New translation sparks debate

BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

Judas Iscariot is one of the most infamous traitors.

But was he?

Or was he just an early victim of bad press?

Marvin Meyer, a biblical scholar who translated the recently published Gospel of Judas, thinks it was the latter. Meyer spoke last week at the University of Mary Washington.

Judas was one of Jesus' disciples, the 12 men closest to him. But, for 30 pieces of silver, he told authorities how to capture and arrest the religious leader.

Throughout history, Judas' story has intrigued many. How do you betray your closest friend? Why exactly did Judas do it?

The New Testament Gospels are not so clear on the subject. Some hint he did it for the money.

But is it possible Judas didn't betray Jesus but helped him? Instead of being the traitor, could he have been the only disciple to truly understand Jesus' mission?

The Gospel of Judas, a text discovered more than 30 years ago and translated in 2006, suggests that very scenario.

The new look at Judas has been so compelling that the translated Gospel became a best-seller.

Meyer's recent lecture at UMW was well-attended. He travels the world speaking about the Gospel of Judas.

"The response has been just incredible to this text," Meyer said in an interview.

The text has its supporters but some consider it heretical and others are now questioning the translation. Nevertheless, it's opening up discussions, Meyer said.

As people learn more about the Gospel of Judas, they also learn about how the canon--the official books of the Bible--was created.

Early church leaders got together and hashed out which books would be part of accepted Scriptures and which would be left out. Those discussions got quite heated, Meyer said, and sometimes the line between orthodoxy and heresy grew very thin.

The left-out gospels often faded into obscurity. Some have been discovered in the intervening years. These include a collection of manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi and the Coptic papyri found in the 1970s, which include the Gospel of Judas.

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The Gospel of Judas doesn't just refute the traditional Judas story. It also gives voice to the Gnostic views, which didn't make it into the canon. And it gives a fresh perspective on early Christianity. "A voice that has been silenced since the second century is allowed to speak once again," said Dr. Marvin Meyer, a translator of the text. Here are a few other things that show up in the Gospel:

Jesus laughed. In the New Testament Gospels, Jesus is a pretty serious guy. But he has a sense of humor in the Gospel of Judas.

Sacrifice is not necessary. The Gospel of Judas doesn't place a high value on martyrdom. In this text, Jesus didn't die for the sins of the world. His value was in teaching people how to find their own divinity.

Jesus may have gone willingly to his death. If there is no betrayer, then Jesus becomes more like a Gandhi figure who allowed himself to be taken without resistance.

Judas may have been the best disciple. At one point, Jesus tells Judas, "You will exceed all of them." Different scholars offer different opinions on the exchange. But Meyer thinks Judas is the disciple who got it right. He understood Jesus needed to be turned in and he performed the task for him.

They were discovered in the 1970s in Egypt and somehow made it out of the country. Since then, the papyrus book "was treated with ineptitude and, at times, with greed," said Meyer, a translator of the papyri.

When the National Geographic Society began to work on the papyri in 2001, what had once been a leather-bound book of papyri was a box of dusty fragments. Piecing it back into a book that could be translated was "really nothing short of a papyrological miracle," he said.

What can the average reader take out of the Gospel of Judas? How can they learn more about Judas and Jesus? Study the New Testament, suggested Meyer. If you read the accounts of Judas found in the four Gospels, you see discrepancies. Study the Judas story in chronological order of the Gospels (which goes Mark, Matthew, Luke, then John) and you'll see that Judas' reputation gets worse and worse over time, he said.

Date published: 11/3/2007

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