translation of an original Greek version that we do not possess.

Pagels and King present their text as casting light on the diverse character of early Christianity before it assumed its canon and orthodox formulation, but the fascination of the Gospel of Judas is at least equally due to the text itself. As Pagels and King point out, the text is the work of an angry author who was critical of the disciples of Jesus and of the form that what would become mainstream Christianity was taking and who was anti-semitic and homophobic as well. But they find the text passing "beyond anger to revelation" (p. 103) as it leaves polemic behind and ventures into the realm of the spirit in considering the nature of God, human character, and the problem of evil.

Pagels and King argue that the Gospel of Judas was written as a response to Christian martyrdom at the hands of the Romans. The author of the Gospel could not believe that a just God would allow His followers to be murdered, tortured, and sacrificed in His name. In place of what the Gospel author saw as a cruel, vengeful God, the author proposed a creation story consisting of a realm of two levels: the higher level the realm of the spirit, and the lower level the realm of the physical world. The persecutions of the Christians were not part of the divine will but were part of the world below. The realm of the spirit could be reached, for the author of the Gospel of Judas, by an effort to "bring forth the perfect human." In the text, Jesus enjoins Judas "to seek [after the] spirit within you."

The Gospel of Judas thus is an attempt to recast what became standard religious thought by internalizing God and the spiritual search. This theme, in broad outline, resonates with many people today who find themselves religiously inclined but uncomfortable with what they perceive as traditional religious dogma.

Pagels and King admirably place the Gospel of Judas in the context of the development of Christianity. They offer a nuanced account that recognizes the value and the need for the four traditional Gospels in establishing a foundation for Christianity in its many creeds, from Catholicism and Orthodoxy to evangelical Protestantism. But the fascination with the text is ultimately the fascination with the message. This book, as well as other recent works exploring Gnosticism, casts light on traditional religious belief, but it also encourages the efforts of those contemporary readers who wish to explore alternative forms of spiritual development.

Robin Friedman

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a fairly interesting, if rather short, analysis of a text that I ended up finding not particularly interesting.

A copy of the Gospel of Judas was found a couple decades ago, but handled very badly and nearly destroyed. It's only recently been restored and translated and made available to scholars. The text is a relatively short work in which Jesus reveals secrets of the universe to Judas so that Judas can sacrifice himself by making the necessary betrayal. It appears to be one of the many gospels that were floating around during the early days of the Church, including Nag Hammadi texts such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary Magdelene. Eventually, after a great deal of infighting, some Church leaders and their chosen texts emerged triumphant, and the others were suppressed.

The analysis is really more a reconstruction of some of that early infighting, and is fairly interesting. They don't have much material to work with, though, and so the book is relatively short. The second half is taken up by the translation itself and notes on that translation. I have mixed feelings on the order. On one hand, reading the analysis first means that for the bulk of that analysis, we have to take the authors' word for what the text says and the impression it gives. They even seem somewhat dismayed by what they have to work with--the tone is deeply bitter, and the second half is a mishmash of numerology and new angel names in a convoluted explanation of the origin of the universe. Not having read the primary source yet, it's sometimes a little hard to follow, and it's impossible to then read the text without viewing it through the authors' lens. However, they're right in their dismay--the original is kind of unpleasant and confusing. If I'd started with the text, I don't know if I would have continued.

The authors are really more historians than theologians, and their reading tilts very much in favor of picking apart the politics of why the author of Judas would write what he did rather than the theological implications of the work itself. While I regret some of the folks who won (Irenaeus sounds like a remarkably unpleasant fellow), I can't actually regret this work not making it into the canon. No one's going to draw real spiritual insight from this. But the brief insight it gives us into the history of the early Church is interesting enough.

[Lia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The authors nicely summarize the Gospel of Judas for us:

Although it is a bit speculative, to us the point in the Gospel of Judas seems to be that Jesus represents the true nature of all human beings who worship the true God. Their fleshly bodies are real; they suffer and die; but at the same time, their true nature is the spirit-filled soul, which will live forever with God above.

But the actual content or interpretation of the Gospel of Judas is not the point of this book:

Whether people accept or reject what the Gospel of Judas says, it should be approached in terms of what we can learn about the historical situation of the Christians who wrote and read it: their anger, their prejudices, their fears—and their hopes.

That is, the rediscovery of this document should help us contextualize the canon by examining what got excluded, what kind of social environment caused them to be canonized or excluded, and what competing narratives or dialogues were the canon competing against.

I know very little about Christian theology, history, canonicity ... I haven’t even read the Bible yet (working on that.) I’m so uninformed in this area, everything is new and shiny and interesting to me. I find the questions or questionable speculations in this book engaging and thought-provoking.

Off-topic remark:
What really grabbed my attention though, is the apparent parallels to Joyce’s Ulysses — I’m starting to understand why some call Ulysses “theodicy.” The mental gymnastics performed (both in Ulysses and in G.o.J) to re-interpret material reality and subjectivity, in order to re-arrange the proper hierarchy, the proper order of things, are so strikingly similar. I’m starting to question some commentators who attributed Joyce’s structures and symbolisms and metaphysics to Dante (though Joyce did mention Dante in his letters, hmm) — given Joyce’s Jesuit education, what if J & D simply shared an older source? (I know the GoJ was only rediscovered in the 1970s, but other documents that debated it existed...)

[Nathan Albright · Rating 2 out of 5]

The authors of this book have a lot of mistaken ideas, and a great deal of those problems relate to the problem of authority. The authors are of the mistaken opinion that they and other self-professed biblical scholars have authority to weigh in on the Bible as judges and authorities as to what is reasonable and authoritative, rather than being disabused of these notions and recognizing that they are subject to the authority of God and of His scriptures. The Bible is not in the dock, God is not in the dock, but we are in the dock. From this fundamental misapprehension the general problems of this work (and many other similar works of biblical criticism) extend. The quality of people and of their worldviews can be determined by the quality of their authorities, and those who would prefer the Gospel of Judas with its attempts to make villains into heroes and to attack the bodily resurrection as well as the basic equality of mankind by claiming that some people are spiritual and intellectual elites (certainly appealing to those whose falsely profess themselves to be wise) tend to praise works like the Gospel of Judas and the bogus reasoning of the gnostics.

This book is a short one and is divided into two parts that are a bit more than 150 pages long. The book begins with an introduction that sets up the authors' point of view. After that comes four chapters that look at how the authors read Judas in his pseudonymous gospel as well as in the actual Gospels, where the authors violate the hermeneutic of charity that governs wise readings of the Bible. These include a question of whether Judas was a betrayer or a favored disciple (1), the troubled relationship between Judas and the rest of the twelve (2), the question of sacrifice as well as the life of the Spirit (3), and the authors' views of the mysteries of the kingdom (4). The second part of the book is then contains the Gospel of Judas with an English translation as well as some commentary on the gospel by one of the authors and an index of cross-references. The book then ends with notes, acknowledgements and an index. These notes, of course, are heavily based on opinion, as is most of the book, to a degree quite high for this sort of work.

Even if I have few nice things to say about the Gospel of Judas or the authors or others who tend to support this sort of book, it is not as if the book is entirely without value. If the book is certainly not Christian and not biblical, it does demonstrate the way that those who wish to be considered as Christians without in fact following Christ and who are highly resentful of the redemption of the flesh and of the sacrifice for sin and of the suffering that is involved in following God demonstrate their frustration with the way that the world works. Sometimes there can be value in reading what people have to say not because they have any authority, but because of how what they say and believe speaks about the quality of their worldview and belief system. And again, the Gospel of Judas is not particularly impressive. It demonstrates a failed attempt at revisionism and also demonstrates that the ancient mutual hostility between Christianity and its fraudulent imitators is certainly a problem in the present-day. The fact that the author sees such layers of meaning in such a modest achievement as this book and cannot see the layers of multiple meaning in the Gospels and their different perspectives is not surprising but is demonstrative of a particular lack of insight.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was overall pretty interesting. I guess, though, I should at least put forth some of my biases: I enjoy the complications in scholarly works on early Christianity, I really enjoy some of the alternative Christianity histories, and I have an affinity toward Pagels work.

That being said, I thought that Pagels section was interesting. She seemed rushed at times and almost to be hitting only a surface-level analysis of the text.

The King portion is pretty analytical in what it conveys, but if you have read The Gospel of Judas (Meyer et. al) you may begin to feel you are having some sections of repetition. My main piece of advice is do not read this if you just want the Gospel of Judas. The text of the Gospel is fairly short (with multiple sections missing) and you can read through it in about 20 minutes--if that. Read this book (and the Meyer book) if you want the commentary to understand some of the Gnostic overtones of the text. The book itself is not trying to purvey the idea that Gnosticism is correct but rather that there are multiple forms of early Christianity and this was one Gnostic thinkers way of continuing his version.

[celestine · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always another “Gnostic” gospel has interesting takes and insights on the teachings of Jesus that feel more relevant than ever in terms of mainstream Christian institutions, and as always Pagels elucidates and contextualizes the texts in a way that is thorough yet approachable.

[Mark Russell · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first decided to read The Gospel of Judas, I considered just buying the translated gospel by itself. After all, I thought, I'm pretty well-versed in the Bible and am a reasonably intelligent person, I should be able to get through this without much help, right? Well, thankfully, I got over myself and bought this book instead. I would not have been able to mine one-tenth of the wisdom and gravity of this long-lost Gnostic text without the authoritative and knowledgeable guidance of Elaine Pagels and Karen King.

In fact, their book is much more than a commentary on the Gospel of Judas-- it's an education on the complexity and diversity of opinion of the early Christian movement. Before there was a "Bible," before the early followers of Jesus began coalescing into Roman Catholics, before they really got into robes and incense, Christians pretty much thought for themselves, came up with their own interpretations of the import of Christ's life. They started up churches for like-minded individuals, each with their own collections of holy texts to be used in their services. To one of these movements, the Gnostics (so-called for their emphasis on gnosis, or knowledge), salvation came via a series of spiritual revelations, and the more you learned the secrets of the Kingdom of God, the more you prepared your soul to live there.

This is largely what the Gospel of Judas is about. The book opens with Jesus and the twelve disciples awakening from a collective nightmare about twelve priests who were buggering each other, engaging in human sacrifice and cannibalizing their own family members. When they ask Christ what this horrible dream could mean, he explains to the disciples that they are the twelve priests and that after he's gone, they will lead the church astray and sacrifice believers on the altar of their own ambitions.

Whoa is fucking right.

While the disciples are consumed with pettiness, i.e. the respect of the other disciples, who's going to take over the church after Christ dies, etc, sensing that Judas is not like the other disciples, Jesus takes Judas aside and explains to him the mysteries of the Kingdom of God, which mostly boil down to not being concerned with matters of earthly import, but focusing on the purity of one's spirit.

Then he gives Judas a task which can only be performed by someone who has truly put the world behind him. Christ asks Judas to betray him. An action which goes against everything in Judas' heart, which will cause him to be stoned to by the other disciples and which will cause his name to live on as the worst traitor in human history. Despite knowing this, Judas still agrees, because he understands that this is the only way for him to demonstrate his transcendence into the spiritual realm, and for Christ to demonstrate the supremacy of the spiritual realm over the physical world.

Invaluable to understanding the Gospel of Judas, as with the canonical books of the Bible, is the historical context in which it was written. At the time, the Christian movement was facing great persecution from the Roman Empire, largely owing to their refusal to provide sacrifices to the pagan gods of Rome or to acknowledge the emperors as gods. This was like atheism, treason and tax evasion, all rolled into one and it made the Christians public enemy number one for several Roman emperors.

Many Christians regarded it a matter of conscience and a badge of personal honor to flaunt the law and willingly condemned themselves, and often their families, to a horrible death. To the Gnostics, this was madness. Not because they were afraid to die. As Judas demonstrates, the Gnostics believed one should be willing to readily sacrifice such worldly concerns such as physical safety, and indeed, they would later face their own persecution at the hands of their fellow Christians. But the Gnostics took deep exception to the fact that many Christians, including several authors of the canonical books, were teaching Christians that martyrdom, rather than spiritual understanding, was the essential ingredient of one's salvation. This, to the Gnostics, was tantamount to the human sacrifice. Like the priests in the dream, the leaders of the church were needlessly sacrificing their followers in order to enhance their own street cred within the movement. The Gnostics, on the other hand, positioned themselves as Judas: the misunderstood and reviled member of the Christian family who alone served the true will of Jesus Christ.

The Gospel of Judas also addresses a central dilemma for early Christians. Namely, the fact that while Jesus was all about forgiveness and turning the other cheek, the God of the Old Testament was a feisty son of a bitch who was smiting and killing people like he were selling magazine subscriptions. The solution Judas offers to this paradox is unique: Jesus explains to Judas that while God, his father, did create the Earth, he outsourced its management to two angels who ruled the place like a slumlord. Thus, it was these two asshole angels, and not God, who were responsible for the atrocities of the Old Testament. Problem solved.

The Gospel of Judas is a fascinating document of a time before such pursuits were abandoned in favor of ritual and conformity. And it's hard to imagine a better guide to this recently rediscovered treasure than Reading Judas.

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just in time for Easter, I've finished this book about the Gospel of Judas. This non-canonical gospel was purportedly found in Egypt in the 1960s or 1970s. Its provenance is somewhat shaky, but the only known copy of the work, in the Coptic language, has been carbon-dated to around 280 of the Common Era, give or take 60 years. It is believed that this is a translation of an earlier Greek work which was in existence at least in 180 C.E. when the influential Christian priest, Irenaeus, spoke out against it and other writings that offered an alternative view of the circumstances and meaning of Jesus' life and death.

Elaine Pagels and Karen King are two respected scholars of Gnosticism, the philosophical tradition from which the Gospel of Judas springs. They explain how and why the author of the work (who, obviously, was not Judas Iscariot but apparently someone sympathetic to him) disagreed with the branch of Christianity that came to be the accepted, canonical version, the life of Jesus as told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

A major disagreement between the two factions had to do with the question of death and the afterlife. The canonical view held with a bodily resurrection of the redeemed. The Judas gospel affirms an immortal spirit. Jesus was not reborn in the flesh and the eternal life that he offers is lived in the spirit alone.

Another major difference is the view of blood sacrifice. Judas has Jesus expressing scorn for animal sacrifice and for the implied human sacrifice of the Eucharist. In this gospel, eternal life is won through adherence to Jesus' teachings rather than through the sacrifice of his life.

Judas is the hero of this gospel and the other eleven disciples are essentially clueless. They don't really understand Jesus' teachings or who he is or the significance of his life. It is only Judas who really understands and his gospel tells how Jesus singles him out, takes him aside and teaches him the mysteries that are beyond the world. In this telling Judas' so-called betrayal of Jesus is simply Judas following orders from Jesus.

I think the main value of the Gospel of Judas as well as the other Gnostic writings that have been found over the past century is that they shed light on the conflicts of early Christianity and how it happened that the religion that we know today emerged. In the beginning of this new religion, there were many different views of the events of Jesus' life and of its meaning and different factions fought hard for their views over several centuries before an orthodoxy triumphed and books of the Christian Bible were set in stone - so to speak.

All that being said, I'm bound to point out that the Jesus portrayed in this gospel is not a very attractive character. He is sarcastic and laughs derisively at his disciples' stupidity. It makes for an interesting alternative hypothesis of what Jesus the man may have been like, but, on the whole, I have to admit I prefer Luke's compassionate Jesus.

[Kaine Andrews · Rating 4 out of 5]

As anyone with any knowledge of me is aware, I love Judas lore and anything that casts doubt on the image of happy-shiny-always-friendly religion, so my opinion on this particular book may be a bit biased, but I'll try my best to keep my fanboyism in check.

So, what is it? Well, the core of it is a (reasonably, given what's available, at least) complete translation of the Gospel of Judas, that lovely bit of apocrypha that has been called Gnostic, heretical, insane, stupid or redemptive at assorted points in its life. The text itself is interesting, if only because it at least makes a token attempt at addressing the issue of Judas' predestination to betray Jesus and whether that flags him as evil incarnate or the leading member of the Snape is Loyal club. Worthwhile, but not exactly new.

What is unique to this iteration is King and Pagels' discussion on the fractured nature of early Christianity, the focus that the faith had on martyrdom - and the dissenting opinion that maybe dying like Jesus wasn't such a hot ticket after all - and how apocryphal texts like the Gospel of Judas present alternative meaning to the death of Christ and the ever present question of "what does it all mean!?"

Thankfully the work does so without drowning you in the writers' particular religious beliefs; things are presented logically - even somewhat coldly - and with suitable references that never fall back on "because God said so," which is always a bonus.

Overall, I'd recommend it to anyone who has a desire to hear a bit more about religion, especially from a point of view outside of the party line, or who is into the apocryphal material but somehow doesn't already have a copy of the Gospel itself. Or for crazy people such as myself who insist on attempting to write fiction with Judas as the hero.

[David Radavich · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another fine, lucid volume by these two great scholars of religion. The recently discovered and translated Gospel of Judas, combined with other newly studied non-canonical gospels, radically alters our understanding of the origins of Christianity. Elaine Pagels and Karen K. King are careful and balanced in their methodology, never claiming too much while also exploring profoundly different understandings of early church events and beliefs. I have always felt, even as a child, that Judas' betrayal must have been part of God's plan; otherwise, the triumph of Judas as Satan's representative explodes the divine narrative that Jesus had to be crucified. This gospel makes a different case, and Pagels and King do an excellent job establishing the contexts, the argumentation, and the implications.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another good one from Pagels, though I've now listened through enough of these that certain chunks start to sound familiar. She's doing the proper work of always situating the fragment(s) under consideration with the history of the early church(es), with other fragments, with the (various manuscripts and versions of) the New Testament, but that means you hear/read a lot of the same framing/comparative facts and fragments as you read quite a few of these.

Gospel of Judas is particularly divergent, but also deeply fascinating, especially the sections which present most of Jesus' followers choosing the way of violent sacrifice, sacrificing even their family members and children, to a mistaken idea of Jesus and God. Certainly a powerful image that current trends don't exactly render irrelevant.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book on a fascinating subject. The discovery and publication of (relatively) recently discovered works of early Christianity quite literally force anyone who has every thought about popular Christianity as it exists today to think again. However, as the Gospel of Judas (included in this edition) is very often confusing and at times downright bizarre, the expository essay that accounts for the first half of this volume is extremely useful and illuminating in terms of both laying out the meaning of the Gospel in clearer terms and placing it within an historical and intellectual context. Although Pagels and King are occasionally less dispassionate about their subject than one might prefer his scholars to be, this book is not the less interesting or informative for it.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure why I bothered to pick this book up. I couldn’t quite get serious about it. It did recite the actual translation of the Gospel of Judas (although Judas didn’t actually write it). The authors of this book, like the authors of the Judas Gospel, were not just religious apologists but Judas apologists. In the end, the only interest to me was its anthropologic amusement. For fun, I was glad to see it challenge canonical verses, but it’s like finding another Egyptian book of the dead or reading a new astrology text. A new interpretation of an old fiction. And this gospel only underscores the infinite capacity of man to reinterpret all he see, hears, feels, tastes, smells, and knows to be true.

[D.l. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a fan of Elaine Pagels. Her approach to Biblical scholarship and unraveling historic conundrums makes sense and is easy for me to follow.

I enjoyed this collaboration because of the cross references to other texts from early Christianity. The background laying out some of the conflicts in the early church is thought provoking.

As often happens, the original Coptic text had been damaged over the centuries. The translation of it is easy to read. The end notes on the translation are a valuable source of further information.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to this over two days on CD. A thought provoking and somewhat creepy text. Although it did have a very spiritual take on the scriptures and God's relationship with man. I am looking forward to reading/listening to more of her work.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found this unusual fragment

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson (1950), a long work by the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, which covers a wide range of topics, presents Judas in accordance with his depiction in the Gospel of Judas.

[Luke Bishop · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short work that includes both an English translation of the apocryphal Gospel of Judas and commentary of the work. The commentary is immensely helpful, as much of the extant Judas is rather fragmentary and decidedly esoteric in many cases. Additionally, the authors provide much interesting analysis and background for the working. Most critically, this comes in their assessment
that the Gospel of Judas is a criticism of martyr-culture among Christians, and that seeking out or encouraging martyrdom was a gross failure on the part of early church leaders like Tertullian and Irenaeus. It is an interesting and thought-provoking perspective, but the authors seem to view the canonical gospels with a great deal of suspicion, and almost treat Judas as a rhetorical equal,
although it was written centuries later and has a distinct Gnostic flare. All things considered, it is an interesting look at beliefs present in the early church.

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably the best part is the inclusion of the translation of the Gospel of Judas. A lot of unquestioned assumptions based on a reconstructed Sitz im Leben, along with a questionable theory of early Christian history.

[Stephen Mettee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extrapolates from the little light The Gospel of Judas throws on the early Christian debates and controversies.

[Michael Canoeist · Rating 2 out of 5]

The anti-war Gospel?

That's the message of these two scholars of early Christianity in their reading of the Gospel of Judas, of which only tattered fragments remain after a greedy dealer kept it in his freezer for years while angling for a huge sale. An incredible restoration effort has salvaged a healthy amount of the original text, dating probably from the second century CE. The translation provided here runs 14 very short pages, and notes various gaps of missing material of three lines, 15 lines, 18 lines, and so on, as well as an occasional "untranslatable" passage.

The two authors focus on a possible disagreement over martyrdom reflected in the fragments of this gospel. Its sect may have differed from other early Christian groups over whether martyrdom was ever to be the price of faith, and whether it was unnecessarily encouraged by church fathers of the time. On the most basic storyline level, this gospel presents Judas as the hero of the Passion, and shows Jesus scorning and mocking all his other disciples in favor of Judas, who was actually doing Christ's bidding.

The Gospel of Judas was unveiled by the National Geographic Society in 2006, and this book was copyrighted in 2007. Those dates are more significant than they may first look, because the controversy then raging at full blast over the U.S.-led coalition's occupation of Iraq seems to run through much of these authors' analysis.

That was the worst period of the Iraqi occupation, with relatively high casualties and much pain and disorder and doubt. It is hard not to hear the fear and concern in the authors' introduction, for example, when they write: "As the age of martyrdom closed with the conversion of Constantine, stories glorifying the martyrs came to dominate the history of Christian origins, providing spiritual heroes for the new imperial church. The Gospel of Judas restores to us one voice of dissent, a call for religion to renounce violence as God's will and purpose for humanity."

Am I overreading? Given all the critical comments being made at the same time about then-President Bush's personal religiosity and other pop-psychologizing, I don't think so. Especially since similar notes recur periodically in their writing, as though one or both authors saw in this text a lesson for U.S. policies and had to throw out hints for their readers to understand. As it happened, happily, the casualties in Iraq were just about to experience a wonderfully rapid decline, while the political situation was slowly improving -- the second free general election in Iraq was just held as I was finishing reading this book.

The authors' passions also target the early church with a hostility and bitterness that surprised me on first reading -- a tone I had not encountered in previous books by co-author Elaine Pagels. Pagels can be critical but is never bitter. So, is it from Karen King? I haven't read anything else of hers, so have no idea. But, to make their case for this strange gospel, they fall into the trap of making allowances for every wacky turn in the text, explaining them away as they show great sympathy for its original author and followers -- while excoriating early church fathers like Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, who analyzed it and many other texts and found them essentially bizarre tangents for cults who were losing the way of Jesus, in his eyes.

And, I suspect, in those of most readers of the actual text here. The differences from the biographies of the synoptic gospels are so vast, it seems hard for anyone to imagine this as anything but what Irenaeus recognized at the time. Still, that said, it provides another window into the dynamism, ferment, drama and excitement of those first two centuries starting with the overlapping lives of Octavian/Augustus and Jesus of Nazareth -- two more polar-opposite lives could hardly be imagined, which makes the eventual crossing of their legacies so fascinating. This and all the manuscripts that have been discovered over the last century or so are making those times much more vivid to us, and encouraging some of the most exciting scholarship going on today. If this particular effort is more miss than hit, well, that comes with the territory. The ideas the authors present in their reading are worthy of consideration and testing against the manuscript itself. I gave only two stars because of my doubts, but it is still a book worth reading for those with an interest in the ongoing discoveries of how Christianity developed from those little journeys around the hills of Galilee and Judea.

[JS · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another good book about the background of the biblical times. It probably isn’t her strongest work, but readable and interesting, with a great translation at the end

[A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review: Reading Judas by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King

This work is divided into two parts, one by each author. The second part, by Dr. King, is a translation of the Gospel of Judas with important notes to the translation. The first part is Dr. Pagel’s essay on reading the Gospel of Judas.
The Gospel of Judas is a second century work falsely ascribed to the infamous Judas Iscariot in order to gain acceptance of the work, just as the Epistle to the Hebrews was falsely ascribed to Paul, as well as all of the four canonical gospels were falsely ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all for the same reason, to promote acceptance. (Stop and think. If the gospel was ascribed to Judas Iscariot in order to promote its acceptance, clearly, a number of Christians did not subscribe to the purported facts expressed in the canonical gospels that Judas was a fiend who betrayed his friend Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.) The essay points out, both by references to other writings and by specific references to the Gospel of Judas, that the origins of Christianity are very diverse. The “modern” history of Christianity is not at all like the “received” history, accepted by most who do not care enough about the subject to learn about it. The history of the beginnings of Christianity was written by the winners of the divergent views of Christianity, which is to be expected. History today, however, has evolved into a science, rather than a victory celebration or propaganda, and now we know better.
The Gospel of Judas, one of perhaps twenty gospels, illustrates one of the many Christianities which competed with brands which became labeled “orthodox,” and which ultimately came out on top, thanks to the Roman congregation having the notice of the Roman Emperor. This self-described “orthodox” Roman congregation evolved, under the patronage of Roman Emperors, into the Roman Catholic Church. It, like Rabbinic Judaism, has spent succeeding centuries writing histories which lead readers to believe that their views were always the correct/true/orthodox positions, and that all other positions were consciously sinful apostasies, not history.
The Gospel of Judas, contrary to the “canonical” gospels promoted by the Roman church and its orthodox allies, depicts Jesus deriding the Peter and the Twelve, labeling them as sinfully unknowing and believing in the wrong god, a material god. The gospel maintains that the twelve Apostles are rabidly mistaken in their core beliefs, especially about the resurrection of the body and the cult of martyrdom: both are to be rejected. Among them, only Judas, by reason of special instruction from Jesus, knows the truth, that the human body--and all material—are alien to the one, holy, spiritual God. Judas must surrender Jesus to the Romans in order that God’s plan may be understood and fulfilled in the spiritual generation. For this knowledge, Judas will be stoned to death by the Apostles. But this, too, is necessary, so that he, like Jesus, can ascend to the one, true, spiritual God.
Pagels competently illustrates one of a variety of beliefs among the early Christians, but not the variety, for the number and kind of beliefs are so diverse that she cannot accomplish her task in one hundred pages, given her methodology of careful, specific citations. And, while the Gospel of Judas illustrates her points in many ways, the document itself is so defective—missing letters, words and pages—that the general reader probably will have difficulty appreciating the document.
This is a good book, but probably not the place for the general reader to start looking for the history of the church. Of course, it would be valuable to students of the subject.

Mr. Graziano is the author of From the Cross to the Church: the Emergence of the Church from the Chaos of the Crucifixion.

[MichaelK · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is divided into two parts.

Part 1, the first 100 or so pages, guides you through the Gospel of Judas and speculates on its place in the history of Christianity. This is interesting, similar in style to Elaine Pagels' excellent solo books, and worth reading.

The authors talk you through the 'evolution' of Judas the Betrayer in the canonical gospels - from Mark the oldest gospel, through Luke and Matthew, to John the youngest, Judas' betrayal becomes more and more obviously part of the divine plan, with Jesus shown as more in control of events. This lost gospel is the logical endpoint in that process: Judas is Jesus' favoured disciple, to whom he tells secrets of the cosmos and trusts to carry out the divine plan by arranging for his arrest.

This gospel is angry. The author was outraged that so many Christians were seeking martyrdom, that priests and bishops were almost encouraging suicide. He found the cannibalistic imagery of Holy Communion disgusting. His gospel has Jesus renounce bodily sacrifice, and mock the apostles when they eat the Eucharist.

This gospel is gnostic. A large chunk is devoted to the 'secrets' Jesus told to Judas, a convoluted creation myth, stuffed with numerology and confusing imagery, which suggests the true God is utterly beyond the material world, which is ruled by false gods, angels who err.

In Part 2, we get to the English translation of the Gospel of Judas.

This gospel is... kinda crap. It is underwhelming. It's not a very compelling narrative. The convoluted imagery doesn't endear or engross. The commentary does its best to explain, but often feels like its re-hashing what we've already learnt from part 1.

Admittedly, a lot of the text is missing due to the poor condition our only extant copy is in, and perhaps the best parts are lost. Regardless, I don't feel like our culture has missed out on a lot by this book being lost in a cave for 1500 years. It's cool that we have it, but no-one's going to read this and start a new Judas cult. I'm not a big fan of the canonical New Testament gospels, but they are fucking spectacular compared this thing.

The Thirteenth Apostle : What the Gospel of Judas Really Says by April DeConick is supposedly a very different interpretation of this gospel and its place in Christian history. I am tempted to seek it out soon and see which I find more convincing.

[Pearl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2006 The National Geographic finally released a copy of The Gospel of Judas, a manuscript which had been copied into the Coptic from second-century Greek. This Gospel immediately casued a stir. Judas, the reviled betrayer? What could he have to say?

Pegals and King, wonderful New Testament scholars and authors of several books on the Gnostic Gospels, do their usual fine job of putting the Gospel of Judas into its 2nd Century context and then discussing its claims. We don't learn anything about the historical Jesus, Judas or the other disciples that we didn't already know from other texts at that time. What we do learn about is the many divergent arguments among the early Christians about the meaning of Jesus' death.

It seems that this Gospel was written about mid-2nd Century. We have references to and refutation of it in 180 C.E by Ireaenus, that great defender (and definer) of orthodoxy. This Gospel was written in the context of Christian martyrdom and the glorification of such a death. The Gospel of Judas is horrified by the glorification of such killings and death and cannot accept that a loving God would want such sacrifices. By the same token, neither is Jesus death as a sacrifice seen as redemptive. According to this Gospel, it is Jesus'teaching (which only Judas among the diciples understood)that can usher human beings into the spiritual world and into eternal life. Jesus death is simply a release from his mortal body, a release that Judas helped to facilitate. Bodily resurrection is soundly rejected, the body being only a temporary and corrupted housing for the soul.

The Gospel goes on to discuss Jesus teaching which seems to be some mixture of Gnosticism, Platonism, numerology, and astrology! But the main message is to look WITHIN, not to the heavens, to find the truth. It is a little unclear whether all human beings have the capability to find this truth within - i.e. Did God implant this spirit in all and only some have the courage and discernment to look within to find it? or is this spirit a divine gift given only to a chosen few?

All in all, this Gospel probably does not belong in the canon. Its importance is in showing us that early believers in Jesus were not of one mind in searching for what his life, teaching, death and resurrection meant.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now that my dad has reached his nineties, I stay with him out in East Dundee, Illinois while his younger wife travels overseas. This year she went to Turkey and I to their home.

It being a month before Christmas, I spent part of the time out there searching for gifts. One likely source has been the EBay consignment store on 72, just before the bridge crossing the Fox River. This year was exceptional in that they were preparing for a book sale. It hadn't started yet, but I was allowed a preview of all the books boxed down in their basement--a favor I repaid by organizing and bring all the boxes upstairs. It was among these boxes that I found this book by my old seminary professor, Elaine Pagels.

Like all of her books, excepts perhaps The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegis, this one demands little of the reader. Unlike most of her books, this one was coauthored by Karen L. King, the primary translator of the text.

The Gospel of Judas was discovered in the seventies but only publicized and published recently. The Coptic holograph dates from the third or fourth century, but as Irenaeus (c. 180) and Epiphanius cite such a gospel, the assumption is that it is based on a Greek original composed prior to the 180s. This is important because other such texts, and they are legion, are not dateable so early. Of course it is an assumption. There may have been more than one gospel attributed to Judas--or perhaps the one mentioned by Irenaeus was much redacted and changed in the process of becoming this particular text.

As ever, Pagels treats the text and its author(s) sympathetically, placing it in the context of what we would call "early church history" as representative of a current of opinion which lost out in the great struggle for ideological hegemony. As ever, she and King make much which appears obscure at first glance more understandable.

[Lee Harmon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun one. Short and sweet, Karen and Elaine share their unique interpretation of this fascinating discovery. Scholars of the gospel of Judas would never consider it mainstream Christianity ... can any book who paints a Christian villian as a hero be mainstream? ... and yet, there remains a lot of controversy about exactly how to classify that ancient Gospel. Part of the problem, of course, is that it's far from complete; and while that's certainly not the fault of Pagels and King, it does disrupt the readability of their book when pieces of the manuscript are missing.

The subtitle of the book is "The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity." This discussion of early Christianity is, precisely, what makes the Pagels/King book interesting. They delve into the conflict between Paul and Peter, and how later writers (such as the book of Acts) purposefully glossed over this conflict in an attempt to bring unison.

The book is in two parts: First, a discussion of the gospel and it setting, and second, an interpretation of the gospel itself with commentary. Karen King translates it herself, and their understanding is unique, quite different from other coverage of the gospel of Judas, as they are unafraid to give serious attention to alternative strands of Christianity and their meaning of the cross, the suffering of martyrs, and of Jesus' divinity. These were important topics in the early years of Christianity, and Christians today are, for the most part, quite unaware of the divisive strands that existed in those days.

Pagels and King do present controversial views (I found myself often disagreeing), but regardless of your beliefs or opinions, this is a fascinating read about an equally fascinating topic.

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having caught just the fringe of any controversy raised by the discovery and translation of "The Gospel of Judas" a few years ago, I was glad when I came across an affordable copy of "Reading Judas" with which I could satisfy my curiosity.

At no time do any of the authors consider this manuscript to be penned by Judas Iscariot. They perceive this to be written in the second century by a writer concerned by some of the developments in the Christian church. However, the concerns he addressed centuries ago may now challenge some of the basic precepts of current Christianity.

One of the prominent issues that the author of "The Gospel of Judas" was concerned about was the concept that submitting oneself to martyrdom was the high road to salvation. The author argues in favor for a sincere desire to develop spiritual purity over a flashy demise. More topical to today's readership are his questions over the true value of partaking of the eucharist or of the actual sacrifice of the Son of God. While I, personally, was initially troubled with someone tampering with such significant elements of my faith, I found with further consideration the issue was one of making certain that these elements did not become empty gestures but that our devotions direct us towards a deepening of our devotions and a heightening of our spirituality.

Whether or not this manuscript ever takes on the status of Holy Writ, it does provide an opportunity for the reader to reconsider what they believe and more importantly, how deeply they strive to assimilate divine principles.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating book. It is written in three parts. One attempts to both place the Gospel of Judas in a historical context, but also attempts to derive the historical context from the existence of the Gospel of Judas itself. The Gospel of Judas was written more than a hundred years after the death of Christ, so is obviously not written by the "real" Judas. But what does it tell us about the early period of Christianity that an author felt the need to write this Gospel?

The second part is the actual text of the Gospel. Unfortunately the text is incomplete, with fragments missing. But most of the text is there, with enough to be able to puzzle out the story.

The third part is an interpretation of the text, done in a manner that takes the Gospel at face value, just as is normally done with the other Gospels and Apocrypha.

Quite thought provoking. There wasn't anything that I thought was outrageous, but I can see why the council of Nicea suppressed it. It sends a message of internal spirituality and undermines the authority of the church. It stresses that the message of Christ is one which is very personal to the hearer and comes from Christ and God, which leaves no place for the Church.