ROME (CNS): An Australian Jesuit professor based in Rome has dismissed the alleged significance of a newly uncovered gnostic writing that paints Judas in a more sympathetic light than his well known role as Jesus’ betrayer.
The Gospel of Judas, long thought to have been lost, is a 3rd century Coptic translation of what had originally been written in Greek before 180 AD.
The find was touted at an April 6 media conference in Washington as one of the three most significant discoveries of sacred writings of the past century, along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, thousands of fragments of biblical and early Jewish documents discovered between 1947 and 1956, and the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of 50 texts found in Egypt in 1945.
In it, Jesus said Judas would “exceed all” of the other disciples, “for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me” – a reference to Judas’ impending betrayal of Jesus.
Judas is also portrayed as the only disciple who knows Jesus’ true identity.
But Australian Jesuit Father Gerald O’Collins said the Gospel of Judas was unimportant to most Christians when it was written hundreds of years ago and it is unimportant today.
Fr O’Collins, a longtime professor of Christology at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, said the text, like the gospels of Mary Magdalene and Philip, “does not merit the name ‘Gospel'”.
“To give Judas greater credit,” the Jesuit said, the gnostics “portray Jesus giving him secret knowledge. It was a nice try”, but there is no evidence to support the claim.
“It was junk then and it is junk now,” he said.
