The Repository of Arcane Knowledge will not be posting an essay about the so-called Gospel of Judas, for the same reason you won’t find a refutation of the “Da Vinci Code” here: it’s too stupid to refute. I can half-understand why the historically ignorant would seriously believe in these crackpot conspiracy theories, but scholars really ought to know better. The Gnostics were the second-century equivalent of Scientologists, pretending to have improbably acquired secret knowledge that would enable people to transcend their bodies. They were theologically eclectic, borrowing from Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Neoplatonism, and other ideologies, yet often mutilating their sources beyond recognition. Since the Gnostics pretended to have secret knowledge, they had to claim that they knew the true, esoteric meaning of Jesus or Plato or whomever, which was often contrary to the plain meaning of the text or the common understanding of most people.
A modern example of this sort of thinking is Leo Strauss, who believed the classical philosophers held esoteric doctrines that were contrary to those professed in the texts we have, and that he could discern these doctrines by “reading between the lines”. In fact, the texts we possess are the esoteric teachings, as in the case of Aristotle, whose exoteric teachings have been lost. The only difference between the two is that the latter tended to be in a non-systematic, literary form, rather than as an explicit treatise, but there is no known case of the esoteric teaching being opposed to the exoteric teaching.
The Gnostics came up with all sorts of contrarian interpretations of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, making the Old Testament God a malevolent demiurge subordinate to the Logos, or claiming Cain was actually a good guy. No one in their right mind thinks this was truly the original meaning of the Old Testament – the Gnostics just made this stuff up, and invented stories about how the “real” story of Cain was handed down to them. The same thing with the Gospel of Judas. How do the Gnostics account for the fact that none of Jesus’ apostles ever preached their bizarre doctrines? Oh, well, the true doctrine was only told to Judas, who was actually Jesus’ favorite disciple. How convenient! The dead giveaway of course is that they insist this was a one-on-one secret with Jesus, who was quite public about even the most difficult teachings. The notion of a one-on-one secret is a standard tactic for conspiracy theorists, who need to make an unverifiable assertion to account for their contrarian interpretation of history. Similarly, the Gnostic “Gospel of Thomas” gives away its game by saying that these were “secret” teachings of Jesus to Thomas, thereby accounting for the fact they are absent from earlier sources.
I find it immensely amusing that the same scholars who are so skeptical of the canonical Gospels should uncritically accept the loony pseudo-histories of the Gnostics. They can’t believe that an apostle really wrote Matthew, but they think an authentic tradition of Judas is really preserved in a later Gnostic work. Critical thinking is clouded by their aversion to orthodox Christianity, so that they will believe anything that would contradict it. This bias is evident in their comical belief that the early Church suppressed the Gnostic writings because they were heretical. They are confusing the early Church with the “repressive” Tridentine Church – the early Church had no institutional power. The failure of Gnosticism reflects a failure to win the hearts and minds of Christians. Besides, even the Gnostic writings that weren’t heretical were not accepted – because they were of dubious authenticity, and in many cases just plain ridiculous.