I was so excited to see this interview.
I love Elaine Pagels. I read her book on the gnostic gospels at least once a year to remind myself not to accept with qualification the received wisdom concerning Christ, the life of Christ, his mission, and his resurrection. The people who interpreted the Bible got the good news from sources with political as well as religious agenda. Putting aside the question of whether the Bible should be accepted as the Word of God, direct from the source, the word of its interpreters (including the early church fathers) certainly does not. Why don't people realize this? And why aren't people who call themselves Christians or christians as hungry as I am to know the details of Christ's life from every possible angle?
I know the answer, mind you: it's because conventional Christians know so little about history, or about the state of the world during Christ's time, about his circumstances, the dangerous and unstable political situation in Judea and Galilee, or anything else that they haven't received via often unqualified Biblical interpreters that they have only the haziest idea of the man who allegedly stilled the water, walked on it, survived or was revived after Crucifixion or came back from the dead, and who referred to himself as "the Son of Man."
They don't know the significance of his calling himself this, the difference between his calling himself the Son of Man and between those who called him the king of the Jews, or why it makes a difference what he really meant. They don't know the significance of Pilate's writing, "The king of the Jews" on the tablet placed over his head at Crucifixion or why the priests objected to this. They don't know the political or religious significance of his ride into the city, his driving the moneychangers from the temple, or his mission to the poor and outcast. They don't even know that Jesus is just Greek for "Yeshua" or "Joshua." Furthermore, they don't want to know.
And the reason they don't is that they are afraid that understanding Christ might interfere with their precious "personal relationship"-----as if human beings, gods throughout history, and God himself weren't perpetually anxious and hungry to be understood. They want to worship him but not to understand him and are afraid of what they might find out if they let in any information that wasn't included by the very politically driven Council of Nicaea 300 years after his life ended.
The discovery of the Gospel of Judas shocked and delighted me, since it shows that at one point in history people were as concerned as I was with the anomaly of poor Judas, whom even as a child I could see was personally commanded by Christ---I always felt that this was absolutely clear, cf. the Gospel of John----to sell him out because only if this were done could Christ's own plan be realized. Somebody had to do it. Later, when I studied the Gospels and their relation to earlier text and prophecies it seemed clear that this was the case.
And now, the Gospel of Judas! I can't believe it. It's hard to keep from feeling it is a personal shout-out to me from my hero the historical Jesus (in whom I completely believe), because that's what being a christian or Christian does for you.
[quote begins from Salon, Gospel According to Judas, by Steve Paulson]
Rumors about the gospel have circulated for centuries. Early church fathers called it a "very dangerous, blasphemous, horrendous gospel," according to historian Elaine Pagels...
"The Gospel of Judas really has been a surprise in many ways. For one thing, there's no other text that suggests that Judas Iscariot was an intimate, trusted disciple, one to whom Jesus revealed the secrets of the kingdom, and that conversely, the other disciples were misunderstanding what he meant by the gospel. So that's quite startling....
"[J]ohn's [Gospel]... suggest[s] that Jesus not only anticipated what was going to happen but initiated it. The Gospel of John says that he told Judas to go out and do what he had to do, which Jesus knew was to betray him. So the Gospel of Judas just takes the suggestion one step further. Jesus not only knew what was going to happen but initiated the action.....
"You realize that whoever wrote [the Gospel of Judas] was a very angry person. And we were asking, What's going on here? Why is he so angry?W]e discovered that it's very dangerous to be a follower of Jesus in the generations after his death. You know, they say his disciple Peter was crucified upside down. And Paul was probably beheaded by the Romans. James was lynched by a crowd, and so were Stephen and other followers. So leaders of this movement were in great danger. And other Christians were also in danger of being arrested and killed because they followed Jesus. The question for many of them was, What do you do if you're arrested?...
"[T]he Gospel of Judas is a kind of protest literature. It's challenging leaders of the church. Here the leaders are personified as disciples who are encouraging people to get killed, to "die for God," as they called martyrdom. This gospel is challenging them and saying, when you encourage young people to die for God, you're really complicit in murder....
"But this author is saying, wait a minute. If you think God wants his son to be tortured and killed before he'll forgive people their sins, what kind of God do you have in mind? Is this the God who didn't want animals to be sacrificed in the temple anymore? So this author's asking, isn't God a loving father? Isn't that what Jesus taught? Why are we saying that God requires his son to die for the sins of the world? So it's a challenge to the whole idea of atonement, and the idea that Christians -- when they worship -- eat bread and drink wine as if it were the body and blood of Christ. This person sees that whole thing as a celebration of violence....
"It contradicts everything we know about Christianity. But there's a lot we don't know about Christianity. There are different ways of understanding the death of Jesus that have been buried and suppressed. This author suggests that God does not require sacrifice to forgive sin, and that the message of Jesus is that we come from God and we go back to God, that we all live in God. It's not about bloody sacrifice for forgiveness of sins. It suggests that Jesus' death demonstrates that, essentially and spiritually, we're not our bodies. Even when our bodies die, we go to live in God."
[quote ends]
Note that this is what many Christians of the "And He Walks with Me and He Talks with Me" persuasion believe anyway. This is what many Christians have inferred from the Resurrection of Christ. Unfortunately, few of these people take a step back and ask the questions raised by the unknown author of the Gospel of Judas 60 years after the death of Jesus. Why view the crucifixion of Christ as a sacrifice to a hitherto unappeasable and unfatherly God rather than a demo of what death does----and does not---mean?
As far as I can tell, there is a strong unacknowledged gnostic streak in most christians today. They think they have direct access to God. They think it's important to "be still and know." They just don't want anymore information than they already have, thank you very much. They're afraid----oh ye of little faith!---that anything new might force them to discard their belief.
I love Pagels also for what she has to say about science and spirituality. Her husband, the physicist Heinz Pagels, wrote eloquently on the mysteries which the study of science constantly reveals. And she sums up Richard Dawkins---whose pronouncements I just can't take seriously; I'm sorry-----thus:
[quote begins from Salon, Gospel According to Judas, by Steve Paulson]
Well, Dawkins loves to play village atheist. He's such a rationalist that the God that he's debunking is not one that most of the people I study would recognize. I mean, is there some great big person up there who made the universe out of dirt? Probably not.
[quote ends]
And, in fact, what Pagels says about Dawkins and about the seeming as opposed to the actual disjunct between science and faith is consistent with what I've said myself to myself and to others----and what most intelligent Christians I know believe.
I certainly believe that anyone who claims to want to know Jesus shouldn't be afraid to look at him through the eyes of the christian splinter groups in the early generations after his death. What POSSIBLE harm could it do to you or him? It's either true or not true and you really don't have to decide one way or the other; what you think is true has absolutely no bearing on what is or what is not (something that religious people don't seem to understand).
But aren't you hungry for any glimpse of the man you can get, from the earliest sources you can find? Don't you long to know more or to understand what he meant to the people of his time? You're free to discount it, to decide for yourself that the unknown writer of the Gospel of Judas really did not get it.
No? If not, are you really sure you love Jesus? Or do you just really love your received idea of him?
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