Ancient Manuscript Sheds New Light?

An ancient manuscript rediscovered after 1,700 years may shed new light on the relationship between Jesus and Judas, the disciple who betrayed him.

Rather than the traitor Judas is portrayed as in the New Testament, this document — the "Gospel of Judas" — indicates that he acted at the request of Jesus to help him shed his earthly body

Here's the clue to evaluating this discovery.  It's the first word of the story - "an."  One manuscript. 

How many manuscripts do we have of the New Testament in comparison?  There are 5,366 separate Greek manuscripts represented by early fragments, uncial codices (manuscripts in capital Greek letters bound together in book form), and minuscules (small Greek letters in cursive style).

Not only does the number of manuscripts help us determine the reliability of the text, but it demonstrates how widely accepted the writings were in the early church because it's evidence of the writing's circulation around the church.  And it's not because this lately discovered "lost gospel" was rounded up and destroyed.  Just take the number of New Testament manuscripts - 5,366.  Can you imagine the impossible task of running around the ancient world destroying every single copy of a document that was widely circulated?  Ridiculous.

These "gospels" were written from the second century by groups generally called "gnostics" who had a penchant for secret information.  Notice that the Gospel of Judas reveals a secret between Jesus and Judas that couldn't be corroborated by witnesses.  The Gospels, on the other hand, were written within the first century and record Jesus' public teaching that was heard by many witnesses who were still alive when the accounts were circulated.  The early church knew about these documents, considered them, compared the reliability of the authors, and rejected them.

A single manuscript of the Gospel of Judas about a secret just isn't to be taken seriously when compared to the New Testament manuscript evidence of public teachings with corroborating witnesses.

Christianity Today has a helpful article on this new gospel and others by the gnostics.

Comments

[Christopher Taylor]

Isn't it a common complaint against some of the Bible documents that they are too late after the events to be trustworthy? And this one is what, over 200 years after the fact?

[Paulo]

(Ack, sorry about the multiple trackbacks from my site. Turns out everytime I update my "Gospel of Judas" post to add a link, it's been pinging this entry. Won't happen again.)