The Lost Gospel of Jesus' Betrayer - What is the Gospel of Judas?

Hi everyone I just started a new substack so if you're interested in reading my writings then you can do so right now at Alex o connor.com Dr bman welcome back to the show thanks for having me who is was Judas scariot ah right so Judas es scariot uh was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus um his name was Jude or Judas we don't know what a scariot means uh it wasn't a last name people in that World didn't have last names unless they were upper class Roman Elite uh and so Scholars have debated for

a long time what is scariot means does it 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 kth and that's that's the I think the normal explanation the the more common explanation is that is is kariot stands for a Hebrew word Hebrew term ish karot Man from kth the difficulty being we don't know of a village like that right right but 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' 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 sikari e uh they're called that from the Latin word for dager sarius 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 sikari e and that sounds like a sharot and so it's so people say well maybe he was maybe he was one of the Sakari e yeah I mean he was 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 sikari is a Latin phrase and Uh you know the New Testament is written in Greek and it's 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's scarrett 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 want 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 betrays Jesus in the canonical gospels but how much information do we get about Judas in the canonical tradition uh so Judas uh 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 Uh 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 rest him without starting a riot uh some historians have doubted if that's really what he did uh we might want to get to that later but the gospels all Rec 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

indicate to the Roman soldiers who it is that's this this Nazarene Rebel uh 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 ation 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 a an unnamed woman who comes and brings a a precious jar of oil and anoints anoints him and um uh as a 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 his 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 the Roman Empire that's right the word the word Messiah our word Messiah comes from the Hebrew word Messiah which means anointed one uh and the anointed one uh in Jewish thinking Was the king of Israel so in in Antiquity when 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 crism oil is rubbed on King Charles's Chester in the coronation of Course crism yes shares a root with the Greek word for Christ which is the same the same term for anointed one so the Chism get 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 c 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 uh 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 uh

a theological problem arises when you know like you might not believe in even the existence of a particular character but you call them Jud Judas scariot that's his name yes Whereas if a Jew for example says oh this Jesus Christ yeah there sort of maybe without realizing it referring to Jesus as the Messiah there yeah it's yeah it it can it it can make some people you a little nervous I'm talking about Christ and so so um right so so Jesus gets anointed y h 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 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 the 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 uh 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 agre 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 quot 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 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 it 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 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

was can we figure out what motivated him and uh 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 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 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's he Judas is not portrayed well in these gospels so uh and so the gospel writers certainly thought that he' done a bad thing and in early

Christianity he was seen as worst of Sinners uh 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 yeah 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 uh Jesus Christ

Superstar which is one of my favorite Jesus movies is all about it's really more about Judas and it's about how you know why 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 uh 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 at the end of the musical in order to sort of yes is 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 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 taking 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 have supported the channel for a while now

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ground. newws 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 ER so this 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 you think this can be G 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 uh three times in Mark explicitly I'm going to Jerusalem they're going to be rejected be executed then raised from the

dead and and you get this in the 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 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 uh God's going to destroy his enemies and those who follow him uh 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 uh 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 SE 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 vill 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 C 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 uh you 12 he's talking to the 12 disciples you 12 will be seated 12 Thrones ruling

the tribes of Israel when the when the son of man is 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's scariot 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 uh in The gospels they certainly expect 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 May it may be that Judas is disappointed or he's upset or he thinks he's been misled I 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 uh 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 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 uh supporting the point of view that of gnosticism which we'll

be talking about that is an alternative form of Christianity and it portrays uh does not portray J Judas a in a negative light as the one who is the Archen 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 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 nostic ISM if you want well why don't you give us a thumbnail sketch Of what it means to 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 nosis spelled with a G um g n o s i s means knowledge in Greek there were a number of Christian groups in the 2 and third centuries especially uh 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 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 nosis 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 a tool time well some and that's right some of them such as uh the Gospel of Thomas I think You 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 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 mindboggling they 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 pointing 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 uh 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 um 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 the this

world came into being it doesn't lay out that and that's Always expressed in nosto text by myths they tell myths uh 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 myth 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 got this is a god beyond our imagination and it's not only that nobody knows him nobody can know him because there's nothing physical about him it's you know you 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 eons yes and these eons start getting emanated from Him sometimes they can be things like his his characteristics so like the 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 eons or and other Divine beings luminaries and angels and things um the entire realm is called the ploma ploma 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 eons that is far removed from the true God uh has some kind of Disaster and some of these texts um a lot of these texts this this Divine being is called Sophia which is wisdom uh wisdom Sophia it's a female name so it's a female Divinity so we get philosophy the love philosophy yeah wisdom sopia 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 ploma 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 ploma and she then leads to the formation of other Divine beings who are generated outside the Poma and one of them one of the is named yot these texts these these texts always have these like weird name they weird words for but yot

sounds kind of like Yahweh Lord of Sabbath which is a term for God in the Old Testament okay yot 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 yot 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 um famously the first I think the first attempt to to sort of canonize uh the New Testament

scripture ends up with this this is maran'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 Demi urge so for a long time marcian he was a second century thinker for in the 19th century up through the 19th century people would talk about Marcian 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 marians 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 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 will 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 the ploma 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 ploma and so in the Gnostic tradition what happens is one of the one of the eons in the ploma 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 eon 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 a secret knowledge then he just returns that's that's one View and it's that's called dotism dotism comes from a Greek word Doo 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 they sexual intercourse the child is born it's a

it's a person he's very righteous so he's the one that the Eon 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 Eon 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 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 and doesn't know how to do his time tables you know what I mean it's sort of it's a little bit weird to Imagine young Jesus in that way and this would help to 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 b as a wonder worker

as a 5-year-old misch 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 do start doing his miracles and he can do whatever you know He can uh do 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 um that's when the Divine element leaves him because the Divine cannot

suffer so the Eon 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 Eon from having to be a human being both of those the dotism and this other view where Jesus 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 Del 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 agnostic 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 Is 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 yeah and I was like okay that I'll 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 is sort of selected out as the person who seems To understand the real Jesus and Jesus says you know 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 and to Judas and so you start out secret Revelation okay this sounds Gnostic right at the beginning and is a secret knowledge is 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 mean Eucharist means to ukar means 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 worshiping 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 uhhuh 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 uh 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- based 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 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 worshiping the god the god you're you know it's you're worshiping 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 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 sethan 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's the good guy well Seth becomes the hero for this sostic 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 text barbello is one of the major Divine beings in the play Roma you just refer to barbello as a as a being yes so um in these um in the Gnostic Traditions uh 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 eons 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 uh 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 got barbell who's the

who's the the wife and the self originating one self-generating one that is the the spirit the sun 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 UT 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 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 Judah 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 let me just let me let me explain something this has to do kind of the history of the scholarship on the gospel of JW 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 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 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 than somebody the kind of the pendulum's always swing so the pendulum Swang a few years later after we had all written about this by uh by a gnostic scholar named April dionic 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 so and some people so the these days what I am sure as the interpret which I think is probably the major inter most 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 head 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 want 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 Gnostic things when when the when the Great invisible Spirits started create coming these all these eons 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 the in some of these nost text 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 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' 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 saass has 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 dot dot dot the eons which will bring their Generations presenting them to sack

class 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 other call him yal how do you say it yalo y yo again another

Angel called saas came forth from the cloud Nimrod created six angels for assistance as did saass and they generated 12 angels in the heavens And took a portion in the heavens for each one the TW archons said to the 12 I know and and so you know we 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 hold we up to and and and so where do we get all this Stuff com 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 GNA 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 uh 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

Comm committing sexual immorality and they like they're 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 asked 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 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 offs 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 Eon 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 send there's a few bits missing over the 12 eons 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 when Jesus heard this he laughed why do you struggle so o 13th Spirit or 13th Dion he answered Judas yeah but speak and I will be patient with you he he refers to Judas as the 13th diamond 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 uh diamon demon demons are bad and 13 that's the Unlucky number mhm and so that's you know it's it's a good argu 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 Dion does not mean what we think of as a demon so Dion is a very common term In uh ancient Greek thought uh both philosophical thought and

in religious thought d diones uh diones 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 lowlevel divinities they might be good they might be bad but you know they're often good um socrates's um guiding Angel his Guardian Angel was Call he calls him a Dione and so it's diamon 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 TW 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 text 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 uh 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 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 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 Jud judas's scariot 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 TW 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 Tech we have other texts that may not be Gnostic um that where Jesus shows up sometimes to his disciples as a child Uh 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 it 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 is innocence um is it they they they they don't think that he's knowledgeable like He's ignorant is it I mean what what's 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 text or where he shows up as a phantom in other text 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 agnostic theology here because at first glance is 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 it's the key verse actually for this entire gospel that verse I think is the key because um 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 um does that give an alternative Translation actually um 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 is 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 Eon 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 Eon 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 Judah 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 the key to this is who's doing the who who's creating what in this um and so there are all

these eons and luminaries and firmaments and things in this in the in this Angels lights in these in the in the story about the creation of the ploma area 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 Nebro and the other is called sackos nebro is a uh is means Rebel and it says that he is covered with blood and sackos the name sackos means fool and so so the so the world and Adam and Eve are

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 Eon figures that's called Adamas ad a ad m a d m 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 um and so it's acknowledging that uh the material world comes into being but it's not because of the uh of this uh of the great invisible spirit it's because of these evil

evil divinities then saas 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 sacas 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 ploma area 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 Poma 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 Form of the thought of Plato that's uh it's usually called M platonism which is very becoming very popular in the second Cent 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 PL 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 eons up in the cloud and Eve is Zoe's represent kind of shadowy representation on Earth adamos is up in the ploma 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 um Jesus then tells us about the destiny of

the cosmos where it's all heading uh and it's actually the the part that I quoted at random earlier came from this section um and and your star will rule over the 13th Eon 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 is and all 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 um 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 um 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 saass 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 eons will bring their Generations presenting them to sacas and So we've got this kind of apocalyptic imagery after that something R so presumably Israel will come to bring the 12 tribes of Israel from and then a bit missing and so it it's a bit tricky because there are some bits missing but we basically got a sort of apocalyptic um 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 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 yeah I mean he's he's exalting Judas and uh You know he's the he's not he's not in the generation that will return to the Poma but he's you know he's doing a good thing he's on a right himself you 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 uh I don't know who did this particular translation but um it's it's a complicated Passage I believe that this is Simon ga I mean it's Simon gao's edited collection so it may have been him that yeah I think he translated These text okay so I'm sure I'm he's a very fine scholar um he did take a liberty there uh 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 and it's unclear the closest anent 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 Jus 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 cloud it's the yeah it's the cloud that um that is there at the beginning in the ploma so he sees the so it's a way of describing the realm of the the Divine Realm of 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 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 the epilog the Betrayal the

famous part just then there was a disturbance amongst the Jews their Chief Priests were angry ree 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 the whole point the 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 matter what matters is his Escape that J Judas makes possible and so that's why I mean I think it's certain that J 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 is so much a part of the tradition I think That Jews gets the money and so they do 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 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 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 there like the major commentary on it is by David bracky and b r a KK 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 Bonafide scholar on this yeah I'll be I'll be linking your book down in the description as well it's it's called The Lost Gospel of Judas scariot

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 Judah since what 2006 2006 yeah 2006 and when we consider 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 the sex and how can we go about dating it um well it almost certainly had to be written in the 2 Century um probably sometime in the middle of the second century so around the year you know we can't put an exact date on it uh but Around the year in like 150 or so um uh the

reason we know that is because there's a church father ireneus 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 um he was writing 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 Ireneus would not read Coptic uh and so he would he would have had to read it in its original know about in the original language the people who

are using it were Greek speaking folk the 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 compos positions uh we have a lot of Coptic translations of of Greek things including including the nagadi library that 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 mean I've been speaking a lot about

apocryphal gospels recently and I'm constantly referencing the nadii library crucially the Gospel of Judas is not discovered with the naram 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 nakam library it was disc is discovered about what what would it be about uh 30 years after the nagadi library um which is discovered in Egypt uh near

a village named nagadi in Egypt this is in a different part of Egypt it's in middle Egypt the alminia um Province uh 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 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 boxes there a couple of stone boxes and one of them had four manuscripts in it uh 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 CL they don't no they have no clue they but they 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 if 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 and he he'll have a contact who is I'm 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 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 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 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 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 united 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 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' 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 and 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 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 up 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 coplist an expert of cop of Copic language and they spend three years restoring it and they uh let National geograph National Geographic comes to know about it and that's how it starts

BEC 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 ay 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 letter 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 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 kiding me so she told me she wanted and I said well what do you have She explained what they had and she asked me if I would help them authenticate it and I said well what language is it in she

said was Coptic well you need a copt list then she said okay great what's a coplist 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 know if it's a modern forgery or or it's a medieval forgery or if it's an act ancient manuscript uh can You do that I said well uh what you really need to do that is a paleographer I said I'm I've got some training in paleography but I I wouldn't be able I'm not a Coptic

pale ographer she said well what what's a paleographer I said okay so the way you date manuscripts is by handwriting analysis uh 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 is uh so I was kind of the history of early Christianity person and Stephen EML in moonster Germany he an American Scholar teaches in German as one of the

leading cists in the world uh 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 EML 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 Redeye from North Carolina and show they take us they drive us outside Geneva to this little town called neon and they pull up in front of a pizza shop what in the World but above the pizza shop Freez 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 rodolph casser 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 EML and I are looking at this things yeah well this is an ancient manuscript and what one of them says this is but is it the Gospel of Judas and EML 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 goel yeah so anyway but the dating of it EML 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 fourth 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 a scariot 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 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 WR you know have uh 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 this4 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 uh 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 EML in there and and he's the Copic guy right I'm just kind of the guy the early Christianity guy there but he's but and he 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 Storying gives a little speech the guy the the person who's I mean the speech and ell 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 GNA show us the whole thing for this reason they don't want to yeah 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 EML 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 Emma 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 mopic paleographer Emma'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 emble 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 Emma 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 uh The Apocalypse of James and

uh Peter's letter to philli 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 a Scariot because he's just brief he's looking but he he re he's really 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 that Thomas is referred to as Judas dimus 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 nagamati the Gospel of Thomas but also a book of Thomas the contender and we have an act 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 papist from the University of Michigan uh lunan who um who and someone else David fre fredman was there David no fredman who's a very famous

Old Testament scholar and fredman thought they could they could manage to come together with $300,000 the guy wanted three 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 uh Steven EML Steven EML had they shown Dr EML 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 Poss 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 happened we' 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' 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 P this in these fragments and you know it looked

like the stuff you know it LO 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 apparently debates about whether these actually were part of that thing or not but they were Coptic Fragments and uh that you know so and the 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 uh you know it's there's still some things maybe That might show up to complete it and so finally National Geographic by 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 h Washington DC where different people on the team gave Little Talks um and so Elaine Pagel 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 Absol how it has to happen but a lot of Scholars were really ticked off about this entire procedure oh yeah especially April Don conic I 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 inv3 million manuscript $3 million Manus 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 PE 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 the 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 Demi urge yeah well the material world is materialist and uh yeah so thank the Demi urge 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 to tail of

it hopefully now after listening to this conversation they'll have a better Chance to do Dr rman 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 con.com and subscribing to my new substack check out one of my earlier episodes with Bart Erman by clicking the link on your screen thanks for watching and I'll

see you in the next one one