Four Gospels Of New Testament: The Gospel Of Judas

During the late second century, the dissemination of diverse Christian teachings was pivotal for the consolidation of Christianity. Most of the teachings came from the various narratives of Jesus’s relationship with his disciples and how each of them felt and learned from Jesus’s divine sermons and teachings and, most importantly, his crucifixion. The first four Gospels of New Testament are the most well-known and essential gospels that are the basis of Christian teaching. These Gospels are written by some of the renowned disciples (Matthew and John) and followers (Mark and Luke) and they not only recount the relationship between Jesus and the disciples but also delineate his teachings and miracles he had performed. However, the range of diverse
Christian teachings has gotten wider as historians discovered more various manuscripts of Christian teachings. The Gospel of Judas is one of the rediscovered gospels that completely redefined Jesus’s life, the essence of his crucifixion, and the overall nature of Christianity.
In general Christian teaching, Judas Iscariot is one of Jesus’s disciples who betrayed him for thirty silver coins, but in the Gospel of Judas, he was portrayed as a hero who sacrificed himself and became a traitor to help Jesus’s death. This led me to ask the following question: What do these disparate depictions of Judas delineate the true nature of the Christian community during the late second century? The conflicting representations of Judas demonstrate that Christianity is not a unified religious sect but in fact, divided by various groups that emphasize their own understandings of Jesus’s divine nature and crucifixion through portraying the disciples’ particular relationship with
Jesus. In the Gospel of Matthews, the disciples underline the importance of Jesus’s humanity and deity to describe his nature. For example, Peter describes Jesus as “ ‘the Messiah, the Son of the Living God’” (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Mt. 16. 16). Peter and other disciples all consider Jesus as the true Savior of sinners who came down from heaven to Earth in a human form to personally promulgate God’s words. This gospel strongly emphasizes the humanity of Jesus because it was important to present him not as an angel or immortal but as a human (but also divine) born under the same human laws like others. Also, his humanity helps him to sympathize with people’s weaknesses and temptation. Since he is a human, Jesus also struggles with temptations and weaknesses. For example, after Jesus told his disciples about his death, he goes to Gethsemane and “threw himself to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want’” (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Mt. 26. 39). This clearly portrays Jesus is in agony because he is afraid of his death and pleads to God for his death to pass. His humanity enables him to sympathize with people, giving him credibility to his divinity and making Christian teachings more acceptable among people.
The Gospel of Judas describes Jesus’s divine nature in a completely different way. In this gospel, when the disciples tell Jesus that he is the Son of God, he corrects them by saying, “ ‘ How do you know me? Truly [I] say to you, no generation of the people that are among you will know me.’ When his disciples heard this, they started to get angry” (Kasser et al. 34). Moreover, Judas Isacriot asserts that Jesus is “from the immortal realm of Barbelo” (Kasser et al. 35). In this gospel, Jesus is portrayed in a docetic view, which contends that Jesus is a spirit and not a human. This undermines the credibility of the disciples because Jesus is not the Son of God as they have informed people but he is, in fact, a pure spirit. Since the disciples do not acknowledge Jesus as a spiritual being, the relationship between him and the unenlightened disciples – except Judas – is very aloof and discordant. The sacredness of Jesus’s crucifixion is also sabotaged because if we follow the docetic view, Jesus has never died and fulfilled his mission – shedding his own blood to redeem the sinners. His crucifixion is simply served “as a symbol of the rejection of the fleshly world and for his triumph over the demonic beings” (Frankfurter 176). The crucifixion demonstrates that it is intolerable for corporeal existence to be also spiritual because they are incompatible. The conflicting portrayals of Jesus demonstrate the lack of consensus on the theological and spiritual questions among the Christian community.
The contrasting depiction of Judas Iscariot between the two gospels also serves to explain the polarity among the Christian sect.
In the Gospel of Matthew and in several Christian manuscripts, Judas Iscariot is a traitor by selling Jesus for thirty silvers. During the Passover when Jesus tells his disciples about the betrayal and his death, he said, “woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one but to have been born” (New Oxford Annotated Bible, Mt. 26. 24). Jesus condemns Judas for the betrayal, and after the crucifixion, Judas commits suicide to chastise his impiety. On the contrary, the Gospel of Judas renders Judas as a helper to Jesus’s death. In this gospel, Judas betrayal is what he was destined to do to free Jesus from his physical prison. Even Jesus tells Judas, “ ‘you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me’” (Kasser et al. 56). Judas is portrayed as Jesus’s beloved disciple because he is the only one who truly understands Jesus and sacrifices himself to free Jesus from the mundane world. The different images of Judas in the two gospels indicate the conflicting understandings of Jesus’s divine nature among the Christian community. The understanding of Jesus’s nature is important to define Christianity, and this can be shown through the relationship between Jesus and the disciples. However, the conflicting images of Judas undermine both the credibility of Jesus’s relationship with the
disciples and his sacred teachings as the understanding of Jesus’s true nature diverged.
Many can argue that Christian community is one unified religious sect since both gospels agree that Jesus is a superhuman. In the gospels, Peter and Judas describe Jesus as Son of God and immortal being. They also agree that Jesus is a Messiah brought to earth to rule over the mankind. But, both gospels’ portrayal of Jesus as supernatural being and Messiah varies to a great extent. As Frankfurter argues, “in earliest times Christian thinkers were interested in particular disciples and their relationship to Jesus” (176). To many early Christians, Jesus’s relationship with individual disciples was important to learn about his teachings and his divine nature to maintain their faith. By emphasizing the disciples’ relationship with Jesus, the Christian movement spread that Jesus’s martyrdom serves a divine meaning. The Gospel of Judas, on the other hand, elevates Judas’s relationship with Jesus very unique because he freed Jesus from the material world by betraying him to the chief priest. Through this gospel, certain Christian thinkers came up with docetic view of understanding the nature of Jesus, which is different from the view of what the general Christian movement perceives.
The early Christian community is divided by various groups that emphasize their own understandings of Jesus’s nature and life. These groups come up with different perspectives of Jesus’s divinity through observing the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. The general Christians favor the disciples’ relationship with Jesus portrayed in the Gospel of Matthew to diffuse the divine meaning of crucifixion and Resurrection to legitimize Jesus as the Son of God. The certain Christian thinkers use the Gospel of Judas to spread Docetism as another possible Christian teaching. This group also emphasizes the particular relationship between Judas and Jesus to uphold their understandings of Jesus’s nature. The relationship between Jesus and individual disciples is one of the pivotal factors that brought division among the Christian community in the late second century.