The most recently discovered gnostic gospel

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Product Description

For 1,600 years its message lay hidden. When the bound papyrus pages of this lost gospel finally reached scholars who could unlock its meaning, they were astounded. Here was a gospel that had not been seen since the early days of Christianity, and which few experts had even thought existed–a gospel told from the perspective of Judas Iscariot, history’s ultimate traitor. And far from being a villain, the Judas that emerges in its pages is a hero.

In this radical reinterpretation, Jesus asks Judas to betray him. In contrast to the New Testament Gospels, Judas Iscariot is presented as a role model for all those who wish to be disciples of Jesus. He is the one apostle who truly understands Jesus.

This volume is the first publication of the remarkable gospel since it was condemned as heresy by early Church leaders, most notably by St. Irenaeus, in 180. Hidden away in a cavern in Middle Egypt, the codex (or book) containing the gospel was discovered by farmers in the 1970s. In the intervening years the papyrus codex was bought and sold by antiquities traders, hidden away, and carried across three continents, all the while suffering damage that reduced much of it to fragments. In 2001, it finally found its way into the hands of a team of experts who would painstakingly reassemble and restore it.

The Gospel of Judas has been translated from its original Coptic in clear prose, and is accompanied by commentary that explains its fascinating history in the context of the early Church, offering a whole new way of understanding the message of Jesus Christ.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47461 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-06
• Released on: 2006-04-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

Review
"The long journey of the codex that ended up…at the Citibank…began in caves along the Nile, according to…The Lost Gospel." -- Newsday

"The story of the gospel’s rediscovery and salvation [The Lost Gospel by Herbert Krosney] reads like a Hollywood mystery." -- The Boston Globe

Review
“The story of the gospel’s rediscovery and salvation [The Lost Gospel by Herbert Krosney] reads like a Hollywood mystery.” –The Boston Globe

“The long journey of the codex that ended up in box No. 395 at the Citibank…began in the caves along the Nile…when peasants discovered leather-bound papyrus written in an indecipherable language, according to Herbert Krosney, author of The Lost Gospel.” –Newsday

Jesus says to Judas: “Lift up your eyes and look at the cloud and the light within it and the stars surrounding it. The star that leads the way is your star.” –from The Gospel of Judas

“(The Gospel of Judas) is one of the greatest historical discoveries of the twentieth century. It rivals the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Gospels of Nag Hammadi.” –Bart D. Ehrman, author of Lost Christianities

“The discovery of the Gospel of Judas is astonishing.” –Elaine Pagels

“The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot…” –The Gospel of Judas

About the Author
Rodolphe Kasser, Ph.D., a professor emeritus on the Faculty of Arts at the University of Geneva, is one of the world’s leading Coptologists. He has organized the restoration and prepared the editio princeps of Codex Tchacos, containing the Gospel of Judas and three other Coptic Gnostic texts.

Marvin Meyer, Ph.D., Griset Professor of Bible and Christian Studies at Chapman University and Director of the Chapman University Albert Schweitzer Institute, is one of the foremost scholars on Gnosticism, the Nag Hammadi Library and texts about Jesus outside the New Testament.

Gregor Wurst, Ph.D., is professor of Ecclesiastical History and Patristics at the University of Augsburg, Germany.

Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D., is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an expert on early Christianity.

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Customer Reviews

A view into alternate cosmologies
Review of "The Gospel of Judas"

Taken at face value, the Gospel of Judas is a disturbing book, largely so because a first impression must recognize the work as a "forgery," and further, one perpetrated not many decades after the death of Jesus. For, after all, the first "success" in marketing a written account of the doings of Jesus did not happen, historically, until Paul wrote his epistles, some decades after Judas died. There was no way Judas might have left behind a "Gospel," since the marketing success of Paul's writings was still many decades in the future. But such a modern interpretation would blind a reader to the content and motivation behind what the work appears to have attempted. If we switch perspectives, to possibly one that more closely reflects thinking such as we expect of Carl Jung, then the parameters that catch the reader's attention are altogether different. In the modern world an authoritarian perspective (and Judas adopts such a one) no longer competes for attention in a multidimensional world of the Internet and high finance, both sources associated more intimately with possible future origins of human salvation.

Yet were one to look at the Gospel of Judas on its own terms, accepting it as a search that is rigorously Gnostic, in the sense Churchton attributes to widely diverse sources of insight during the early Greek millennium. However uncomfortable a reader may feel within the constraints of Gnostic thinking, once that modality of thinking is accepted, then what the Gospel offers is a surprisingly seductive parallel to our modern searches for a cosmology, much as today one attributes to astronomy! What differs between Judas and Hawking is the lower bounds (mathematicians would call on a boundary value problem, while Jung might look at an "Urquelle des Denkens") of insight. But in the days of ancient Greek thinking, insights were thought to originate entirely from human sources, in terms, possibly, of essences a favored mind (accessing divine sources) might perceive, yet always from a source that was itself endowed with a will, much as experience attributes to a will observed in human existence.

From such a perspective, a Gnostic cosmology is a remarkably sophisticated edifice, rather closer in its perception to the writings of Carl Jung than to the writings of Saint Irenaeus (bishop of Lyons, about 180 C.E.), to whom historians attribute the definitive configuration of the New Testament as promulgated by the Council of Nicaea during the fourth century. What looms fascinating from what has survived in this Gospel is the demand for precision of concepts, as the Gnostics seem to have perceived such an imperative. Precision of that order is not the stuff of political mandates by which, during the time of Irenaeus he believed to represent the more pressing concern, if Christianity was to survive the tribulations of the more powerful Roman oppression.

Quite apart from issues of where, today, a reader might perceive his own commitment, the Gospel of Judas expresses and pursues a search for a cosmology, some two millennia in the past, to which once one believed that humanity might willingly place their commitment. A historically insightful book.

Gospel of Judas
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One may not know how one got into this mess, but the Gospel of Judas may have a way out
If one is a mainline religion believer, one will find this Gospel contrary of one's belief system. Basically, it says that the (lesser)god of thoughs beliefs is the cause of all of the worlds troubles and they are headed for doom. The belief in the (Greater)God of Jesus is ones only way out. The part, of why Judas betrayed Jesus,the main focus point, is a mute point, when considering the underlying point, and most important one, that salvation is thru knowledge and not thru faith, according to this Gospel. Much of the historical and backround information can be collaberated from the Sumerian Text found and interpreted by Zecharia Sitchin's books, an archaeologist and biblical scholar, who resides in Isreal. The contradiction according to this Gospel from others, and the main point, is that the God of Jesus is not the god of the mainline religions, or of the twelve apostles even. That his spirit was resurrected long before he was crucified, and an empty body shell must have then died for ones sins, if that was the case. And much, much more, that I won't get into, if one is already condemming this as hersy. But one can. And should one? Well, if one believes in conspiracies, this one will keep one awake at night, or at least get one thinking. Other backround reading probably should be about the Sethian Gnostic's, Texts from the Nag Hammadi Library, and maybe even Platonism.