The Lost Gospel
The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot
by Herbert Krosney
National Geographic, 2006
[ #5 Breaking Ground: A book about exploration or discovery, fiction or nonfiction. ]
The lost Gospel of Judas is a piece of New Testament Gnosticism that was discovered in the 1970s but took a very roundabout route into the hands of “legitimate” scholars. The gospel was considered lost because although it was mentioned in the third century writings of Bishop Ireneaus no copy of it ever turned up. What it contained was a mystery.
This book detailed the history of that manuscript, which was written on papyrus in Egyptian Coptic script. The journey it took was a fascinating one and a cautionary tale about mishandling precious old documents, as the book was exposed to modern air and rough handling after its removal from the desert and deteriorated significantly from when it was found. That was rather heartbreaking, and though the writer never came out and said so, you could read it between his words. The book, which no one could read except scholars of antiquity, went from bounced from semi-criminal Cairo antiquities dealers, more lawful Swiss and Greek ones, university scholars fighting for translation, and big business CEOs looking for investments.
The writing was a bit dry — it was a National Geographic publication, after all — and the parts where the various scholars and colleges and foundations were fighting for dominance was confusing, but also a look inside the world of artifact dealing. I found it touching that two of the manuscript’s “saviors” were women: the first an accomplished Greek antiquities dealer who bought it, and donated it, the second the restorer of the papyrus who worked on it for years.
Because I found the story interesting I read the gospel online (it’s now freely available.) The gist of it was Judas was not the bad guy the other gospels made him out to be, but rather the friend and accomplice of Jesus, who went ahead with the betrayal as we know it because it was all part of Jesus’s plan. This fit in the Gnostic idea of souls being separate from bodies and the souls living forever while the flesh dies; the idea of bodily resurrection is not touched upon. It’s more akin to Buddhism and other Eastern thought. AFAIK it didn’t exactly shake up Christianity or the Catholic Church when it was published. It’s more of an interesting footnote.
It reminded me of how little I know about the Catholic Church, even though I was raised in it.
