Judas Iscariot? Write a gospel?
By: Steve Singleton
A new gospel?
The manuscript discovered in a cave in Egypt that bears the title “Gospel of Judas” definitely has no connection with the historical person Judas Iscariot, or Jesus and the other apostles for that matter. It’s text is in Coptic, an ancient language of Egypt, and dated to about 300 C.E. If it is a translation of a Greek original, which has not been proven, the original probably comes from the second century, around 100 years after Jesus Christ was crucified and arose from the dead. You can read the English translation for yourself at the National Geographic website.
Just another Gnostic wannabe
The content of the so-called “Gospel of Judas” bears all the telltale signs of being a Gnostic text such as those common in Egypt during that period. A whole library of similar documents were uncovered at Nag Hammadi in upper Egypt in 1945. They share with the “Gospel of Judas” typical Gnostic features: emphasis on finding salvation through attaining knowledge, a hidden knowledge available only to a select few; a strong dualism between the physical and the spiritual realms; a series of intermediaries between the transcendent God and lowly humans, including the god that created us.