Loading...In my previous post, which started out talking about non-disclosure agreements, I began to explain a time when I myself had to sign one, in reference to the Gospel of Judas Iscariot. To make sense of that, I decided I needed to give the fuller story about how I got involved with the Gospel to begin with. That takes a bit of telling. It all started with an odd phone call, recounted yesterday, in which a distant friend asked me about a Gospel of Judas in fall of 2004, before we had (or knew we had) any such thing.
After that call I decided to see what we *did* know about the Gospel of Judas. I looked up what Irenaeus, the late-second-century heresiologist (= heresy hunter) had to say about it. He refers to it in his discussion of the Cainites, a group of Gnostics that revered Cain, the son of Adam and Eve.
So, OK, why would any group of Christians revere the first bad guy of the Bible, who committed fratricide, murdering his brother Abel in cold blood simply out of jealousy? For Irenaeus, it was all because of their overarching theology. As Gnostics, the Cainites believed….
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It is a great thing to have such knowledge freely available. Keep up the great work!
You should write movie scripts 🙂
Hmm. So what you thought about a Gospel of Judas at this point turned out to be incorrect, right? Because in the actual Gospel of Judas, Jesus *wants* Judas to “betray” him, to free him from his earthly body.
If “all the bad guys” were perceived as “good guys” – and presumably, the reverse – how did Jesus himself fit into this? Did you think, at this point, that the admirers of Judas perceived Jesus as a “bad guy” or as a “misunderstood good guy” (which was seemingly their actual belief)?
Yes, Jesus was the good guy, obviously. But it’s because he did not come from the God of the Bible.
This is painful Dr. Ehrman 🙂 … And the next episode will be when??
Bart, you wrote: “According to Irenaeus, Judas Iscariot in fact was the only one among Jesus’ followers who understood the truth …”
Certainly, you meant something like, “According to Irenaeus, the Cainites believed that Judas Iscariot in fact was the only one among Jesus’ followers who understood the truth …”
Yup!
what did the cainites think of the devil? did they believe in the devil? if they did, was he a good guy?
I don’t think we know!