Gospel of Judas

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Vesayen
It is dated to the year 250 CE or so, no? That does not make it real by any means...

Carbon dating puts the surviving copy at 280CE +/- 50 years. However you have to remember that it is most likely a copy, not the original.

[Jon Miller]

Right, which is a point to make about the canonical gospels. Carbon dating dates fragments of those to ~100 AD. These are also fragments, not the originals....

Most likely some of the originals were written within 30 years of when Christ was on the earth.

(Gnosticism was really strong at ~200 AD)

Jon Miller

[Jon Miller]

Re: Gospel of Judas

Originally posted by Zkribbler

I didn't know that in the early Christian days, there were over 30 gospels. The Gospel of Judas was one of the Gnostic gospels that was eventually repressed as part of the reduction to just the four: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Well before Gnosticism was repressed (hundreds of years in fact), those 4 were the favored ones by most followers of Christ (the mainstream if you will).

In fact, they were favored (those 4) in 2nd century AD.

Jon Miller

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
Right, which is a point to make about the canonical gospels. Carbon dating dates fragments of those to ~100 AD. These are also fragments, not the originals....

The Sypnotic Gospels are generally thought to have been written in first century CE. Mark around 60CE, based on earlier (and lost) documents.

[VetLegion]

UR, you're a christian?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

Carbon dating puts the surviving copy at 280CE +/- 50 years. However you have to remember that it is most likely a copy, not the original.

It says it is a copy of an older Greek document. A Greek document for which we no longer have copies. Blame the early church for ordering all heritical texts burned.

This one only survived because some early christians hide them in a cave in Egypt.

[Jon Miller]

Likely it was hid before the Christian church got much political power.

Likely there were just not that many gnostics...

Jon Miller

[Wernazuma III]

I think the gospel is a highly interesting find to study the ancient gnosis. What I'm worried about is when media (even national TV) claim that in the gospel there is "new evidence on the life of Jesus and the role of Judas" while in reality it's "new evidence on the views held by ancient gnostics of the 3rd century on Jesus and the role of Judas", not more and not less.

Water on the wheels of neognostics, neocathars, Rosicrucians, anthroposophs, ariosophs,...

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Vesayen
It is dated to the year 250 CE or so, no? That does not make it real by any means..... then again, who knows if any of the gospels are true? Being Jewish, I doubt anything supernatural in all of them lol.

If it makes any devout christians feel better, I have some serious doubts over the historical accuracy of alot of the Torah.... most of my gripes are in Genesis and a few in Exodus... the rest is mostly historically plausible.

Yes, obviously Historical Plausibility of the Torah is > then the Historical Plausibility of the Gospels.

Discuss.

What about Deuteronomy? It was accompanied by a lot of revisions, including the introduction of camels to the region centuries before their historic appearance iirc.

[Elok]

Er, UR, are you familiar with exactly what these cracksmokers believed? Even the atheists should be glad gnosticism died out. It combined the pompous arrogance of Calvinist predestination with an appalling hatred of reality that makes puritanical anti-sensuality seem lax. Arians, Origenists, Manichaeans, those you might make a case for. The Gnostics...ugh.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Elok
Er, UR, are you familiar with exactly what these cracksmokers believed? Even the atheists should be glad gnosticism died out. It combined the pompous arrogance of Calvinist predestination with an appalling hatred of reality that makes puritanical anti-sensuality seem lax. Arians, Origenists, Manichaeans, those you might make a case for. The Gnostics...ugh.

I'm atheist, and I'm 100% d'accord, except for the Manichean bit.
Arians, though, could have been an interesting trait of Christianity (highly subjective feeling, I know).
Rather 10 catholics than 1 gnostic.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by VetLegion
UR, you're a christian?

No, I have done some studying, though.

[Harry Tuttle]

Using CE and BCE in a thread about Christianity.

Boooo!

[Barnabas]

Something I wrote in another forum

Jesus said himself, the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

So, if you are a christian who believes in jesus´words, you should lose no sleep over sects/denominations that no longer exist, or books which did not make the final cut.

For example the donatists who were wiped out by the islamic conquest in north africa, cant be the real church, according to those words, since the gates of hell would have prevailed if the church founded by jesus stopped existing.


For a christian this just means that there was a lot more diversity in the early church , that the early church was not a monolithic organization.
But that if those denominations no longer exist it is because they were false, heresies etc.

A non christian would say the same, that there was more diversity in the early church, but that the church which later would give birth to catholics, eastern orthodox and, copts/armenians just won the competition with the other denominations/gnostics etc.