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Rodolphe Kasser (1927–2013)

Autor(a) de The Gospel of Judas

11+ Works 1,079 Membros 19 Críticas

About the Author

Image credit: Michel Kasser

Obras por Rodolphe Kasser

Associated Works

The Gospel of Judas (2000)algumas edições366 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Data de nascimento
1927-01-14
Data de falecimento
2013-10-08
Sexo
male
Nacionalidade
Switzerland
Local de nascimento
Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
Educação
École pratique des hautes études (Ph.D. equivalent)
Ocupações
professor
Organizações
University of Geneva

Membros

Críticas

1CThe Gospel of Judas 1D is the third book about this gospel that I have read this year. The common thread in all of these books 14aside from the controversial gospel itself 14is the lore of books and publishing, especially the ephemeral world of ancient publishing. It is sad, too, to read in each book how this ancient papyrus book or codex was treated by its several late-twentieth-century owners. When it was first seen by Professor Rodolphe Kasser, the man who became its chief translator, he was alarmed to notice that the papyrus upon which the text is written crumbled at the slightest touch. Kasser pays the ultimate compliment to Florence Darbre, the professional restorer who gently and patiently conserved the ruined book: 1CWith her fairy 19s fingers, she made largely possible what, at first glance, appeared doomed to failure. 1D

The recent history of this gospel is shrouded in secrecy because the discovery and subsequent sale(s) were illegal. It was found somewhere up the Nile by grave robbers and sold on the black market. After more than twenty years of miserable treatment, it was bought by the Maecenas Foundation in Basel, Switzerland, where it was rescued by Darbre, then translated by professors Kasser of Switzerland and Gregor Wurst of Germany. The Foundation also made a deal with the National Geographic Society for the publication and distribution of 1CThe Gospel of Judas. 1D

This book contains not only the nearly complete text of the short gospel, but also copious footnotes, an introduction, and four lengthy commentaries by each translator and two American scholars, Marvin Meyer and Bart Ehrman. The notes prove to be necessary because holes, tears, discolorations, and missing fragments leave sometimes enormous gaps in the text, requiring restorative guesswork to make sense of the story. Fortunately, there are a number of other gnostic texts, so that when only a few legible phrases remain of the more compromised passages of the Gospel of Judas, they sometimes turn out to be reminiscent of phrases found in the Secret Book of John, the Holy Book of the Invisible Spirit, and other gnostic works; so the translators are able to guess what some of these ravaged passages probably said.

There is further justification for so much commentary. Even if the translators had had a pristine copy to work from, the Gospel of Judas, like all gnostic texts, is full of obscure allegory as well as allusions to astrology and numerology. (If you think that the canonical New Testament is free of influences such as numerology, then explain why it is that several of Jesus 19s miracles that involve fish dwell so much on the exact numbers of fish involved; for that matter, explain the far out use of allegory in Revelations 26but then again don 19t 14I don 19t want to get anyone started.) Many students of gnosticism have speculated that these texts were only really penetrable to those who were privileged to receive an oral explanation from a gnostic teacher.

The second-century Bishop Irenaeus mentions the Gospel of Judas in his five-volume work Against Heresies (circa 180). Wurst believes that Irenaeus probably had heard of it but never actually saw it; nevertheless, Wurst concludes that the original of the Gospel of Judas would be over 1830 years old, if it were still to exist, but was composed after 100 14probably well afterward. It also would have been in Greek rather than the Coptic (late Egyptian) language in which the surviving third- or fourth-century copy of the Gospel of Judas is preserved. (By comparison, the only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas is in Coptic and dates from the fourth century, but fragments from two different third-century copies in Greek also exist.) The title of the Coptic text is literally 1Cthe Gospel of Judas, 1D not 1Cthe gospel according to Judas, 1D as might be expected since the latter is the usual style of most other gospel titles 14including those of Matthew and Thomas, for example. The editors suggest that this is because this is not supposed to be a gospel about Jesus by Judas, but rather a gospel about Judas.

The existence of the Gospel of Judas tells us little if anything about the situation at the dawn of Christianity. Rather, it tells us mainly about the diversity of belief among subsequent generations of early Christians. While the earliest split in Christianity was between Jewish and gentile Christians, there were multiple GENTILE Christianities by the beginning of the second century (although most varieties of Christianity were either influenced by or reacting against Jewish Christianity; paradoxically, some may actually have been doing both at once). One of these varieties was gnosticism, a system of thought influenced by Greek philosophy and mysticism, but which also appealed to some Jewish as well as Christian sects. Most scholars doubt that Jesus was a gnostic but many believe that some very early Christians might have been. Gnostic Christians were certainly ubiquitous throughout second- and third-century Christendom 14even finding their way to Rome. They did not seek to convert masses of people, instead seeking out only the few in any community who would be receptive to their message. Not only did gnostics live side by side with orthodox Christians for several centuries but, also, quasi-gnostic ideas mingled with orthodox thought 14and arguably still do. The letters of Paul and the Gospel of John, tinged as they are with Greek philosophy and mysticism, were comfortably read by gnostics with their own interpretations in mind.

This gospel clearly intends to promote the beliefs of the gnostics who held that the world was created by an evil god (or the henchmen of an evil god), and that there is a higher God or 1CGodhead 1D above this lower god. This sounds polytheistic, but not more so than the belief of some 1Cmonotheists 1D in the Devil, who is, after all, an entity lower than God yet possessed of some god-like powers; indeed, the evil god or 1Cdemiurge, 1D as conceived of by the gnostics, shares some obvious characteristics with Satan who is often described as if ruling over the material world even if he did not make it.

Gnostics believed that knowledge (Greek: gnosis), that is, an enlightened understanding of the true arrangement of the universe, is the beginning of a journey at the end of which one 19s soul might be reunited with the true Supreme Being in the highest spiritual realm, where the soul truly belongs. According to this theology, Jesus came not to expiate our sins through his sacrifice but to spread knowledge of the True God and then to make his own escape from this material world. There is no resurrection in the Gospel of Judas because the True God, through Jesus, has no wish to claim this world. Jesus 19s death, accomplished indirectly through Judas, is a rejection of this corrupt material plain. According to the Gospel of Judas, the title figure is not a villain but, rather, simply Jesus 19s means of escape. 1CYou will exceed all of them, 1D says the gnostic Jesus to Judas, 1Cfor you will sacrifice the man that clothes [or 1Cbears 1D] me 1D (Judas 56 14rather than being divided into chapters and verses, the Gospel of Judas is cited by page number in the codex).

The gnostics who wrote and used the Gospel of Judas explicitly belonged to the Sethian sect within gnosticism (named for Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, with whom these gnostics identified Jesus), and perhaps they belonged to a 1CCainite 1D sect or sub-sect that was suggested by Irenaeus and others to have been connected with the Gospel of Judas; however, the editors of this translation point out that no mention of Cain appears in the admittedly incomplete text of the Gospel of Judas, while Seth is quite prominent. It is possible that 1CCainites 1D was just an epithet applied to gnostics by their enemies.

There is an unmistakable 14if possibly misunderstood 14elitism in gnosticism: some human beings are 1Cof the spirit 1D while others are 1Cmade of wood 1D and are seemingly hopeless cases. According to gnostics, the greater portion of humanity is trapped not only in the prison of the material world but in ignorant worship of the lower god as if he were the True God. Moreover, there looms the likelihood that not everyone who possesses the spark of the divine in his soul will achieve the illumination of divine gnosis if he does not seek it diligently. (This three-tiered hierarchy of who does and does not attain gnostic illumination lends itself to one possible interpretation of the parable of the sower [NT: Matthew 13:1-23; Mark 4:1-20; Luke 8:1-15; and, extra-canonically, Gospel of Thomas 9].)

Just as Irenaeus and other orthodox churchmen accused gnostics and their other enemies of the most heinous kinds of immorality, so the 1Cheretics 1D returned the favor. In the Gospel of Judas, the gnostic Jesus accuses his disciples 14excepting Judas 14of leading Christianity into false teachings, fornication, homosexuality, and spiritual (and possibly even physical) mass murder. Indeed, while the Gospel of Judas resolves the mystery of why a farseeing Jesus would adopt a disciple whom he knows will turn him over to his enemies, it creates the greater puzzle of why Jesus would accept the other eleven disciples even as he reproaches them for their abominations in his name. Why does he not read them out of his program entirely if he is not able to rehabilitate them before they go out to do so much evil in the future? The obvious answer is that by the time this gospel was written, Christianity had already embarked on the program decried by this gospel 19s author. (This is a good example of how this text 14like others, including the NT texts 14tell us far more about the attitudes and conflicts of the times in which it was actually written than it does about the time in which its story is set.)

Much of the text is taken up with the exposition of cosmology, making the 1Cplot 1D rather thin for those who expect this gospel to be a narrative or even a novel. As far as they go, the plot points are these: Jesus finds the apostles anachronistically at Eucharist, worshipping the false lower god. After Jesus chides them, he is approached by Judas who confesses that Jesus was sent by the True God. The other apostles describe a vision they have had and Jesus interprets it to mean that they will betray his teachings. He then teaches Judas gnostic cosmology. Judas later describes a vision in which he is stoned to death by the others, and Jesus tells him that although he will be reviled by men for a long time, ultimately 1Cyour star will lead the way. 1D Toward the end of the gospel, Jesus guides Judas on a mystical ascent to the heavens. He seems to be speaking about Judas 19s relation to the 1CGreat Generation 1D that is destined for gnostic reunion in the upper reaches of heaven, but this is another compromised passage with as many as five lines completely missing. For all we know, those missing lines could involve Jesus telling Judas more explicitly than before to hand him over to the authorities. An interesting difference from the NT version of the arrest is that Jesus is evidently not grabbed in a garden but in a room in some unspecified place where he has gone to pray. Then the Gospel of Judas ends almost anticlimactically with Judas meeting with the authorities and delivering Jesus to them.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
MilesFowler | 18 outras críticas | Jul 16, 2023 |
Let's get this straight. I finished the text, not the entire book. I'm sure the essays that followed The Gospel of Judasare interesting and provide historical insight to the lost text, it doesn't further my pursuit of reading as many religious texts as I promised - a stupid idea last year, but I bought all these books so I better damn read them.

It's hard to "review" a religious text - especially one that is considered a "lost book" of the Bible. Especially hard when said "lost book" also has several lines of text missing. We also know the ending - "Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed him over to them."

So what this book offers is an unique insight to the times before Judas' betrayal. It even offers a hint that Jesus already knew and warned Judas of said betrayal: "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me./Already your horn has been raised,/your wrath has been kindled,/your star has shown brightly/and your heart has [...]."

It's a new look at Judas Iscariot, the betrayer, as well as, Jesus the messiah. It's also no wonder why this text will never make it into any canon. Interesting read and you should definitely pick it up.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
ennuiprayer | 18 outras críticas | Jan 14, 2022 |
" Tu les surpasseras tous. Car tu sacrifieras l'homme qui me sert d'enveloppe charnelle. " Ce sont là les paroles que Jésus adresse à Judas, dans un évangile inconnu, arraché aux sables égyptiens. Un évangile doublement caché, à la fois par dix-sept siècles d'oubli mais aussi par la condamnation officielle de l'Eglise. Ecrit en copte, ce codex, qui a miraculeusement traversé les âges, a dû être rédigé lors du IIe siècle de notre ère. Son message est bouleversant, qui voit en Judas l'homme choisi par le Christ pour accomplir Son destin. C'est là tout l'univers fascinant des croyances qui s'ouvre, réservées jusqu'alors aux initiés qui luttèrent contre l'Eglise lors de la création de la chrétienté. Le manuscrit original est ici intégralement livré au public, avec un double appareil critique complet qui offrira à chaque lecteur de cheminer à son gré dans les profondeurs de ce texte troublant.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Haijavivi | 18 outras críticas | Jun 11, 2019 |

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Obras
11
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Membros
1,079
Popularidade
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Avaliação
½ 3.4
Críticas
19
ISBN
23
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