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Last update - 08:54 17/04/2006And the traitors will become heroesBy Guy G. StroumsaThe well-timed publication - just prior to the Easter holiday - of the Gospel According to Judas Iscariot is an exciting event, not only in the world of the researchers but also in the minds of hundreds of millions who were educated to believe Judas Iscariot is the archetype of the traitor. Judas, a disciple of Jesus who turned him in to the priests and the elders according to the canonical Gospels, is perceived as having betrayed the messiah, and he is also called the son of Satan. Therefore he is identified with the Jews and hence, of course, has played a symbolic role in Christian anti-Semitism throughout the generations. The dramatic discovery has been published only now, but the text was discovered in Fayum, Egypt back in the 1970s, and has had many adventures since then. The excitement that the discovery is arousing is comparable to that aroused by the discovery of a new star by means of a powerful telescope - when a new technology (or luck) confirms the conclusion that the astronomers had reached prior based on calculations alone. After all, we have long known about the existence of this lost gospel and therefore it was possible to guess its contents, more or less. Good is evilIrenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons, was able to confirm in his major book “Against All Heresies,” written circa the year 180 C.E., the existence of a Gospel According to Judas Iscariot in one of the Gnostic sects, which he called the “Cainites.” The members of the sect interpreted the biblical figures in the opposite of the usual way: They considered the protagonists (like Noah and Moses) to be evil and the antagonists (like Korach and Cain) to be good. Moreover, the God of the Bible, the Creator of the universe, whom they called Hysteria (from the Greek for “womb” - this may be derived from the Hebrew epithet rahman, “merciful,” which is etymologically related to the word for womb) was perceived by them as evil. According to Irenaeus, these Gnostics’ antinomian approach led them to preach wild sexual behavior, aimed at disobeying God. When engaging in forbidden sexual relations, the Cainites were supposed to declare: “O, Angel, I am using your creation. O Ruler, I am carrying out your action!” The fact that Judas Iscariot, the traitor who handed Jesus over to his death, was the hero of this sect did not improve its reputation among the various Christian churches. In addition to the four canonical Gospels, during the first centuries of Christianity dozens of other texts were given that title and attributed to various disciples or associates of Jesus, including Thomas, Mary, Jacob and Phillip. Gospels were also written according to the Egyptians, Hebrews, the Evangelist of Truth and more. These evangelical books were defined before the end of the second century as apocryphal to the crystallizing canon of the New Testament, and their authors were labeled as heretics. Therefore most of them have not survived, or have survived only in translation - not in their Greek originals. The discovery of every such text helps us draw the portrait of early Christianity more precisely (or less vaguely). The text under discussion depicts a conversation between Jesus and Judas three days before Passover and the death of Jesus. Jesus reveals to his close disciple the secrets of the heavenly kingdom and asks Judas to hand him over to the authorities and thus “sacrifice the man that clothes me.” Only thus, with the help of Judas, was it possible to realize the divine plan. The true essence of Jesus is entirely spiritual: It is his soul, and it is imprisoned, supposedly, in his material body. This anthropological dualism was already present in the Orphic movement in Greece during the first half of the first century B.C.E. (“somo sema” - “The body is a tomb,” said Plato), and it is one of the building blocks of the radical dualistic interpretation of early Christianity. This kind of interpretation of Christianity was developed by the stream called Gnosis (“knowledge” in Greek), that is - knowledge of the secret of redemption, which is hidden from most people. This stream, in different forms and sects, was the main challenge to the crystallization of Christianity in the second century. Jesus laughsA striking characteristic of the new text is the fact that it depicts Jesus as laughing a lot. This is a laughter of superiority and scorn for the blindness of others - including his disciples, who do not understand the essence of things, nor the significance of their acts. This laughter is typical of the figure of the Gnostic Jesus, and is familiar to us from other Gnostic texts, especially those found toward the end of World War II at Nag Hammadi, south of Fayum. The Nag Hammadi “library” is comprised of approximately 50 Gnostic texts in 13 codices in the Coptic language (into which books had been translated from the original Greek). The texts had not been known beforehand. The discovery at Nag Hammadi, which is similar in importance to the discovery of the scrolls at Qumran, allowed us to understand rather precisely the processes of the emergence of the Gnosis and the details of its extensive mythology. The new text, along with three other texts that were found in the same codex, is a significant addition to the Nag Hammadi discovery. Jesus laughs at the sight of the stupidity of the “rulers” (Archons) - the angels of evil. These act under the command of the god Saklas (the Fool - related to the Hebrew word ksil), who is the God of Israel, the creator of our material and evil world. Saklas and his cohorts intend to crucify Jesus, but they succeed only in killing the material body, an empty shell that the spiritual redeemer succeeded in exiting before the calamity. Therefore Jesus laughs. Parallel to IsaacSome time ago I suggested the hypothesis that Jesus’ laughter in the Gnostic texts hints at constructing the figure of Jesus as a parallel to the biblical Isaac (whose name comes from the Hebrew root for laughter), who is also saved at the last minute from an attempt to sacrifice him. The new text supports this hypothesis, both because of the centrality of laughter and because it includes a probing discussion of sacrifice in general, and human sacrifice in particular. The possibility of seeing Jesus as an avatar of Isaac hints that the first Gnostics were Jews, and that at the basis of their interpretation stood the difficulty of acknowledging that the messiah died (and in such a humiliating way). The new discovery helps us draw a more precise picture of the complex religious situation that existed at the inception of Christianity. However, there is of course nothing in the Gospel According to Judas that brings us closer to the historical figures of Judas or Jesus. There is also no basis to the claim that had this text not disappeared for 1,700 years, Christian anti-Semitism would not have developed like it did. Judas is a positive figure for only one marginal sect, which was defined as heretical and whose opinions were considered false and shocking to the major Christian theologians as early as the second century. Furthermore, the Gnostics’ attitude toward the God of Israel as an inferior deity and the Prophets of Israel as his minions is a clear example of what can be called metaphysical anti-Semitism. Traitor or hero, evildoer or righteous - there are few options, but they are dizzying, in the relations between the Devil and God. Literature is perhaps able to absorb today some of the echoes of the early heresies, and thus Marcel Pagnol in his play “Judas” and Jorge Luis Borges in his story “Three Versions of Judas” succeeded in our own times in reconstructing the theology of the Gospel According to Judas: The Messiah only appears to be suffering, but in secret he is laughing and announcing, “In the Kingdom of Heaven, the traitors will become heroes.”
והיו הבוגדים לגיבורים
( מס' מילים - 919, מס' כתבה - 1261420)
מתוך חלק תרבות וספרו
מאת סטרומזה גדליה
אין בבשורה על פי יהודה, שהתפרסמה עתה, שום דבר שיקרב אותנו לדמותם ההיסטורית של יהודה או של ישוע.
גם אין שחר לטענה שאילולי נעלם חיבור זה במשך 1,700 מאות שנים לא היתה מתפתחת האנטישמיות הנוצרית
כפי שהתפתחה. יהודה הוא דמות חיובית רק לבני כת שולית אחת, אשר הוגדרה כמינות
אירנאוס, הבישוף של ליאון, יודע לספר בספרו הגדול נגד ההרזיות (אשר נכתב ב-180 לערך) על קיומו של
אוונגליון על פי יהודה איש קריות אצל אחת הכיתות הגנוסטיות, כת שהוא מכנה "בני קין". את דמויות המקרא
מפרשים אנשי הכת בצורה הפוכה: "הטובים" (כמו נח ומשה) נחשבים אצלם לרעים, והרעים (כמו קורח וקין) -
לטובים. יותר מכך: אלוהי המקרא, בורא עולם, הנקרא בפיהם היסטרה (רחם, ביוונית: ויתכן ששם זה גזור
מהכינוי "רחמן"), נתפש בעיניהם כרע. על פי אירנאוס, גישתם האנטינומית של גנוסטים אלה מביאה אותם לדגול
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