gospel of judas and codex tchacos

As mentioned in the previous essay, the Gospel of Judas was discovered in the Egyptian sands in the late 1970s. This Gospel, however, was not discovered as a solitary document. It is contained in what is now called the Codex Tchacos (named after the Italian antiquities dealer, Frieda Tchacos Nussberger, who obtained the codex from an Egyptian antiquities dealer in 2000). The codex consists of thirty three folio pages (sixty-six pages) and contains the following four tractates:

1. Pages 1-9, a Letter of Peter to Philip, which is very similar to a letter of the same title in Codex VIII of the Nag Hammadi library;

2. Pages 10-31, a document entitled "James," nearly identical to a document in Codex V of the Nag Hammadi library and there called the "Revelation of James" or the "First Revelation of James;"

3. Pages 33-58, the Gospel of Judas (not appearing elsewhere, though a Gospel of Judas is mentioned by the late 2nd century Christian author Irenaeus of Lyons);

4. Pages 59-66, a seriously damaged tractate which scholars have so far agreed to call Allogenes from the name of the main character.

These texts are written in Coptic and dated, by radio-carbon dating and handwriting analysis, to the end of the 4th century C.E. But no one thinks that the texts originated at that period. Most scholars at this point believe that the Gospel of Judas was originally written in Greek probably in the middle of the 2nd century. The reason for that conclusion comes from the following...

Reference to the Gospel of Judas in Irenaeus

Around 180 C.E. the Christian writer Irenaeus composed a large book entitled "Against the Heresies." Though most scholars would agree that a uniform, orthodox Christianity hadn't congealed throughout the ancient world at that time, Irenaeus' approach to Christian faith would be consistent with what was later known as orthodoxy. He mentions the existence of a Gospel of Judas in this most interesting passage:

"And others say that Cain was from the superior realm of absolute power, and confess that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons are of the same people as themselves: for this reason they have been hated by their maker, although none of them has suffered harm. For Wisdom [Sophia] snatched up out of them whatever belonged to her. And Judas the betrayer was thoroughly acquainted with these things, they say; and he alone was acquainted with the truth as no others were, and so accomplished the mystery of the betrayal. By him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thrown into dissolution. And they bring forth a fabricated work to this effect, which they entitle the Gospel of Judas."

This text from Irenaeus is suggestive but ultimately inconclusive as to whether the Coptic Gospel of Judas discovered in Egypt is the same as the Gospel of Judas he mentions. The passage just quoted seems to suggest that the Gospel of Judas that Ireneaus had heard of (he never mentions that he saw it) also dealt with other rejected individuals in the Bible--such as Cain, Esau and Korah--though the Egyptian Gospel of Judas makes no reference to those other biblical figures. But the tone of Irenaeus' comment, to the effect that Judas felt himself "alone acquainted with the truth as no others were," is quite consistent with the Egyptian Gospel of Judas. If Irenaeus is not referring to the Gospel we now have, he is referring to something very similar to it.

One other point from Irenaeus. The fact that some marginal Christian thinkers were associating Korah, Esau, Cain and Judas together in the same breath as early as 170 C.E. shows that a sophisticated theology is already being developed among these thinkers. Korah, Esau and Cain were all rejected by God, but if the God who rejected them is really the God who is a lesser divinity (more on that in the next essay), then they might really all be kin with each other and messengers of a higher order of reality. The "orthodox" or "proto-orthodox" thinkers of that era certainly didn't have a lock on sophisticated theological thinking.

Conclusion

Thus, the least we can say is that sometime in the middle of the 2nd century C.E. a Gospel of Judas was circulating and that it probably looked very similar to the one unearthed in the Egyptian sands. The major ideas of that Gospel, to which we now turn, have to do with the special knowledge Judas uniquely had regarding the heavenly origin of Jesus Christ. He (Judas) would be the instrument enabling Jesus to escape the clutches of the flesh and return to the heavenly realm where he belongs.

The next essay explains the structure and literary flow of the Gospel of Judas.

1819