We had a family night and after the playground, we ventured to Borders to use some of our Discover card payback. To the left of the entrance upon walking inside was the huge display of best-selling books. Not that the DaVinci Code needs hype, but the paperback version is out about the time the motion picture is opening. Crowded around the top ten are combinations of DaVinci copycats, spin-offs, critiques, segues, and explanations. I did consider this a moment, asking myself why. One answer and only one answer filled my mind immediately—people are looking for a reason to disregard Jesus. I read just this week that some schools are attempting to take BC and AD off the calendar and to give it a different, more innocuous designation.
About every time I have one of these nights, Bart Ehrman makes another appearance. If you read me regularly, you remember that last time it was his book, Misquoting Jesus. He comes back to us again with the Gospel of Judas. Two books about the Gospel of Judas sat in the most prominent bookstore display. For one of them, Bart Ehrman wrote the introduction. In the other, the one containing the English translation of the Gospel of Judas, Bart Ehrman writes a 30-40 page chapter, explaining his interpretation of its importance relative to the history of early Christianity. Bart Ehrman is the very liberal professor at UNC, Chapel Hill, Moody-Wheaton-Princeton graduate, apostate, and prize student of Bruce Metzger. While incarcerated an hour at Borders I read his intro of the one book and then his chapter of the actual Judas translation, while I drank a Grande Hazelnut Mocharoon Javakula Decaf. Yes, all those are one beverage. It was good; how good would require a separate blog. I didn’t buy the Gospel of Judas, one Ehrman book should be anyone’s lifetime quota. So what you will read here is off-the-top-of-my-head. It also might keep you from having to read anything else about this, which could possibly greatly benefit your life.
What is the Gospel of Judas? Iraeneus was an ante-Nicean patristic writing in the late 2nd century, among his writings are five anti-heresy books. He explained, negated, argued against, and warned about every heresy existent at that time. One heretical book he mentions is the Gospel of Judas. Iraeneus ridicules it in his writings. It’s pretty much the only mention you find of it. No one had seen the book in over 1500 years. Only rumors had floated. One day in the last year or two Bart Ehrman gets a phone call from a female archaeologist friend. She asked him if he knew about this book. He vaguely remembered it. When she calls him back a short period of time later, she asks if he will be a part of a team to deal with this copy they found unearthed in Egypt. It’s written in Coptic. Ehrman suggests getting someone expert in the field of ancient Coptic manuscripts. He must have forgotten about me. Well, no, I don’t know Coptic. Ehrman, of course, loves the Gospel of Judas. He says its the top archaelogical find in the last 60 years, the best since the Nag Hammadi texts found in 1945. Um, how about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Well, Ehrman gets carried away on projects with his name attached.
The Gospel of Judas (GJ) is a gnostic gospel. Ehrman says there are hundreds of gospels, but the ones we have just happen to have passed through the grid of popularity for inclusion in the canon. In GJ, Judas is not a villain, but a hero. Judas was a hero to the gnostics. Why? Well, they believed that true salvation came from throwing off the evil, vile material body in which we inhabit to allow the spark of divinity which some of us possess to go back to the rest of god. GJ presents Judas as the only true enlightened one of the twelve. Gnosticism is about having secret knowledge, the knowledge spiritually that is exclusive and very secret.
What we find out from the gnostics is that the God of the OT was really not the most powerful, nor was he really that important as a deity. He was several emanations away from the very powerful deity, and the God of the OT, according to the other deities, did something very bad when He created the physical universe. The gnostic “christians” believed that Jesus was more divine than other human beings, had a much larger spark, perhaps a flame of divinity, and he also really understood the secret of salvation was throwing off the material flesh. Jesus himself was the fewest emanations removed from the most powerful spiritual deities. According to gnostics, people either have no or varying degrees of divinity. The ones with none, like ants and worms and birds and dogs, just turn back to dirt upon dying. The people with divinity release theirs into the ultimate deity in pure spiritual existence, unshackled by human flesh. The non-canonical gnostic gospels, pagan and secular writings, taught these doctrines in the first and second centuries.
Anyway, back to Judas. According to his gospel, Judas, a gnostic himself, unlike the other disciples, understood these secrets Jesus was telling. For this reason, Jesus worked the most closely with Judas, told Judas that he was going to be hated by the other disciples, but he was going to have to endure that in order to work with Christ in furthering this important gnostic agenda. His betrayal of Jesus was not actually a betrayal, but actually an elaborate plan to deliver Jesus from his bondage within human flesh, hence providing a model of salvation for others with a similar spark of divinity as He.
Men who interpret GJ like Ehrman say that gnosticism is just another branch of religion like Judaism, Christianity, and others. They say that if the gnostic ideas had won out in the first and second century competition, that gnosticism would have gone on as a legitimate version of Christianity. They say that gnosticism didn’t gain a foothold among the most powerful Christian leaders, so these gospels, including GJ, were held back from legitimate propagation. This, of course is a bunch of garbage. Ehrman himself provides a modern portrait of Judas Iscariot, rejecting the truth of Christ and the Gospel because of his own faithlessness, he now extracts as much cash as possible from modern-day doubters and scoffers to compensate for the lost years he fooled himself into thinking he had the real thing. If he isn’t going to have peace, he at least will get his thirty pieces. Doesn’t that sound like Judas himself?
Whoever reads this blog; a person cut and pasted this to the comments. I didn’t publish it, because I wanted to introduce it—but this is what he/she wrote or pasted:
I have produced comprehensive and verifiable proof that the original pre-Christian Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) was a symbolically encrypted wisdom text that was stolen and modified by the founders of Christianity. I demonstrate a series of specific and undeniable proofs of verifiable fraud in the Christianized Book of Revelation, which also appear throughout the New Testament.
Furthermore, I have produced stunning and comprehensive proof that the ancient symbology used to construct sealed Hebrew texts is an ancient philosophical technology.
The ancient symbolism used in The Apocalypse and other Hebrew prophecies and wisdom texts predates Christianity, Judaism, modern secret societies, and mystery schools by thousands of years. While in the hands of Christianity, The Apocalypse and its symbology have been purposely misinterpreted, recast, and misrepresented. The original Hebrew document was a multi-purpose narrative constructed using layered and synchronized ancient wisdom symbolism. Its true purposes, features, and functionality are detailed in my book, further demonstrating that it was a symbolically encrypted Hebrew wisdom text encoding prophecy, philosophy, and scientific wisdom that was stolen and fraudulently modified by the founders of Christianity.
If your goal is to seek the truth then read my book and direct other Christians to read it also. Challenge them to prove me wrong. The E-Book is a FREE download and I make no money from it or the paperback. Not only do I talk the talk, I walk the walk.
GNOSTICISM DOES STILL EXIST EVERYONE! IN MANY DIFFERENT FORMS.
GNOSTICISM DOES STILL EXIST EVERYONE! IN MANY DIFFERENT FORMS.
Great (imagine an eye-rolling emoticon here…) – truth still exists too! I would rather stick with that.
Kent, it’s just another sign of the times – I used your blog name/passage (“What is truth?”) to preach on yesterday, among other passages. Proverbs says, “Buy the truth, and sell it not.”
Most people no longer place any value on truth. On that note, Revelation 3:14, dealing with these endtimes has Jesus identifying Himself to our churches as “the Amen, the Faithful and True Witness.” In a time when many will even question if there is such a thing as absolute truth – Jesus says, “I Am the Truth; My Word is truth.”
While I may not agree with every single thing you post (especially landmarkism), I do appreciate that you have “bought the truth, and are not selling it”! Reading your blogs is a breath of fresh air. God bless!
This comment is in reference to your introduction.
All the hype about The DaVinci Code, A.D. and B.C., The Gospel of Judas, ad infinitum besides trying to disregard Jesus also proves how powerful He is. He is the only One that gets this kind of attention almost 2000 years after he died, arose, and ascended victoriously to heaven! Just more anecdotal (is that the right word?) proof of His deity.
What’s landmarkism? And are you one of those? Oh my.
🙂
First question is serious. Second one depends on the answer to the first one.
Hey Jeff. Landmarkism. It really does depend on how it is defined. From what I know, the ones people originally called landmarkers, J. R. Graves and his guys, didn’t even believe what people say they do, that is, a chain link succession back to Jesus. They just believed in some visible succession and actual perpetuity of the church.
I think Joey probably thinks I’m landmark because I am local-only in my ecclesiology, which is the grammatical historical interpretation of Scripture. The universal church is a Platonic/Augustinian invention that was passed down through the reformers. My actual position is most often called spiritual kinship, the position of Armitage of the two volume set, History of Baptists. I also believe churches should start churches, that people should be baptized with church authority, closed communion since the table is the communion of the body of Christ and the body is local only. We only accept transfers from real churches. That’s about it.
Excuse me, I said Joey. A Joey has been writing me and we have a Joey in the church. Jerry. Jerry, Jerry, Jerry. Sorry Jerry.
Great post pastor, I sure get a kick out of what people have to say and I got lost after Landmarkism. How could people believe such garbage?
Thanks Brother Jim. Obviously, they are lost, minds desolate, speaking, of course, of Ehrman and people like him.
Perhaps I misunderstood some of your comments. I used that term because one of the first articles of yours I read linked to an article on the KJV that seemed to positively refer to “Landmarkism” and the author (Ross, I think it was) stated that he was from the same church as you (if I read it correctly) – so I took that as the position of your church. If I was wrong or misunderstood what he was saying, I am sorry about that. In light of that article, I probably took some of your comments in a way other than you intended them. Thank you for clarifying.
I do agree with what you have posted above, and have read the Intro and first couple of chapters of Armitage’s book (my webpartner on our message board has been posting the chapters of this book online – click on my name to go to our Study Board) – and I would say that is where I stand too. I believe there has always been a remnant, but a remnant based on doctrine, not necessarily on a visible succession of churches.
I was really hoping you would have given us the link for the free download of this man’s book!!
I can’t wait to read his book so I can find truth! Just from reading his comments, it is clear this is a man of great intelligence. A man who has obviously found truth.(Just kidding of course!)
Great post! The Error of Ehrman. Maybe we can call him Errorman — just a thought.
Great post! The error of Erhman. I think we should call his name Errorman, but that is just a thought…wishful thinking.
Well, Pastor Kent, I see you still have your following be it pro or con and with words that are just mind boggling…and yes, that is a word. I heard of the book of Judas some time ago, but didnt even give it serious thought. If I wanted to read about what a traitor and coward had to say perhaps I would read some antiwar sympathy seeker or listen to a Jesse Jackson speech. Now that is real garbage.
Ruth