The Gospel of Judas

"The Gospel of Judas Iscariot" is a fourth-century Coptic, gnostic document which shows a completely other view of the betrayer of Jesus and was featured on National Geographic (TV) on Sunday evening, April 9. The 2-hour program was unbelievably biased in favor of this view of Judas as opposed to the accounts of Judas which are recorded in the four New Testament Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Unfortunately, no conservative scholars' views were presented, leading me to ask two primary questions: (1) Why is National Geographic so "evangelistic" about getting this document to the public? and (2) Why was this strongly liberal presentation brought to the public without conservative debate during the Passion Week of our Lord?

Consider these facts about Gnosticism:

1. Gnosticism is syncretistic. It is nothing more or less than an assimilation of imperfectly understood Christian doctines to a fundamentally pagan scheme. The Gnostics sought to combine Christian ideas with contemporay ones.
2. Gnostic systems did not come into existence until the 2nd century AD.
3. There is no Gnostic literature which can confidently be assigned to the first century.
4. Gnostic literature is obscure in thought (compared with the straightforwardness of New Testament thought).
5. According to the Gnostics, all matter is evil.
6. The Gnostic gospels appear with no life-context.
7. Gnostics maintained that man's chief need is knowledge. Christians maintain that we are saved by grace through faith (not mere knowledge).
8. Gnostics believed in the creation of matter by an inferior power or demiurge, not by God.
9. Gnostics make a distinction between the man Jesus and "the Christ" who descended on Jesus in the form of a dove after he was baptized. "The Christ" left Jesus before he died while "the Christ" remained immune from suffering, since he was a purely spiritual being.
10. The gnostics were not one school, but many. It took many different forms.
11. A characteristic teaching of all gnostics was the fundamental antithesis between the material and the spiritual universe.
12. Many gnostics believed that the origin of evil came about when woman was created and that to have children is to multiply souls who would be in bondage to the powers of darkness.
13. Gnosticism is a system of ontological dualism. It pits the transcendent God of the Bible against an ignorant, obtuse demiurge (often a caricature of the Old Testament Jehovah).
14. Salvation is through a secret gnosis (knowledge) and not by the completed work of Jesus Christ on a Roman cross.
15. Early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (AD 180) denounced Gnosticism as heretical.
16. Ask yourself: "Why didn't Gnosticism win out?"
17. Ask yourself: "Why and how did Gnosticism disappear?"