PROVO — The newly translated "Gospel of Judas" doesn't contain the actual sayings of either Jesus or Judas, according to a panel of religious scholars who spoke at Brigham Young University on Saturday.
On that, they agreed.
There was slightly less agreement about how the document will, or should, be of interest to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
S. Kent Brown, Frank F. Judd, Gaye Strathearn and Thomas A. Wayment spoke as part of the university's annual Easter Conference. Professor Richard Neitzel Holzapfel introduced his fellow professors, saying they are the school's premier New Testament and Gnostic experts.
Holzapfel also said that, in his entire life, he has never seen such interest in an ancient text. People e-mail him and stop him in the grocery store, he said. Everyone, including his Jewish friends, wonder what LDS scholars will make of the Gospel of Judas.
The National Geographic Society has the rights to the document and, last week, released two books and a television special explaining where this latest discovery fits into the history of Christianity. At BYU, in the first half of their 45-minute discussion, the scholars summarized the story.
They said the leather-bound codex is thought to have been found in a desert cave in Egypt 18 years ago. Since then, because of the way it was stored, it has disintegrated greatly. During the discussion, the BYU scholars did not question the age or translation of the document.
Holzapfel noted the gospel describes a conversation in which Jesus tells Judas, "You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man who clothed me."
By this, according to the text, Jesus means Judas will help to liberate him from his physical body.
"The gospel also suggests Judas will be despised by other disciples but that, in the end, he will be exalted over them," Holzapfel observed.
He noted the abrupt ending to the gospel. There is no mention of the Crucifixion or the Resurrection. Judas hands over Jesus and the story is done.
"This is a key word. Instead of 'betrayed,' it says 'handed over,' " Holzapfel said.
Judd contrasted the Gospel of Judas with the biblical, or "canonical," gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The Bible says Judas did not care for the poor. It says he stole. The Bible says it was Satan, not Jesus, who convinced Judas to accept money in exchange for his master's life.
Wayment said the panel finds other texts — especially the Nag Hammadi, discovered in 1945 — to be more important. He said, "Unlike the Gospel of Judas, which does not contain any real sayings of Judas Iscariot or any potentially valuable historical information about Jesus of Nazareth, there is a potential that some of the Nag Hammadi codices contain authentic sayings of Jesus."
Strathearn pointed out ways in which the Gospel of Judas is similar to other Gnostic texts. In the Gnostic gospels, the material world is often described as evil. The serpent in the Garden of Eden is described as good because he enabled the spread of knowledge — thus it is within the Gnostic tradition to describe a different version of Judas as well.
The Gospel of Judas is like several other Gnostic gospels in saying the God of the Old Testament is not Jesus' God, she added. Thus, in the Gnostic gospels, "You get a very, very different look."
Still, she thought LDS Church members might find the ideas within the Gospel of Judas interesting, "as long as we put them in the proper context."
There are discussions about knowledge and about humans having a spark of divinity within them.
"Is this discovery going to change our interpretation of early Christianity?" the panel was asked, to which Wayment answered, "Not first-century Christianity. I think there is no legitimate claim to say this preserved the sayings of Judas or sayings of Jesus that didn't make it into canonical text. However, I think it will tell us a great deal about second-century Christianity and third-century Christianity.
"For me, this sort of thing is very interesting," Brown said, in answer to a question about whether or not this discovery is important to LDS people.
But he added a caution: "I'm not sure that it holds much for Latter-day Saints," he said. "There is a very strong strain underneath this text of apostasy, both doctrinal and also behavioral."
Judd believes the questions addressed in the Gospel of Judas will be of interest to LDS people, although he knows Latter-day Saints will disagree with the answers. The Gospel of Judas offers complex myths of salvation and says only special groups can even understand the path to be taken.
When asked if the world should expect similar discoveries in the future, Brown said "yes." He said this gospel may be part of a larger cache that includes other documents.
"I actually had my hands on some of those, once," he added.
The texts he saw were being offered for sale and have yet to surface, he said. He believes the reason the documents haven't surfaced may be because they were obtained illegally. He's glad BYU didn't buy them, he said.
"That might have brought stain on the university," he said. "Right now the university enjoys wonderful relationships with authorities in Egypt."
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