Review: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot

Bart Ehrman’s books tend to get quite a bit of hype around them, but when one actually reads them, one finds the work of a fine, generally balanced scholar. This is true of The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, as it was of Misquoting Jesus, which I reviewed early in a series of posts. Ben Witherington is fairly hard on Ehrman, referring to that same book, and stating that he goes well beyond his evidence (What Have They Done with Jesus?, pp. 6-7). If one goes by he cover, that is likely true, but I would say that the actual contents are much better, both in terms of nuanced claims and of evidence. (I’ve begun blogging through Witherington’s book here.)

The bottom line is that this is a well-written book, easy to follow, and covering the most essential material. I rarely read a book on a discovery like this one without wishing that the author had spent less time on some things and more on others. Ehrman manages to include enough of the story of discovery to give the flavor. He summarizes the document well, and then looks at its implications.

Many popular discussions–by which I mean non-scholars discussing the Gospel of Judas–get the focus and implications entirely wrong. It is natural for 21st century westerners to immediately turn to issues of the historical Jesus, and of course the historical Judas. But the fact is that the Gospel of Judas gives us very little additional information on that issue. It is later than the canonical gospels, though earlier than most non-canonical gospels, and it has even less emphasis on historical events.

But it does have a significant impact on our understanding of early Christianity in its various forms and on gnosticism. That is what could be expected, and it is also what was actually found. Ehrman makes these facts pretty clear.

He starts by providing us a narrative framework for his own exposure to the gospel which serves to help us understand the process of discovery and preservation (or lack of it) that goes into bringing this type of manuscript to publication. This preface and first chapter illustrates some of the difficulties in dealing with ancient artifacts. Fortunately, unlike most items such as ossuaries, pieces of pottery, and so forth, a printed text retains a good deal of its value even without a well-established provenance.

The second chapter continues by telling us what is already known about Judas Iscariot and how this is known, as well as discussing the various perspectives on Judas. This is followed in chapter three by a discussion of later Christian literature and its perspective. These two chapters are valuable in demonstrating how a story can grow and change shape over centuries of use. Chapter 4 then tells us what was known previously about the Gospel of Judas in order to prepare for the discovery of the actual text, and chapter 5 finishes the story of the discovery.

Chapters 6-8 get to the heart of the matter and tell what we learn from the text itself, and how that fits into our understanding of early Christian gnosticism. Ehrman provides good context and well done summaries. He also covers a variety of views on gnosticism. The result is about the best one could hope for in the space allotted.

Finally, in chapters 9-10 we get what many were probably looking for in the first place–a discussion of the historical Judas, and it turns out that the Gospel of Judas has practically nothing to say about this at all. Ehrman follows with an excellent summary of how historical study is done using ancient manuscripts and other material, and then applies those methods to Jesus and Judas Iscariot. He finds frustratingly little that one can say with certainty, but he is very clear about how he comes to those conclusions. Those interested in the historical Jesus could do worse than to read his summary of the methodology involved.

Despite the limited historical conclusions about Judas, Ehrman regards the Gospel of Judas as very historically important. Its importance is to the history of early Christianity. In the final chapter he kind of rounds up what has been implied earlier. There are two extremes in views of the history of early Christianity. One holds that a single orthodoxy came from Jesus and the apostles. There were numerous heresies that broke off and threatened the true faith, but ultimately truth (orthodoxy) prevailed. Thus while there may have been disputes, these were either minor ones amongst friends, or fights between truth and error.

The other extreme represents Christianity as spreading from its origin point in Jerusalem and presumably Galilee in many variations as various groups of disciples did their best to understand Jesus and what he meant. Orthodoxy is “orthodox” because it represents the winning viewpoint, not because it has some ultimate claim to being the most genuine. Ehrman plainly represents the second of these views and sees the Gospel of Judas in that light.

While I am not fully in agreement with Ehrman on all points, I think this is an exceptionally good popular level book and a good introduction to the meaning of the Gospel of Judas. It doesn’t require any substantial background, because Ehrman provides a clear context throughout.