Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity [Hardcover]

Elaine Pagels (Author), Karen L. King (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 6, 2007

The two leading, bestselling experts on the Gnostic Gospels weigh in on the meaning of the controversial newly discovered Gospel of Judas

When the Gospel of Judas was published by the National Geographic Society in April 2006, it received extraordinary media attention and was immediately heralded as a major biblical discovery that rocked the world of scholars and laypeople alike. Elaine Pagels and Karen King are the first to reflect on this newfound text and its ramifications for telling the story of early Christianity. In Reading Judas, the two celebrated scholars illustrate how the newly discovered text provides a window onto understanding how Jesus’ followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.

Most contemporary readers will find passages in the ancient Gospel of Judas difficult to comprehend outside of its context in the ancient world. Reading Judas illuminates the intellectual assumptions behind Jesus’ teaching to Judas and shows how conflict among the disciples was a tool frequently used by early Christian authors to explore matters of doubt and disagreement. Presented with the elegance, insight, and accessibility that has made Pagels and King the leading voices in this field, this is a book for academics and popular audience both. Pagels’s five previous books, including The New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief, and King’s The Gospel of Mary of Magdala prove that there is a considerable audience eager for this kind of informed and engaging writing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This accessible, engaging book has Princeton religion professor Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels; Beyond Belief) in a dream team pairing with King (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala), who teaches ecclesiastical history at Harvard Divinity School. Together they take on the controversial Gospel of Judas, published in April 2006 after some years of languishing in a safety deposit box after its initial discovery in the 1970s. In their hundred-page introductory essay, Pagels and King date the gospel to the middle of the second century and situate it amidst the deadly persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Such persecution, they say, drove the author of the Gospel of Judas, who "could not reconcile his belief in a deeply loving, good God with a particular idea other Christians held at the time: that God desired the bloody sacrificial death of Jesus and his followers." The key to understanding this gospel, they argue, is its relentless unmasking of the triumphant rhetoric of martyrdom. Though the gospel text appears angry and polarizing, Pagels and King have come to realize that they "cannot easily dismiss this author as either a madman or a lunatic." Instead, they delve deeply into his theological view that a pure, spiritual realm exists beyond the physical world that we see—a Gnostic chestnut that recurs in other second-century texts. Alive to irony and historical nuance, this remarkably concise primer opens readers to a plausible and often persuasive interpretation of the disquieting Gospel of Judas.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In fall 2006, the National Geographic Society made quite a splash, bringing to light the discovery of a new gospel in the Gnostic tradition told from Judas' point of view. There have already been several books on the subject, including one by Bart Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (2006), which provided an overview and placed the book in its historical and religious contexts. Now come two premier names in the field of religious writing to take a more intimate look at the gospel. Pagels, author of the classic Gnostic Gospels (2004), teams with translator extraordinaire King for a compact reader's guide into the heart of the new gospel. The Gospel of Judas can be a convoluted, even bizarre, reading experience, but the combination of King's translation, which appears at the end of the book, and Pagels' text will help general readers get past the difficulties and into the fascinating message, which emphasizes spiritual rather than physical resurrection for both Jesus and his followers. Pagels also shows why this message was so noxious to church leaders and explains how the gospel fits into the body of noncanonical literature. By showing how Judas' vision of life after death should be understood, this elegantly written book makes clear the relevance of a centuries-old text for a contemporary audience. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (March 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670038458
• ISBN-13: 978-0670038459
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #188,595 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

96 of 102 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beyond Anger to Revelation April 18, 2007

By Robin Friedman HALL OF FAMETOP 50 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robin Friedman

106 of 119 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The Spiritual Reviewer Rates this book 8.2 on a 1-10 Scale April 2, 2007

By BigHeart VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

SUMMARY

This book presents us with a content analysis and the actual translated text of the Gospel of Judas, which was accidentally discovered by peasants in a burial cave in the 1970's in Middle Egypt near al Minya. The archaeological find was finally made public by the National Geographic Society in April 2006. Award-winning authors, Pagels and King, who study, translate and specialize in early Christian writings, estimate that the Gospel "was written sometime around 150 C.E., about a century after Judas would have lived, it is impossible that he wrote it; the real author remains anonymous."

In addition to its outside-the-box spiritual teaching, this Gospel is valued because it clearly shows that the early Christian movement was not characterized by the unified, simplistic and fixed message that we hear today. Rather, it's yet another piece of evidence that demonstrates there were many different and controversial messages, each competing for a position of supremacy, each claiming to be the divine truth, each messenger asserting to be the most special and favored one. While many people are comforted by the idea that the 12 apostles worked together and that they unanimously embraced and delivered the same doctrines, this homogenized and white-washed picture is a distortion of the historical facts, rivalries and power struggles that are now being revealed.

MESSAGE OF LOVE: Score 10

If God is Love and only Love, He cannot be violence. The Gospel of Judas renounces violence, sacrifice, martyrdom and even the cannibalistic practice of symbolically eating the body and blood of Christ as God's Will. This is in direct contrast to one of the central messages of Christianity, where sacrifice and suffering is used as a bargaining tool with God: "With the suffering of just one hour, you can purchase for yourself eternal life!"

The central idea is that "those who imagine human sacrifice pleases God have no understanding of the Father..." And even more, "By teaching that Jesus died in agony for the sins of the world and encouraging his followers to die as he did, certain leaders send them on a path toward destruction - while encouraging them with the false promise that they will be resurrected from death to eternal life in the flesh." The Gospel of Judas teaches that at the moment of death the human body dies and there is no resurrection of the flesh. Eternal life has to do with understanding our spiritual, non-physical connection to God. Judas says that the crucifixion of Jesus demonstrates that the death of the body is not an end of our "real" life. "What dies is only the mortal body, not the living spirit."

INSPIRATION: Score 10

Inspiration from this work does not come in the conventional manner, as an emotional surge. Rather, it comes as a subtle opportunity to forgive Judas and to release him from the judgments we hold against him (and thus, against ourselves)

The reader is invited to perceive Judas Iscariot in a new, uplifting and more loving way. Instead of meeting him as the predictable and villainous betrayer, we are re-introduced to him as the only one who really understands and gets the message that Jesus was trying to deliver: that suffering is not necessary; that suffering has no value; that suffering can be transcended. Judas is characterized as the only disciple who is ready and able to hear the mysteries of the kingdom: "...that there is another glorious divine realm above the material world, and an immortal holy race exists above the perishable human race."

PRACTICALITY OR RELEVANCE: Score 10

Anything that forces us to open the mind and look more closely at fundamental religious beliefs to see if they still make sense is highly relevant. This is because our beliefs guide our actions and our actions determine our life experience. The authors tell us that over the past 40 years "we have gained access to over forty gospels, letters, and other early Christian works." The Gospel of Judas is as important today as it was when it was written.

READABILITY: Score 4

Reading Judas is scholarly, well-written and well-researched. But that said, the actual reading experience is more like forcing yourself to take medicine or to do a homework assignment. You know it's good for you, but you don't really enjoy it. Because of that, this book would best be suited for those who are more intellectually inclined than those who are looking for a quick and easy read.

TOTAL SCORE: 34

AVERAGE SCORE: 8.2

62 of 69 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Well written and Informative March 8, 2007

By Dr. James Gardner VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Elaine Pagels and Karen King are two of the most prolific scholars on early Christianity and more specifically, the Gnostic movement. Separately they have penned nearly a dozen books. So what a gift it is when the two of them collaborate on a new book about the Gospel of Judas.

After last year's circus surrounding the release of the Gospel of Judas (GoJ), Pagels and King turn their attention not to the historical information about the major players, Jesus and Judas, about whom the Gospel tells us very little new, but rather to the purposes of the author of the Gospel. They identify the GoJ as another example of the "Jesus is in charge" theme which increases in emphasis as one moves from Mark to Matthew to Luke and then John. Indeed, they believe that Judas is the most extreme example of Jesus orchestrating his own death. Yet while the catholic Christians did this to keep their Godman all-knowing, Pagels and King submit that the author of Judas is devaluing the physical body and emphasizing the spiritual one, and hence Jesus dies so that he can live. It's a subtle difference but a very meaningful one, and Pagels and King make their point slowly, methodically, and firmly. This fundamental difference in outlook also lies behind what they describe as the "anger" in the GoJ, anger that the catholic Christians are acting against the interests of the true Christ by adopting the suits and trappings of the physical world.

The book is extremely short. It is divided into 2 parts. Part 1 (Pagels and King) barely covers 100 pages, and presents their thesis. Part 2 (King) is a new translation of GoJ with lots of comments on the translation. The comments are particularly useful.

The book is not without flaws. Here's a few:

"...after Jesus's shocking arrest, torture, and slow horrifying public execution...(p. 4)." There was nothing shocking about his arrest. It was anticipated by Jesus and by the high priests for some time. And his death was hardly "slow," at least not from a comparative analysis. Most crucified victims spent days on the cross. Jesus was up and down in three hours.

"Rumors that close companions, like Mary of Magdala...(p. 5)." Her name was Mary called the Magdalene. We expect the newspapers to talk about Mary of Magdala, but scholars should be more exact in their naming traditions. We are fairly certain that the town of Magdala never existed, so Mary of Magdala makes no senses as a person's name.

"Josephus...mentions Jesus as a notorious troublemaker... (p. 12)." Nonsense. Almost every scholar maintains that this is a later Christian addition, and not part of the original text.

"...the Gospel of John had identified Judas as a thieving, greedy man who criticized others to display his own piety (John 12:4-6)...(p. 26)." No. The passage from John identifies Judas as a thief, but never says anything about being "greedy" nor anything about "criticizing others to display his own piety" Check it out yourself.

While these are flaws, they are not germane to the main thesis of the book.

All things considered, this book is the best book to come out of the GoJ discovery. It is well written, informative, and makes a good case. Though short, the comments section in the translation part of the book is a major contribution, as is their theory of the context in which the book is written.

The book is probably too advanced for beginning students, not because of its writing style, but because it assumes a level of understanding of the canonical gospels and Gnosticism that most beginning students don't have.