Pseudo-Tertullian and Irenaeus on Judas
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Patrick McCullough had a nice post on the Gospel of Judas last week, in which he asked, "Would Dr. DeConick suggest that scholars working on the Gospel of Judas are too quick to accept Irenaeus' understanding of its message (if not his judgment of it as heresy) and let it influence their translation?"
I suspect that this is the case, although the understanding seems to me to be coming from a pesher of texts that have been read together. Note that Irenaeus never says that Judas is a hero in the Gospel of Judas, or a Gnostic. He simply says (as our manuscript of the Gospel of Judas reports) that Judas is the only one who understands anything in this gospel, and that his betrayal of Jesus has chaotic consequences for the cosmos.
The heresiological texts have been read together in our collective scholarly consciousness so that we expected the Gospel of Judas to present us with Judas as a good guy. It is my suspicion that this expectation has influenced the translations (and interpretations), since the Coptic does not present us with a positive Judas, or a hero. Any attempt I've seen so far to interpret our manuscript with Judas as the hero results in dissonance and uneven commentaries.
Again I ask, if the text is anti-sacrifice and is saying that God is against this and does not consider it to be efficacious, then how can Judas be a hero by sacrificing Jesus at Jesus' request?
I suspect that this is the case, although the understanding seems to me to be coming from a pesher of texts that have been read together. Note that Irenaeus never says that Judas is a hero in the Gospel of Judas, or a Gnostic. He simply says (as our manuscript of the Gospel of Judas reports) that Judas is the only one who understands anything in this gospel, and that his betrayal of Jesus has chaotic consequences for the cosmos.
Others again declare that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau, Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them has suffered injury. For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas.It is Pseudo-Tertullian who is our earliest witness to the idea that Judas is considered a hero by Gnostics he calls the Cainites. He never mentions the Gospel of Judas. In my opinion, there is every reason to think that the Cainites never existed, but were fabricated by the heresiologists, perhaps based on Irenaeus' mention of Cain as a power (which the Sethians do say, but he is an archonic evil power!). Our manuscript was written by Sethian Gnostics, not these Cainites.
The heresiological texts have been read together in our collective scholarly consciousness so that we expected the Gospel of Judas to present us with Judas as a good guy. It is my suspicion that this expectation has influenced the translations (and interpretations), since the Coptic does not present us with a positive Judas, or a hero. Any attempt I've seen so far to interpret our manuscript with Judas as the hero results in dissonance and uneven commentaries.
Again I ask, if the text is anti-sacrifice and is saying that God is against this and does not consider it to be efficacious, then how can Judas be a hero by sacrificing Jesus at Jesus' request?