Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? [Hardcover]

N. T. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2006

Joining many other recently found and publicized "gospels," the Gospel of Judas has found its way into the limelight as the subject of some recently published books and some recent television programming. The ancient manuscript is genuine-so what are Christians to make of the claims therein? Claims such as -Judas was doing what Jesus asked him to do when he betrayed Jesus -Jesus came to offer secret knowledge of how to escape this earthly world, rather than to usher in God's kingdom on earth -Jesus felt no pain on the cross -and more This timely and necessary response to the Gospel of Judas is the authoritative, orthodox word on what it really tells us--and does not tell us--about Jesus, Judas, early Christianity, and Gnosticism. Tom Wright, as both a bishop and an historian, is uniquely qualified to speak on the subject and answers the questions Christians have after encountering this "new gospel."

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

FRONT FLAP I am writing this little book to make three points. First, this new "Gospel of Judas," while a spectacularly interesting archaeological find, tells us nothing about the real Jesus, or for that matter the real Judas. In particular, it doesn't (as some have claimed) "rehabilitate" Judas over against either the charges laid against him in the New Testament or the anti-Jewish use that was made of the Judas tradition in the Middle Ages. Second, the enthusiasm for this new "gospel" lays bare the real agenda which has been driving both what we might call the scholarly "Quest for an Alternative Jesus" and also the popular eagerness for such sensational material that we find in books like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Third, the specific teaching of the "Gospel of Judas" only serves to highlight certain features about first-century Christianity that need to be drawn out more fully than is sometimes done. BACK FLAP Tom Wright is the bishop of Durham in the Church of England. Recently named by Christianity Today as one of the top five theologians in the world, Wright has taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, Oxford, and McGill universities. He is the author of The Original Jesus, What Saint Paul Really Said, and The Challenge of Jesus.

From the Back Cover

What does the Gospel of Judas really tell us? Joining other recently found and publicized "gospels," the Gospel of Judas has found its way into the limelight. The ancient manuscript appears to be genuine--so what are we to make of the claims therein? Claims such as -Judas was doing what Jesus asked him to do when he betrayed Jesus -Jesus came to offer secret knowledge of how to escape this earthly world, rather than to usher in God's kingdom on earth -Jesus felt no pain on the cross -and more This timely response to the Gospel of Judas is the authoritative, orthodox word on what the Gospel of Judas really tells us--and does not tell us-about Jesus, Judas, early Christianity, and Gnosticism. Tom Wright, as both a bishop and a historian, is uniquely qualified to speak on the subject. In Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, he clearly and fairly answers your questions about this "new gospel."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Baker Books; First Edition edition (October 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801012945
• ISBN-13: 978-0801012945
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #837,122 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

N.T. Wright is Bishop of Durham and was formerly Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey and dean of Lichfield Cathedral. He taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities. Wright's full-scale works The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God are part of a projected six-volume series entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God. Among his many other published works are The Original Jesus, What Saint Paul Really Said and The Climax of the Covenant. He is also coauthor with Marcus Borg of The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions and the volume on Colossians and Philemon in The Tyndale New Testament Commentary series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 131 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gnosticism vs Christianity, October 9, 2006

By 

William Muehlenberg (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Hardcover)

The standing joke about Tom Wright goes like this: An inquiring student gives Dr Wright a call. His secretary says, "Sorry, but he is busy writing a book". To which the student caller replies, "That's OK, I'll hold".

NT Wright is one of our most prolific New Testament scholars. It seems just a few months ago the media broke the story about the discovery of the so-called Gospel of Judas. And here we have a major critique of the find and the claims surrounding it.

The gospel was in fact discovered three decades ago, but for various reasons, was only made public in April of 2006. The media made much of it, and it tied in nicely with the film release of the Da Vinci Code. Both were over-hyped and cast aspersions on the canonical gospels and the real Jesus. And both fed into conspiratorial claims about church cover-ups and the need to reinvent Christianity.

Here Wright takes on the hype and the search for an "alternative Jesus". He demonstrates that this new find offers very little to our understanding of Jesus, and shows how far apart Gnostic teaching is from biblical truth claims.

The document in question, a Gnostic gospel, is authentic, but from third or fourth century Egypt. Like other Gnostic writings, this Judas document presents an unbiblical dualism: this world is evil and needs to be escaped from, and a secret knowledge (gnosis) will help one to achieve that. Jesus and the early disciples, by contrast, taught that God's kingdom was breaking into this world. While this material world is in need of restoration, it is not evil in itself. Indeed, God created it, and will one day recreate it altogether.

In orthodox Christianity, the goal of salvation is the redemption of this world, along with the resurrection of our bodies. In Gnosticism, the aim is to escape this evil material world. Thus the biblical gospels are this-worldly, while the Gnostic gospels deny this world. The message of the two are worlds apart.

And so too is the dating. The canonical gospels are early (written within a generation of the lifetime of Jesus) while the Gnostic gospels are late (second and third centuries). And the genre differs as well. The canonical gospels are sustained narratives, while the Gnostic writings are usually loose collections of teaching. While the Gospel of Judas is a bit different, it still is closer to the latter than to the former.

Wright correctly points out the irony of modern-day scholars trying to persuade us that the Gnostic gospels were radical alternatives to the `conservative' canonical gospels. Quite the opposite. The New Testament message was truly radical, and resulted in suffering and death. The Gnostic message was similar to the mystery religions of the day, and Gnostics rarely faced persecution for it.

In other words, "the Gnostics were the cultural conservatives, sticking with the kind of religion that everyone already knew". In contrast, the orthodox Christians "were breaking new ground, and [were] risking their necks as they did so".

So why are certain scholars so intent on promoting Judas and other Gnostic ideas and writings? Suggests Wright, the desire to champion even bizarre Gnostic texts over against the canonical writings "has more to do with social and religious fashions in North America than with actual historical research".

Gnostic beliefs fit very well into the American and Western fixation on self: the ideals of self-discovery, self-awareness, self actualisation, and self-salvation. They certainly make far lesser demands on people than do the radical requirements of Christian discipleship. Indeed, such Gnostic leanings, whether ancient or modern, have nothing to do with biblical Christianity.

In sum, the Gospel of Judas, like the other Gnostic writings, is totally incompatible with the New Testament gospels. They differ in genre, theology and time of writing. If the claims of the former are true, then Christianity (and Judaism) cannot be true. Conversely, if the biblical version of events is correct, then the Gnostic perspective must be wrong.

Fads and trends in theology will continue to plague us. But the everlasting gospel is not so easily disposed of. A debt of gratitude must be accorded to NT Wright for making these distinctions so clear.

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A sharp critique of popularized gnosticism., February 1, 2007

By 

Stephen Triesch (Shoreline/Seattle USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Hardcover)

N. T. Wright's scholarly works are often ponderous tomes characterized by forty-word sentences, endless paragraphs, and an exasperating delay in getting to the point. This slim volume does not share those faults. Quickly, clearly, and concisely, Wright takes aim at the recent popular fascination with Christian gnosticism and the small group of scholars who have been at the forefront of this well-publicized effort to re-imagine the origins of Christianity. In his own polite way, Wright is saying, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."

The occasion for Wright's salvo is the recent publication of "The Gospel of Judas," a second-century gnostic tract that surfaced about thirty years ago but was held back from publication as its various owners tried to maximize its financial payoff. Now that the gospel has finally seen the light of day, it has been the subject of several popular works and celebrated as providing important new insights into Jesus, Judas, and early Christianity.

The highlight of the gospel is the claim that - contrary to the New Testament - Judas was the apostle who understood Jesus best, and was in fact ordered by Jesus to turn Jesus over to the authorities. The purpose of this was to hasten Jesus's death so that his spirit could be liberated from the confines of his mortal and corruptible body. This is in line with the core gnostic belief that the world was created by an inferior, malevolent god or demiurge, and that salvation consists in liberating the spirit from its connection to matter.

Authors such as Elaine Pagels, Bart Ehrman, and Marvin Meyer have popularized the idea that the gnostic writings provide a legitimate alternative to the New Testament portrayal of Jesus and Christian origins.

"Nonsense," says Wright. He points out that the scholarly consensus still overwhelmingly places the gnostic writings at a minimum of 50 to 100 years later than the writings collected in the New Testament, and that there is no reason whatsoever to think that the gnostics had a better understanding of Jesus than the authors of the New Testament.

Quoting some of the more incomprehensible and pretentious passages of "The Gospel of Judas," Wright questions whether all this talk of "aeons" and "archons," and the gnostic contempt for material reality, is really as in tune with contemporary sensibilities as the popularizers claim. Wright accuses them of presenting a sanitized version of gnosticism as well as a false characterization of early, mainstream Christianity. I think he is pretty much on the mark.

If I have a quibble with Wright, it is in his generalized claims about the contempory Christian Left and the Religious Right. He accuses both of escapism into a world of private religious experience and of a failure to contend against the "principalities and powers" of this world. Notwithstanding elements of escapist New Age-ism on the Left, and Rapture-ism on the Right, I think Wright is wrong about both the Christian Left and the Religious Right. I think both are very concerned with real-world issues, with practical concerns, and with politics. Both, in their different perspectives, are confronting what they regard as the "principalities and powers" of the world, even if they don't agree on what the principalities and powers are.

Moreover, Wright never specifies what he thinks an authentic Christian engagement with the "principalities and powers" would entail. For example, he seems to oppose the American war against Saddam Hussein, so is he therefore a pacifist? Or does he just oppose this specific war? And what is the authentic Christian response to brutal dictators, in Wright's view? And what is the authentic Christian view on gay marriage, or homosexuality, or pornography, or abortion, or Islamo-fascism, or any other issue which divides Left and Right? Wright does not tell us. He assures us that Left and Right are wrong, but never tells us what the Middle should do. Nor does he quite come to terms with the fact that the representatives of Christian orthodoxy - both secular and religious - committed many historical acts which Wright would in no way countenance. If escapism is a vice, real-world engagement also carries its dangers. How does one change the world without getting one's hands dirty?

Those quibbles aside, I can recommend this book to anyone who is still on the fence regarding the significance of Christian gnosticism. People who read Wright first might save themselves the trouble of reading - and being taken in by - a lot of nonsense emanating from scholars who should know better.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WRIGHT GIVES LIBERAL SCHOLARSHIP A BLACK EYE, January 23, 2007

By 

Jeri Nevermind "loves to read" (Idaho) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Hardcover)

N T Wright, one of the world's greatest biblical scholars, tosses aside his usual calm and comes out swinging in "Judas and the Gospel of Jesus". He is clearly sick and tired of certain group of American scholars, the ones who claim there were all sorts of early Christianities, and, frankly, the one we ended up with was certainly not the best choice.

So, for once, Wright is naming names and taking no prisoners.

Wright's book is based upon "The Gospel of Judas" which was released with such great fanfare last Easter. No doubt you, too, had a laugh when that great biblical magazine, the "National Geographic", published a huge article on "The Gospel of Judas". And remember all those newspapers declaring darkly that "Judas" would shake the belief of those who still clung to Christianity?


Oh please. It was just another late Gnostic text, and, as usual, poorly written and with rambling idiotic passages about aeons. Yet the usual suspects--I mean scholars--made false claims about the importance and meaning of "The Gospel of Judas".

Wright doesn't exactly call Marvin Meyer, Elaine Pagels, and Bart Ehrman liars, but he comes thisclose. Most books about biblical scholarship are pretty tame. Not this one. Expect to enjoy yourself as you watch Wright tear Meyer, Pagels and Ehrman to pieces.


Some instances bound to make you smile: Meyer and Pagels "try to use the motif of laughter to make this 'Jesus' appear friendly" (p 54-55), in direct contradiction to the fact that the text means something very different. It's about time someone mentioned how liberal scholars play fast and loose with the facts.


Then there's the instance when Wright calls Elaine Pagels' statement about Jesus "breathtaking" and notes dryly, "It could only be sustained by a systematic and sustained rereading, and in fact a radical misreading, of the canonical gospels" (p 81). Now that's how a
true gentleman calls someone a lying twit. Then there's Bart Ehrman's bizarre claims about early Judaism and Christianity while ignoring the obvious:that early Christianity and Judaism had much, much "more in common with one another than with Gnosticism"(p 115).

The argument about there being many early types of Christianity is nonsense. People weren't wandering around in 200 AD unable to distinguish between a Christian and a follower of one of the schools of Gnosticism. As many of the early church fathers acidly noted, no Roman made a mistake and tossed a Gnostic to the lions. No, the Christians were the ones being eaten and the Gnostics were those preening about their insight or moaning on about how the universe and flesh were evil. Astrology has as much intellectual merit as Gnosticism, which was merely an attempt to paganize Christianity.

Wouldn't you just love to know how Ehrman, Pagals, and Meyer react? You've GOT to get this book.

Anyone interested in early Christianity and Gnosticism should get Simone Petrement's "A Separate God", the most quoted, most respected book on the subject.