The Gospel According to ... Ialdabaoth?

I am shocked, shocked, that the much-hyped "Gospel of Judas," a dull third century Gnostic text that purports to tell the Passion story from the Iscariot's point of view, would turn out, upon more careful examination, to be something other than the cross between "Gregory Maguire Does the New Testament" and The Da Vinci Code that everyone made it out to be. I mean, really - how could Elaine Pagels possibly lead us astray?

Needless to say, while the new translation alters Judas's role in the story - he's a an agent of the wicked demiurge the Gnostics blamed for sin and suffering and the whole of creation, not a tragic hero - it doesn't sound as though it much alters the substance of the text, which like most of the "lost gospels" is at once historically bogus and theologically unappetizing (with a Jesus who tends to sound, in Adam Gopnik's priceless phrase, like "the ruler of a dubious planet on Star Trek"). But of course the lost gospels' quality and historical credibility - or lack thereof, in both cases - have never had much to do with their appeal.

Comments

well, it might not be theologically appealing to you, but let's not forget that there were very large gnostic movements during the early centuries of Christianity, that Manichaeanism had for about a thousand years the status of a major world religion, and that it took fire and sword, not theological argument to finally wipe out the Manichaeans, Cathars, Bogomiles, Albigensians etc.

on an intuitive level, it should be acknowleged that dualism is at least a superficially appealing hypothesis that purports to explain how a largely evil world can coexist with a purely good God. that doesn't make it true, of course, but neither does it make it as absurd as you make it sound. speaking personally, I can't help thinking that the history of the last few millennia indicates at the very least that the power of evil is considerably more powerful than mainstream, orthodox Christianity gives him credit for.

moreover of the lost gospels there are quite a few that aren't particularly gnostic at all (like the one that talks about the death of Pilate) and the rest of them span the gamut of varying degrees of heterodoxy.

the lost gospels have continued to capture the imagination of heterodox thinkers (and even some of the more orthodox- a good portion of early Christian mythology is based on them) for two millennia, it's not some kind of modern thing.

Posted by Hector | December 2, 2007 12:33 PM

Re:well, it might not be theologically appealing to you, but let's not forget that there were very large Gnostic movements during the early centuries of Christianity,

True enough. There also existed major cults of Isis and Mithras. Christianity had rivals in its earliest centuries. In the end they failed. And as far as Gnosticism goes it's not hard to understand that failure: the Gnostics were the consummate elitists, since salvation was only available to a tiny minority of enlightened. Moreover, while Christianity today may seem unattractive due to its ascetic and puritanical tendencies, next to Gnosticism Christianity was a sensuous and worldly faith.

Re: moreover of the lost gospels there are quite a few that aren't particularly gnostic at all

I'm not sure which texts you are referring to. But there were some sacred writings that writings were rejected from Scripture because they were not seen as inspired but which were nonetheless affirmed as texts worthy of Christian study, though sadly most are little known today: the Protoevangelium of James, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistles of Clement, for example.

Re: ...a good portion of early Christian mythology is based on them

Huh? Can you expand on that? All of these texts date from later (often much later) than the canonical Christian texts. (On the other hand it is true that most of the "approved" legends of the Virgin Mary come from the Protoevangelium of James I mentioned above)

Posted by JonF | December 2, 2007 12:50 PM

First, sorry, but I have to nerd out for a minute. DeConick is wrong, or at the very least, has badly overstated her care. It is not at all clear, for instance, that "porj ebol" should mean "separated from" and not "separated for". Both are perfectly good translations, both attested widely in ancient Coptic. Most importantly, she doesn't address the fact that Judas "enters the cloud" of the divine light at the end of the text. DeConick tends to accept the forced, highly unlikely translation that it is Jesus, not Judas, who enters the cloud, which is just not what the Coptic says. I find it highly unlikely that Judas is the agent of the demiurge - you really have to torture the Coptic of the climactic scene in order to get that reading.

Second, the Gospel of Judas is dated by almost everyone into the 2nd century, since it is discussed by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century.

Third, I definitely dispute that it isn't interesting. The disciples recount to Jesus a dream that they had in which they saw themselves as priests, performing sacrifices of cattle. Jesus tells that they saw themselves, that the cattle they sacrifice are the people "whom [they] lead astray upon the altar". The Gospel of Judas, from a second-century perspective, is condemning the church's embrace of martyrdom, and in particular the leaders of the church (who figured themselves as the followers of the apostles) who exhort their congregants to become martyrs.

What we see in GJudas, then, is a particular early Christian response to a situation of religious violence and unjust persecution. We see how early Christians were struggling with these sorts of problems from a very early period, just as they have been contesting notions of authority, leadership, and all the rest.

What's valuable in the "lost gospels" isn't that they should be permitted into the canon, or that they predate the Gospels, it's that we learn how early Christians really were living and debating. The loss of historical evidence that occured around Theodosius is being slowly righted by these new discoveries.

History doesn't define theology, and it cannot, but it is quite valuable that we are also able to prevent theology from defining history, as we gain new evidence like GJudas and the Tchacos Codex.

Posted by DivGuy | December 2, 2007 12:51 PM

And as far as Gnosticism goes it's not hard to understand that failure: the Gnostics were the consummate elitists, since salvation was only available to a tiny minority of enlightened.

This is simply not true. You are taking the claims of the heresiologists as historical truth, rather than investigating the texts that we find.

The Secret Revelation of John, for instance, which is typically taken as the quintessential "Gnostic" document, claims that all people will be saved with the advent of divine justice in the world.

Michael Williams' Rethinking Gnosticism is among several works in the last decade that have shown that historians have been falsely attributing to the Gnostics as a group certain traits that are found in disparate and different texts, and that the category is highly problematic for defining a large movement. If it was a large movement, it generally did not have the characteristics alleged by the heresiologists.

Posted by DivGuy | December 2, 2007 12:56 PM

Re: Huh? Can you expand on that? All of these texts date from later (often much later) than the canonical Christian texts.

Well, things like the Harrowing of Hell, Pilate's being called to account by the Emperor, the details about the lives of Dysmas and Gestas, St. Paul's visit to heaven, the evil Simon Magus being able to fly, St. Thomas going to India and talking to snakes, etc. are detailed in some of the apocryphal texts that never made it into scripture.

Some of the visionary literature about heaven and hell is interesting too- like the "Apocalypse of Peter", and so forth. There's some nasty details in there about what happens to abortionists in the afterlife....it's too bad more people aren't better acquainted with it.

Posted by Hector | December 2, 2007 1:13 PM

Judas was the best of the disciples, not the least. I thought that before the gospel of Judas was ever mentioned in the press; it's a pretty obvious reading just from the canon. Look, Jesus had the gift of foresight, he knew he had to die to make the sacrifice. He needed the disciple who was willing to go down in history as one of the worst villains ever to make his covenant complete. What would you have preferred? That Judas not betray Jesus, and prevent the second covenant from happening?

And, of course, the Bible is a human creation, with its various inclusions and exclusions often the product of chance or whim. The Bible as it's currently constituted doesn't have exclusive access to the truth of the story.

Posted by Freddie | December 2, 2007 1:13 PM

Perhaps this is a foolish question. I know very little about the topic. But what does Ross mean by "historically bogus?"

Does he mean it is fraudulent? Or that it's depiction of events is historically inaccurate? If the later, it seems like a charge one could apply widely to religious books.

Tom

Posted by Tom G. | December 2, 2007 1:51 PM

The non-canonical gospels are wonderful in an ironic way. They put into even sharper relief how odd, mysterious, and commanding the canonical Gospels are.

Of course, there is a load of money to be made by creative interpretations of these goofy texts. They are play-do in peoples' hands. It offers an irresistible opportunity for liberals to imagine a Jesus made in their very own image and likeness.

Posted by Joe | December 2, 2007 1:54 PM

Thanks to DivGuy and Tom G. It's far from clear that "daimon", in Greek, means demon, though the modern sense of demon is derived from it etymologically. The most obvious example of a good daimon is the one from Plato's Apology, which was certainly not a "demon" (and it goes without saying that Plato and Neoplatonism played no small part in texts like the Gospel of Judas).

The really startling thing about this op-ed is the assertion that, in the 2nd century, there was something called "mainstream Xtianity". As authors like Williams have nicely shown, there was an intense amount of variety amongst early Xtians, and this is far from "historically bogus."

Posted by berger | December 2, 2007 2:17 PM

I don't think there is anything "historically bogus" about the Gnostics or their gospels so-called. I don't think Ross meant to imply that there is. The texts exist, and they say what they say.

What's "historically bogus" is the attempt to make these texts into something they're not. Today's theologians, influenced by their own desire for novelty and (often enough) their lack of personal faith, too often use the texts as clubs with which to beat institutional Christianity, specifically the Catholic Church. That's bogus, and (see also Luke Timothy Johnson's expose of the Jesus Seminar people) should be recognized for what it is: an attempt to manufacture history.

Posted by Joe Magarac | December 2, 2007 2:52 PM

I was wondering about that "historically bogus" phrase myself. If the "lost gospels" were contemporaneous with the canonical gospels, then it would seem to me that they might be historically illuminating, especially considering that we know that the canonical gospels were written decades after Jesus's death by people who weren't even there. Heck...it might even be possible the canonical gospels are plagiarized versions of an even more lost gospel.

On another note...the bible (not just the gospels) is full of all kinds of "historically bogus" information. Noah's flood, the Tower of Babylon, the Garden of Eden, yadda, yadda, yadda...

Posted by Herb | December 2, 2007 3:31 PM

Heck, even I know that "daimon" does not translate as "demon".

Ross has too much of an axe to grind to be taken seriously.

Posted by grumpy realist | December 2, 2007 4:34 PM

This may be a first, but I agree with most of what Hector said. What is important about non-canonical gospels is whether they had adherents during the centuries soon after Jesus, if he existed, walked the earth.

There were a lot of competing versions of "Christianity" floating around out there, and the reason that the orthodox forms won out had as much to do with luck, attachment to power, territory, and other such matters as it did to any theological superiority.

It's worth remembering that if Jesus existed, we really have no idea what he taught and how he lived and what his real message is. We just have an official narrative and a bunch of unofficial ones that competed and lost the competition. Plus, I am sure there are other narratives that are lost to time.

That's one reason why all devout believers have to avoid being too smug about their certainty in the authenticity of their holy scriptures and teachings.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 2, 2007 5:30 PM

Re: This is simply not true. You are taking the claims of the heresiologists as historical truth, rather than investigating the texts that we find.

Oh good grief! I'm sorry but I have no patience for this sort of revisionism whereby one discards the historical evidence of centuries and instead presents this or that ancient alternative to Christianity as a tabula rasa on which can be written whatever sort of New Age or liberal religion the writer wishes to dress up in ancient clothing. But we know too much about these "holiness movements" of antiquity for that to wash. Gnosticism is an extreme mystical form of neo-Platonism onto which some not-very-orthodox Judaic elements and eventually Christian elements were grafted. The Neoplatonists (and even the paleo-Platonists back to Plato himself) were well-known for their privileging of the spiritual over the material, and the disparagement of physical passions. Indeed the whole moral universe of antiquity was founded on this type of thinking, and Christianity has some of it too. (Even further afield you find something very similar in philosophical Hinduism and Buddhism, though it's probably a parallel development not a case of influence one way or the other). And I'd just rather see the Gnostics and others from the past as they were, not as modern-day enthusiasts wish they were. These revisionists you cite have all the credility that the Ossianiac poems did for real Keltic literature.

Re: It's far from clear that "daimon", in Greek, means demon

It didn't. It meant "divine spirit". In Homer's works it even is applied to the Olympian gods, though in later times it generally meant a lesser sort of spiritual being. The meaning "demon" is a result of early Christian thinkers holding that these daimones were in fact malefic in character.

Posted by Jonf | December 2, 2007 5:31 PM

I'm sorry but I have no patience for this sort of revisionism whereby one discards the historical evidence of centuries and instead presents this or that ancient alternative to Christianity as a tabula rasa on which can be written whatever sort of New Age or liberal religion the writer wishes to dress up in ancient clothing.

I'm sorry, but you clearly are completely out of your depth on this topic. The "historical evidence of centuries" was almost entirely the writings of the heresiologists. Your notion of Gnosticism, based on the work of Hans Jonas and Adolf Harnack, relied basically on Irenaeus, Epiphanius, Eusebius, a bunch of unrelated Iranian material, and the extremely dubious modern parallel of Mandaean religion. With the Nag Hammadi finds, the Berlin Codex, the Tchacos Codex, and a few others, we have reams of evidence with which to write the history of early Christianity that we simply didn't have before.

If we want to write a good history of a group, and we can now use both the writings of the group as well as their opponenets, why wouldn't we do that? For what reason would you presume to know what "Gnosticism" really was when you clearly haven't read the texts, certainly don't read the language, and seem bent on misconstruing the basic facts of the field? I cited the Secret Revelation of John to show that your notion of restricted salvation did not apply to the quintessential Gnostic text, and you complained while citing no evidence at all that I was disregarding hte evidence of centuries. It seems clear to me here who isn't engaging with evidence and argument.

To be clear, I never said and I do not think that the early Christians were proto-liberals, whether we're talking about the people who wrote the Gospel of Judas or the people who wrote the Pastoral epistles. Your immediate assumption that anyone interested in the actual facts of Christian antiquity is by definition doing bad history is a good way to avoid learning history.

Posted by DivGuy | December 2, 2007 5:46 PM

Ross, how about a hat tip to Dreher's Crunchy Con? I must admit that, until recently, I thought you and him were the same person.

Posted by Supon | December 2, 2007 6:01 PM

Thanks for the correction, JohnF ... the only thing is I didn't claim that daimon meant demon - Professor DeConick did. You might want to read her actual op-ed, which is what this whole thread is a response to.

Posted by berger | December 2, 2007 8:15 PM

It's worth remembering that if Jesus existed, we really have no idea what he taught and how he lived and what his real message is.

IF he existed? NO idea? Really????????

Sheesh.

Posted by John | December 2, 2007 10:54 PM

Actually, Professor DeConick merely says that "in Gnostic literature 'daimon' is always taken to mean 'demon.'" I myself have no idea whether this narrower claim is true or not, but it is not the same as claiming that daimon always and everywhere means demon.

Posted by James Kabala | December 2, 2007 11:16 PM

I was particularly interested in what DeConick said about the Dead Sea Scrolls:

"The situation reminds me of the deadlock that held scholarship back on the Dead Sea Scrolls decades ago. When manuscripts are hoarded by a few, it results in errors and monopoly interpretations that are very hard to overturn even after they are proved wrong."

From what I understand, the consequences of the Scrolls monopoly are indeed still continuing today, in a misleading exhibit taking place in a "natural history" museum in San Diego. See this article for details:

http://www.nowpublic.com/culture/did-christian-agenda-lead-biased-dead-sea-scrolls-exhibit-san-diego

So I would suggest that an important question confronting us today is whether so-called liberal Christian scholars -- by which I mean scholars of Christian faith who, like April DeConick, seek to do their research in accordance with fundamental scientific principles rather than any religious agenda -- will part company with their Evangelical-minded colleagues and frankly condemn what is going on with the Dead Sea Scrolls in one museum exhibit after another.

Posted by View from Here | December 3, 2007 2:20 AM

Re: The "historical evidence of centuries" was almost entirely the writings of the heresiologists.

Oh? And this includes the Gnostic writings themselves? You need only read these works to see what the Gnostics taught. Sure, the Church Fathers may have exagerrated this or that I won't claim otherwise, but they didn't invent the whole shebang either. It's all there: archons and aeons and demiurges, Sophia and an evil Yahweh who cretaed the material universe and all the rest.
And I think the link between Gnostics and Neoplatonism is quite beyond dispute.

Posted by Jonf | December 3, 2007 7:15 AM

it doesn't sound as though it much alters the substance of the text, which like most of the "lost gospels" is at once historically bogus and theologically unappetizing (with a Jesus who tends to sound, in Adam Gopnik's priceless phrase, like "the ruler of a dubious planet on Star Trek")

You do realize that the fact that some new text makes Jesus sound a bit loopy isn't a strong logical argument against it's validity unless you already come to the table presupposing he wasn't a bit loopy, right?

Posted by Sam Hutcheson | December 3, 2007 9:47 AM

IF he existed? NO idea? Really????????

John, we take Jesus for granted, but there is actually precious little actual contemporaneous evidence for his existence. The best one can say is that the Gospels-- which were written years later-- contain some details that are consistent with historical practice.

Similarly, even if we assume his existence (and I have no problem with that assumption, because it is pretty clear that SOMEONE existed who had a huge impact on all these people who became followers and spread different gospels of his teachings), any objective look at the first 400 or so years of Christianity shows that there were a lot of competing narratives and different belief systems, and gradually, an orthodoxy won out, with the result having as much to do with luck and which factions and sects got access to power and spread to which geographic locations as it did with theological truth.

Thus, we have a religion based on the teachings of a man whom we think existed, but can't be certain existed, and we are also not sure that the teachings were really his teachings, or whether some other set, known or unknown, constitute his teachings, or if his teachings are lost to history.

Again, smugness in the face of this history is just willful ignorance.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 3, 2007 12:51 PM

Dilan, your problem is that you discount innate intuition, mystical experience, and other sources of knowledge as bases on which to construct one's view of the world.

Look, you probably won't find a Christian more sympathetic to some elements of the dualist heresies than me. I think that a somewhat dualistic framework is the only thing that makes sense of the world. Christ Himself, after all, said, 'The devil sinneth from the beginning.' It's a pity that the Church stamped out the heretics by fire and sword when it couldn't do so by faith and by example, and it's undeniable that a good part of what we know as Holy Scripture today reflects the result of ideological purges, suppression of dissident works, etc.

However, in spite of my general sympathy for many of the heretical movements, it is a fact that they only make sense- historical, theological or moral-
as supplements, critiques or developments within the broader context of what we know as catholic/orthodox christianity- 'heresies' in the non-pejoriative sense of the world. there were distinct logical flaws within every one of these heresies- however much partial truth or beauty they might have contained- that prevents us from accepting any of them as the full truth. Manichaeanism survived in China, free from Christian persecution, for a thousand years, but even there it eventually collapsed, presumably under the weight of its own logical contradictions.

for example, why does the world contain beauty as well as evil, if it was the creation of the devil? how could Jesus Christ really share in our suffering and death if he wasn't really human? why does the old testament contain beautiful things as well as horrible things, if it was inspired by the devil? and why are love, friendship, charity and generosity with the things of the earth inherently good things, if the world itself is inherently evil. Tertullian's challenge to the Marcionites, "Look at the beauty of the wild flower," etc. remains. these were the logical contradictions that Marcionism & Manichaeanism never really overcame- and some of the other Gnostic sects were even sillier, and a few (not the majority) even embraced open immorality, like the Carpocratians.

In general therefore, it's a mistake to see Gnosticism as an alternative Christianity that was suppressed purely by force and for no reason. In contrast to many Christians I would say that I think the traditional Christianity has been wrong about many things, and has some things to learn from some of the dualist heresies. But none of them, and much less so the Gnostics, could ever have founded the basis of a long-lasting religion in their own right, and they only make sense within the broader context of the Christian story about Jesus.

And by the way, Dilan, you should know that the heretical Christians were if anything much less friendly to your view of the world than the orthodox Christians. The heretical Christians were for the most part world-denying, anti-sex, anti-material, violently anti-Jewish, and convinced that the world was a giant cosmic battleground between twin Gods of Good and Evil. Somehow I don't think that your secularized and sanitized earthly utopia, where 'evil' is just a name, would have much room for the Gnostics or Manichaeans if you actually knew what they taught.

Posted by Hector | December 3, 2007 1:37 PM

It's worth remembering that if Jesus existed, we really have no idea what he taught and how he lived and what his real message is.

I sentence Dilan to a week or two reading the first volume of Jaroslav Pelikan's Development of Christian Doctrine, which does not answer this point at all, really, but should make clear that this history and debate is known to educated orthodox Christians.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | December 3, 2007 2:44 PM

Again, smugness in the face of this history is just willful ignorance.

But here I agree -- smugness is not a virtue. Though I think it's not smugness, but simple intelligence, taste, and honesty to point out that Jesus in the heretical works does seem to be a profoundly annoying and trite fellow, while the real Gospels offer something much more interesting. Gopnik's "the ruler of a dubious planet on Star Trek" isn't just a pithy put-down, it embeds a truth. Whether that truth is grounded in the Gospel writers being a superior set of myth-makers or on the actual personality that started the religion, of course, is a harder point to prove. And some people really do prefer the airy flatutlence and mythologizing to the real Gospels, for reasons aesthetic or ideological.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | December 3, 2007 2:50 PM

I mean, to bring it down quite a bit, some people like Kahlil Gibran more than Newman or (for that matter, so that it doesn't seem like I'm only saying this can be about orthodox Christianity vs. something else) William Blake. which is absurd, to me, but true.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | December 3, 2007 2:53 PM

Marquis,

I think that here we get into tricky matters....one's definition of 'annoying' and 'trite' can vary somewhat, as you acknowledge. The fact that some of these apocryphal works were quite influential for centuries indicates that at least some people liked the mythologizing- and this isnt a taste that's gone away, as people like William Blake demonstrate.

Posted by Hector | December 3, 2007 4:25 PM

And by the way, Dilan, you should know that the heretical Christians were if anything much less friendly to your view of the world than the orthodox Christians. The heretical Christians were for the most part world-denying, anti-sex, anti-material, violently anti-Jewish, and convinced that the world was a giant cosmic battleground between twin Gods of Good and Evil.

Hector, I am well aware of this. I am not endorsing gnosticism but simply saying it has a historical importance in reminding us that the sorting out of Christian doctrine was a messy process.

As I said, what I draw from the early competition among various Christian sects and traditions is that devout Christians shouldn't feel so certain about their scriptures and their doctrines. There's a heck of a lot we don't know, and we really can never know, about whatever or whomever it was that started what we now call "Christianity", INCLUDING what his "real" teachings were, and I get the feeling that American religious conservatives aren't always too keen about acknowledging that.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 3, 2007 7:00 PM

But Dilan, the question at issue isn't whether there is doubt about the exact mechanics of the fall of man, or exactly what was the role of Jesus in the salvation of mankind, or what is the origin of evil, or what Jesus Christ would have thought abnout this or that particular issue. Of course there is doubt about those questions. That's why there are 2,000 years of fascinating theological and casuistical debates.

The question at issue here is whether you, and other American liberals, can find support for YOUR doctrines in the early Christian heresies (that Jesus was just a wise moral teacher, that Christianity and Judaism are just branches of the same tree, that abortion is OK, that Heaven and Hell are not real places, that the devil is just a metaphor, that Jesus is A-OK with worldly success and pleasures, etc.) And really, I don't believe you can. The heretics were if anything more hostile to those ideas than the orthodox.

For example: The orthodox Christians say Christ had both a divine and a human nature, while the heretical Christians typically denied His humanity, and the debate went on for a long time between the two factions. This is interesting but it gives absolutely no support to those who would deny His divinity. If orthodox Christianity did go off the rails (which I don't believe it did, in this case) then it erred by de-emphasizing His divinity, not His humanity. Those who would make the absurd claim that He was just a 'wise moral teacher' or some such, must find their arguments actually considerably weakened the more they learn about the history of heresies. The early Christian heresies said many things, and contradicted each other and the orthodox Church on many points, but one thing that NONE of them said was that Christ was just a man, just a 'wise moral teacher'.

If we can be certain about anything (as followers of Christ), we can be certain that whoever Jesus was, He was assuredly not 'just a man' and not 'just a moral teacher'. The proof is that the closer back in time we get to Jesus, the fewer people there are who said He was 'just a man'.

As I said above, my point of view in this debate is kind of in the middle. I disagree with those people who see nothing of value in the heretical scriptures, but also with those people would use them in an ill-informed way to bash traditional Christianity.

Posted by Hector | December 3, 2007 7:19 PM

The question at issue here is whether you, and other American liberals, can find support for YOUR doctrines in the early Christian heresies (that Jesus was just a wise moral teacher, that Christianity and Judaism are just branches of the same tree, that abortion is OK, that Heaven and Hell are not real places, that the devil is just a metaphor, that Jesus is A-OK with worldly success and pleasures, etc.) And really, I don't believe you can.

To be clear, Hector, I really don't push that line. I leave that sort of argument to folks like Jim Wallis. I am a secularist and aren't really any more impressed with arguments that I should be a liberal because Jesus told me so than I am with arguments that I should be a conservative for the same reason.

I do think there's a somewhat more moderate position that can be taken that the Jesus of the orthodox gospels took some liberal positions on important issues (especially on poverty and tolerance and against violence) and wouldn't necessarily have agreed with the platforms of the politicians who invoke his name most often. But even that, I basically leave to the believers. It's really not my fight.

In any event, I am not using the alternative scriptures to "bash" traditional Christianity; I am simply saying that they are one reason among many that people who swear to have all the answers usually don't, which has important implications for the debate over secularism and religion in public life.

Posted by Dilan Esper | December 3, 2007 7:56 PM

Well, if you don't push that line, then OK. I do hear it pushed by secular liberals not uncommonly, though. I wouldn't put Jim Wallis in that category. His politics are Christian-left, like mine, and I suspect he probably believes in the divinity of Christ, heaven and hell, the atonement, and all the other things that Christians believ. I have no reason particularly to think he's anything less than devout.

I certainly agree with you that Jesus would have taken a relatively left-wing position on economics.

I guess the point I was making is that while we can't necessarily know what ideas are true, we can have a decent idea of what positions are not true, such as the claim that Jesus was just a man. There is very little reason to believe that.

Posted by Hector | December 3, 2007 9:14 PM

I find the non-canonical gospels and other early heresies and heretical texts quite interesting because to me they represent, narratives, concepts, or theology that lost out. Although I accept the authority by which these texts and heresies were dismissed, defeated, or disposed of (though not always the methods), I think it's worthwhile to revisit them from time to time to reconsider them. As Chesterton wrote, "it is not bigotry to be certain we are right, but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we could have possibly gone wrong." Since each new piece gives us another opportunity to imagine "how we might have possibly gone wrong," I think they are quite worthwhile. I find that to be true of gnostic texts, early heretical writings, and the "star trek" narratives too.

Posted by hugo | December 3, 2007 10:10 PM

Hold on -- Hector, I don't think anybody here actually thinks the heretical stuff is without value. It's interesting both historically and theologically -- see how Pelikan tells the story of the development of doctrine. Heretics, if nothing else (and that's not quite true) are the people who forced orthodoxy to actually grapple with the most difficult points of Christology and other aspects of the faith.

I do dislike the Pagels approach, where we read something akin to modern liberal Christianity into any random heresy, in order to establish that gentle Jesus, meek and mild, was probably something like a relativist half-Episcopalian or something -- that's not quite what Pagels (for example) does, but it's too close for comfort. The gnostics were wrong, but they don't deserve to be retro-actively converted into modernists.

One point -- there were groups (in the Christological controversies) that stressed Jesus as teacher much much more than the other things, no? I don't have my books to hand right now, so can't name names, but this was fairly common in the more "human adopted by God" thought, which did (somewhat or very much) deny divinity.

But they sure didn't do it in a modern way!

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | December 4, 2007 12:08 PM

Just for fun, a long-time favorite poem of mine by James Wright.

Saint Judas

When I went out to kill myself, I caught
A pack of hoodlums beating up a man.
Running to spare his suffering, I forgot
My name, my number, how my day began,
How soldiers milled around the garden stone
And sang amusing songs; how all that day
Their javelins measured crowds; how I alone
Bargained the proper coins, and slipped away.

Banished from heaven, I found this victim beaten,
Stripped, kneed, and left to cry. Dropping my rope
Aside, I ran, ignored the uniforms:
Then I remembered bread my flesh had eaten,
The kiss that ate my flesh. Flayed without hope,
I held the man for nothing in my arms.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | December 4, 2007 2:16 PM

Moe,

You should read 'Three Versions of Judas', by Borges. It's quite an amazing story, and essentially foretells the basic elements of the 'Gospel of Judas' before it was discovered.

Marquis,

Well....when I said 'without value', I meant something a little more. I do think that some of the heretical schools had good points about some things. This is among the reasons why I'm not a Catholic. However, I think that in general, and for all its faults, the apostolic church was closer to the truth than they were. The Manichaeans, say, to take one of the greatest challengers that apostolic Christianity ever had, said that evil is a basic quality of the universe, and that good could never have existed without evil to oppose it.

i think they were maybe right about this, or at least it makes sense to me; in order to deny this, Aquinas was forced to revert to a tortured exegesis of 'The devil sinneth from the beginning', denying what seems like the obvious meaning of the saying. At the same time, the Manicheans took this one sensible idea, and ran with it into a haze of folly, mythology, and supersititon, which left a shaky and unhealthy basis for morality. A world run by the Manichaeans, in spite of the some sensible ideas that they had, would have been a moral and spiritual disaster. and so i think to some degree the Church was right to suppress them, even though it never really came to a convincing (to me) refutation of their ideas. If it had to come to a battle to the death between the Church and the Manichaeans, better by far that the Church won. But that doesn't meant that its opponents had no reasonable ideas at all.

Posted by Hector | December 4, 2007 6:24 PM

Hrm. The problem is that the Manichaen dualism pretty much blows up some basic attributes of God that are (as far as I am concerned) central to Christianity and Judaism -- and even to philsophical theism.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | December 4, 2007 6:32 PM

One of my favorite poems too, Moe.

A completely different but related point is that it's worth remembering that perhaps the three most famous heresy trials in Western history were for Jesus, Socrates, and Galileo. It's almost fair to say that, throughout history, those branded as heretics have driven Western civilization.

Posted by hugo | December 4, 2007 7:52 PM