Bibliofreakblog

Reading Judas by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King

Speaking of Elaine Pagels, in order to prepare for my interview, I read and reread a lot of her work.  Her newest book (relatively speaking) is Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, written with Karen L. King.

The Gospel of Judas is a bit different than some of the other lost Gospels.  It depicts an angrier Jesus, only glimpsed at in the New Testament (I’m thinking of episodes such as when he cursed a fig tree).  Judas, it appears, is the only one who really understands him.

The whole Gospel leads up to Judas’s betrayal.  First Jesus sees that Judas gets it.  Or sort of does.  So he takes him under his tutelage.  Part of that is a crazy esoteric description of the making and order of the universe.  Thank God for all of commentary in this book because I would never ever have understood anything in these parts without it (not that that should scare you…as a Gospel it’s relatively short anyways).  This occurs right before the final chapter, where Judas gives away Jesus’s location.

The book itself is divided up into two parts.  The first hundred pages deals with the context and exploration of the text.  The second part is the text with commentary after it (though I found it better to flip back and forth between the two, reading the commentary simultaneously).

Though many scholars don’t quite agree that this is a “Gnostic” Gospel (and indeed, it was not found with the Nag Hamadi codices), I did find many similarities.  Focus was on the qualities that allow one to find God and Jesus within oneself.  A physical resurrection was seen as a gross misunderstanding of Jesus and his teaching.  Furthermore, the author condemned martyrdom for the same reasons.  

However, beyond that, I can see why this would have been considered heretical by the early Church leaders.  The whole convoluted system described in chapters 10-15 of this Gospel describes whole hierarchies of angels and lower gods.  This, I believe, is probably still metaphorical, at least to some extent.  The most interesting thing is how this mirror’s (or, more probably, is derived from) Plato.  I remember learning in school about how the early centuries of Christianity were heavily influenced by Plato, and this is probably just one more instance.  
Buy Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed by Bart D Ehrman
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D Ehrman
The Gospel of Judas, Second Edition by Rodolphe Kasser
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography John Dominic Crossan
A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong 
Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says by April D Deconick

Other works by Elaine Pagels:

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity
The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics
The Gnostic Gospels
The Gnostic Paul: Gnostic Exegesis of the Pauline Letters 

Other works by Karen L King:

Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism 
What Is Gnosticism?
The Gospel of Mary of Magdala
Revelation of the Unknowable God: With Text, Translation, and Notes to Nhc Xi, 3 Allogenes