April D. DeConick, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says (New York: Continuum, 2007). pp. xxi + 202. ISBN-10 HB: 0-8264-9964-3; ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9964-6. $19.95.In the spring of 2006 there was a great deal of media attention devoted to the publication by a team of specialists assembled by the National Geographic Society of a transcription and translation of the Coptic Gospel of Judas, a second-century apocryphal Gospel known to Irenaeus but lost until the present. More exciting still, the translation indicated that the Judas of the Gospel of Judas was not only good rather than evil, he was in fact the only disciple who understood the message of Jesus and it was at the behest of Jesus that Judas betrayed him in order to defeat the powers of darkness.
PaleoJudaica noted the existence of the Gospel of Judas and its impending publication in Jully of 2004, long before it came to the attention of the mainstream media. Then in early October of 2006, PaleoJudaica again broke the story that there was specialist doubt that the Gospel of Judas actually presented a good Judas rather than an evil one. So I am glad to have this opportunity to review one of the recent books on this controversy and I am grateful to Continuum for providing a copy for review on PaleoJudaica.
The Preface to the book under review explains how DeConick began to doubt the interpretation of the Gospel of Judas published by the National Geographic team and how, as it became clear to her that other specialists in Gnosticism and Coptic shared her doubts, she reluctantly found herself led to write this book.
Part One: An Unfamiliar Story
Chapter one, "The Silenced Voice," begins by laying out a few of DeConick's doubts about the National Geographic interpretation of the Gospel of Judas. Then it presents brief, user-friendly summaries of most of the various movements in the early church through the second century, including the Apostolic Church (the "proto-orthodox" movement ancestral, but not yet identical to what would later become "mainstream" Christianity); the Marcionite Church (which rejected the Old Testament and elements of the New as spurious); the Ebionite Church (a Jewish-Christian movement); the Church of New Prophecy (the Montanist movement, a charismatic reform movement that predicted that the second coming of Christ would happen the year 172 CE); and the Gnostics (the Valentinian, Basilidean, and Sethian movements that disagreed much among themselves but agreed that salvation came through esoteric "gnosis" or knowledge).
Chapter two, "A Gnostic Catechism," gives a user-friendly summary of the oldest Gnostic movement, the Sethians: their Platonic cosmology; the transformation of the biblical Angel of YHWH into the Platonic Demiurge or secondary creator god Yaldabaoth; the myth of the creation of this creator god by Sophia (the personified Wisdom of the True God) and the creator god's fall and creation of the material universe; and the theology of the redemption of the human divine spark through the defeat of Yaldabaoth by means of the death of Jesus, which released his divine and redemptive spirit and opened a route for the souls of the Gnostics to ascend out of the material realm.
Part Two: Translation Matters
Chapter three, "A Mistaken Gospel," presents a compendium of what DeConick regards as incorrect translations in the National Geographic translation of the Gospel of Judas, this embedded in a highly autobiographical account of her reactions as she discovered them.
Chapter four discusses the discovery of the manuscript (the tomb where the manuscript was found, the other contents of the Tchacos Codex, and the three other books found with the Tchacos Codex in a limestone box) and then presents a complete English translation of what remains of the 58 pages of the Coptic Gospel of Judas.
Part Three: Good Old Judas?
Chapter five, "Judas the Confessor," argues that the Gospel of Judas plays upon a reasonable, literal reading of the canonical Gospel of Mark, which reading presents the disciples of Jesus as faithless, hard-hearted, and repeatedly unable to get the point, and holds that it is the demons who understand the truth about Jesus. (In DeConick's view, Mark presents a polemic by the Jesus movement associated with the Apostle Paul against the Jesus movement associated with Jerusalem.) So Judas is a demon, not a Gnostic.
Chapter six, "Judas the Demon" presents DeConick's understanding of Judas in the Gospel of Judas. In order to grieve him, Jesus reveals to Judas that it is his destiny to rule over the thirteenth aeon (realm of the demonic ruler-angels or Archons), replacing or merging with Yaldabaoth; and over the twelve apostles, who double as the twelve aeons; and over the apostolic church. Nevertheless, all of these shall curse Judas. Since Gnostic baptism can save a person from that person's fate or destiny, it appears that Judas is understood never to have undergone Gnostic baptism.
Chapter seven, "Judas the Sacrificer," continues the exposition of the theology of the Gospel of Judas. In the Sethian drama and in the Gospel of Judas, Judas is a demonic figure who sacrifices Jesus, but thereby accidentally releases his spirit, which then defeats the Archons. This story is a critique of the weak point in the canonical Passion narratives, that the sacrifice of Jesus came about through Judas, who was explicitly demon possessed. The conclusion drawn by the Sethians is that Judas sacrificed Jesus to Yaldabaoth, which could hardly support the doctrine that the death of Jesus atoned for the sins of humanity. This new spin was of concern to proto-orthodox Christians and led the Church Father Origen to conclude that it was God who used Satan to possess Judas and bring about Jesus' death, but that Satan was outwitted by his resurrection, a position that preserved the theological viability of Jesus' atoning death. Despite their great theological differences, Origen and the Sethians would have agreed that the death of Jesus brought about victory over the dark powers.
Chapter eight, "An Ancient Gnostic Parody," briefly summarizes the narrative of the Gospel of Judas and then argues that this Gospel had a surprisingly modern message about questioning authority and thinking for oneself. It is profound that Origen and the Sethians both concluded that Jesus' spirit overcame death and by that victory defeated the Devil.
The Epilogue traces the evolution of Judas in Jesus movies and shows how from the 1960s to the 1980s the formerly evil figure of Judas became much more sympathetic. DeConick suggested that a similar impulse may have influenced the National Geographic team while they deciphered the Gospel of Judas. But ultimately the Judas of the Gospel of Judas is much more like the Judas of Dante than the Judas of The Last Temptation of Christ or the Judas of the National Geographic translation.
The book concludes with Appendices on: Further Reading; A Synopsis of Sethian Gnostic Literature; Testimony from the Church Fathers on the Gospel of Judas; and a Q&A with April DeConick on her interpretation of the Gospel of Judas.
This is a very useful introductory work on the Coptic Gospel of Judas. It vigorously advances the author's own views, but always puts them in the context of the scholarly debate so that the views of her opponents are clear as well. Some may find the highly autobiographical style a little irritating, but it must be kept in mind that this is a popular book, not a specialist monograph. The book offers clear explanations of the reasons for rejecting the view that the Gospel of Judas presented a Judas who was good, including detailed and commendably jargon-free discussions of the problematical passages and the philological issues, and these discussions require no knowledge of Coptic.
The debate about the meaning of the Gospel of Judas has naturally continued after the book was published (see the response of Marvin Meyer, member the National Geographic editorial team, here and DeConick's replies, beginning with this post, followed directly by seven more). Sethian Gnosticism and Coptic philology are not my areas of specialty, so I must decline to pronounce in favor of either DeConick or her opponents. But I can say that this book is an excellent entry into the Gospel of Judas for the nonspecialist, be it a scholar in a cognate discipline or an interested layperson.
