Jesus-Judas manuscript is genuine, but is its story true?

[Shammu]

  Jesus-Judas manuscript is genuine, but is its story true?
By Laurie Goodstein The New York Times
FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2006
NEW YORK In 1959, when the Gospel of Thomas was first published in English, many Christians were shocked to learn that any gospels existed other than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

It was also the first time that most Christians had ever heard about the Gnostics - Christian communities in the second through fourth centuries whose scriptures and spiritual beliefs barely resemble what is now thought of as traditional Christianity.

But the Gospel of Judas, another piece of Gnostic scripture, has been released in a very different era. It is a time when many Christians have been bombarded by competing claims about their faith and its history, and some are grappling with how to absorb it all.

Gnosticism has become practically a household word, largely thanks to the novel "The Da Vinci Code," as well as to scholars of early Christianity like Elaine Pagels, who write for a popular audience.

Many more Gnostic Gospels have been translated and distributed - Mary Magdalene, Philip, Thomas and even "The Gospel of Truth." Some churches are holding study groups to pick over books on the "historical Jesus."

The Gospel of Judas is only the latest crumbling parchment to surface in the sands of Egypt like an ancient time capsule. Even before its formal introduction at a National Geographic Society news conference on Thursday, scholars have been part of a debate that will soon be echoing in churches, on the Web and in Christian publishing.

The real debate is whether the text says anything historically legitimate about Jesus and Judas.

Some of the scholars on National Geographic's advisory committee said the text should prompt a reassessment of Judas. In it, Jesus speaks privately to Judas, telling him he will share with Judas alone "the mysteries of the kingdom." Jesus asks Judas to turn him over to the Roman authorities so that his body can be sacrificed.

Craig Evans, a professor of the New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and a scholar on the National Geographic panel, conjectured that some of the dialogue between Jesus and Judas may have been spoken in private, and so did not make its way into the New Testament Gospels, which are more likely to treat Jesus' public statements.

"It is possible that the Gospel of Judas preserves an old memory that Jesus had actually instructed Judas in private, and the other disciples did not know about it," Dr. Evans said.

Ms. Pagels, a religion professor at Princeton, said the discoveries of the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic texts were "exploding the myth of a monolithic Christianity."

The reaction of other scholars is that the Gospel of Judas is interesting but no challenge to the New Testament.

"The manuscript tells us nothing about the historical Jesus or the historical Judas," said Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. "It tells us a lot about a group that were labeled heretics in their own day."

Scholars on all sides agree that the text was probably produced by a scribe in a Gnostic community of Cainites - early Christians who regarded the traditional villains of the Bible, including Cain, Esau and Judas, as heroes.

"There is no evidence that any of these documents ever represented mainstream Christianity," Professor Witherington said. "The Cainites were always on the fringes of their own movement."

He said that unlike Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which were written in Christianity's first century, Gnostic works were produced in the second century and afterward. To say that the Gospel of Judas reveals anything factual about Judas, Dr. Witherington said, "is like saying a document written 150 years after George Washington died tells us the inside truth about George Washington."

Another member of the National Geographic panel of scholars, the Rev. Donald Senior, said the Gnostic gospels could undermine Christianity only if many Christians were to adopt the kind of conspiracy thinking that undergirds "The Da Vinci Code": that an "orthodox elite" of early church authorities suppressed the free-thinking, spiritual Gnostics "for the sake of uniformity and conformity."

Father Senior, president of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago and a member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which advises the pope, said that the Vatican is not likely to regard the Gospel of Judas as a threat. He said that the Roman Catholic Church's likely response would be to "affirm the canonical texts" in the New Testament, rather than seeking to refute each new discovery.

"If the Gospel of Judas suddenly became something that hundreds of thousands of Christians were claiming as their revelation and scripture, perhaps the church would come out with some kind of statement," Father Senior said in an interview. "But mostly I think it's just not even on the radar screen."

He added, "I'm just glad it wasn't found in a bank vault in the Vatican."

Jesus-Judas manuscript is genuine, but is its story true?

My note; I myself think that this is just another way for satan to try and trick us.

[Soldier4Christ]

Calling evil good ....................


I am sure that we will see more and more of this kind of garbage coming out.

[JudgeNot]

If there was ever a subject that could get me out of hiding...

This story disturbs me.  What is most disturbing is that they are calling it a ‘gospel’.  The literal translation of ‘gospel’ (as everyone on this board knows) is ‘good news’ – is there any?  There is no doubt it is an early Christian writing – written a century or two after the biblical gospels – but to jump on it as divinely inspired is stretching reality.  I think agnostics will try to use it as leverage against the validity of Christianity to discredit God – that also disturbs me.  But then, I suppose God can take care of Himself, huh.

[Soldier4Christ]

It was written by the early gnostics. To me that says it all. The gnostics thought they and they alone had the key to all knowledge and it was that knowledge that "saved" them. They also did not believe in the Deity of Jesus Christ. So it makes sense that they would come up with such a story as this to prove that Jesus was just a man and conspired with someone else to bring about His death on the cross.

Yes, it will be used by many to disprove true Christianity. Another sign of the times.

[Allinall]

"I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me! I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough. I consider that I am not in the least inferior to these super-apostles. Even if I am unskilled in speaking, I am not so in knowledge; indeed, in every way we have made this plain to you in all things." - 2 Corinthians 11:1-6

"I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel-- not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed." - Galatians 1:6-9

 

[Shammu]

Matthew 24:3-13 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. "Tell us," they said, "when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"  4 Jesus answered: "Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.  9 "Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.

[Shammu]

'Gospel of Judas' gives new view of Jesus' betrayer
 Email this Story

Apr 6, 4:53 PM (ET)


By Deborah Zabarenko

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Judas Iscariot, vilified as Christ's betrayer, acted at Jesus' request in turning him over to the authorities who crucified him, according to a 1,700-year-old copy of the "Gospel of Judas" unveiled on Thursday.

In an alternative view to traditional Christian teaching, the Judas gospel shows the reviled disciple as the only one in Jesus' inner circle who understood his desire to shed his earthly body.

"He's the good guy in this portrayal," said Bart Ehrman, a religion professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "He's the only apostle who understands Jesus."

The Judas gospel's introduction says it is "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot." Later, it quotes Jesus as saying to Judas, "You will exceed all of them (the other disciples) for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me."

"The idea in this gospel is that Jesus, like all of us, is a trapped spirit, who is trapped in a material body," Ehrman said. "And salvation comes when we escape the materiality of our existence, and Judas is the one who makes it possible for him to escape by allowing for his body to be killed."

Rev. Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, said the document revealed the diversity and vitality in early Christianity.

"The question becomes ... does this tradition, this alternative story, if you like, in the gospel of Judas have a claim that in some sense is equal to the rival claim of the gospel tradition?" Senior said.

It is not known who wrote the Judas gospel. The copy unveiled on Thursday is of a document mentioned critically in the year 180 in a treatise called "Against Heresies," written by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon in what was then Roman Gaul. It spoke out against those whose views about Jesus differed from those of the mainstream Christian Church.

In the Bible's New Testament, Judas is portrayed as the quintessential traitor, accepting 30 pieces of silver to betray Jesus by identifying him to Roman soldiers. The biblical Gospel of St. Matthew says Judas quickly regretted his treachery, returned the silver and hanged himself.

The New Testament contains four Gospels -- of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John -- but many more so-called apocryphal gospels were written in the first centuries after Christ's death, attributed to such disciples as Thomas and Philip and to his female follower Mary Magdalene.

HIDDEN IN EGYPTIAN DESERT

Ehrman, Senior and other experts on Christianity spoke at a briefing at the National Geographic Society, which unveiled a translation of the Judas gospel and which helped authenticate, preserve and translate the document.

The leather-bound copy of the gospel was written in Coptic script on both sides of 13 sheets of papyrus, and spent most of the past 1,700 years hidden in a cavern in the Egyptian desert, said Terry Garcia of the National Geographic Society.

This document was probably copied from the original Greek manuscript around the year 300, Garcia said. Discovered in the 1970s near Minya, Egypt, the volume -- including the gospel and other documents -- was sold to an Egyptian antiquities dealer in 1978.

The dealer offered it for sale without success, and eventually locked it in a bank safe deposit box in Hicksville, New York, for 16 years, which hastened its decay. In images displayed at the briefing, the papyrus looked like brown, dry autumn leaves.

Garcia said it had crumbled into more than 1,000 pieces.

In 2001, the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Switzerland began an effort to transcribe and translate the volume from the Coptic. In the next years, scientific tests -- including radiocarbon dating, ink analysis and multispectral imaging -- showed the document was copied down around 300.

The Judas gospel is being published in book form by National Geographic and pages from the papyrus manuscript will be on display at the society's museum in Washington starting on Friday. The manuscript will ultimately be housed at the Coptic Museum in Cairo.

'Gospel of Judas' gives new view of Jesus' betrayer

My note; The heresy continues to increase!

[Shammu]

In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD and LAURIE GOODSTEIN

An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years, and it portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple and willing collaborator.

In this text, scholars reported yesterday, the account of events leading to the Crucifixion differs sharply from the four gospels in the New Testament. Here Jesus is said to entrust Judas with special knowledge and ask him to betray him to the Roman authorities. By doing so, he tells Judas, "you will exceed" the other disciples.

"You will be cursed by the other generations, and you will come to rule over them," Jesus confides to Judas in the document, which was made public at a news conference at the National Geographic Society in Washington.

Though some theologians have hypothesized the "good Judas" before, scholars who have translated and studied the text said this was the first time an ancient document lent specific support to a revised image of the man whose name in history has been synonymous with treachery.

Scholars say the release of the document will set off years of study and debate. The debate is not over whether the manuscript is genuine — on this the scholars agree. Instead, the controversy is over its relevance.

Already, some scholars are saying that this Gospel sheds new light on the historical relationship between Jesus and Judas. They find strands of secret Jewish mysticism running through the beliefs expressed by some branches of early Christianity.

But others say the text is merely one more scripture produced by a marginalized Christian cult of Gnostics, who lived so many years after Jesus' day that they could not possibly produce anything accurate about his life. For these reasons, the discoveries are expected to intrigue theologians and historians of religion and perhaps be deeply troubling to some church leaders and lay believers.

"We will be talking about this gospel for generations to come," said Marvin Meyer, a professor of religion at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.

The discovery in the desert of Egypt of the leather-bound papyrus manuscript, its wanderings through Europe and Long Island, and now its translation, were announced by scholars assembled by the National Geographic Society. The 26-page Judas text is believed to be a copy in the Coptic language, made around A.D. 300, of the original Gospel of Judas, written in Greek the century before.

Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of the society, said the manuscript, or codex, was considered by scholars to be the most significant ancient, nonbiblical text found in the past 60 years. Previous major discoveries include the Dead Sea Scrolls, which began coming to light in the late 1940's, and the Nag Hammadi monastery collection of Gnostic writings found in 1945 in Egypt.

The latter, including gospels of Thomas and Mary Magdalene, have inspired recent Gnostic scholarship and shaken up traditional biblical scholarship by revealing the diversity of beliefs among early followers of Jesus. Gnostics believed in a secret knowledge of how people could escape the prisons of their material bodies and return to the spiritual realm from which they came.

"These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion and demonstrating how diverse — and fascinating — the early Christian movement really was," said Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton who specializes in studies of the Gnostics.

Mr. Garcia said, "The codex has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature," citing extensive tests of radiocarbon dating, ink analysis and multispectral imaging and studies of the script and linguistic style. The ink, for example, was consistent with ink of that era, and there was no evidence of multiple rewriting.

"This is absolutely typical of ancient Coptic manuscripts," said Stephen Emmel, professor of Coptic studies at the University of Münster in Germany. "I am completely convinced."

Experts said the handwriting appeared to be that of a single professional scribe. He is anonymous, as is the original author in Greek.

The word "gospel" means "good news," and generally refers to accounts of Jesus' life. Though someone is named in each, the titles are not necessarily those of the true authors. The consensus of scholars is that the four canonical gospels — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — were probably not written by any of the original disciples or first-person witnesses to the life of Jesus, although they were probably written within the first century.

Scholars have long been on the lookout for the Gospel of Judas because of a reference to what was probably an early version in a treatise written by Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, in 180. He was a hunter of heretics, and no friend of the Gnostics, whose writings proliferated in the second through fourth centuries.

"They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas," Irenaeus wrote.

Unlike the four standard gospels, the Judas document portrays Judas Iscariot as alone among the 12 disciples to understand Jesus' teachings.

Karen L. King, a professor of the history of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, who is not involved in the Judas project, said this gospel might well reflect the debates that arose in the early centuries.

"You can see how early Christians could say, if Jesus' death was all part of God's plan, then Judas's betrayal was part of God's plan," said Dr. King. The standard gospels either give no motivation for Judas's betrayal or attribute it to the pieces of silver or the influence of Satan.

At least one scholar, James M. Robinson, said the new manuscript did not contain anything likely to change traditional understanding of the Bible. Dr. Robinson, a retired professor of Coptic studies at Claremont Graduate University in California, was thegeneral editor of the English edition of the Nag Hammadi collection. "Correctly understood, there's nothing undermining about the Gospel of Judas," he said.

Dr. Robinson noted that the gospels of John and Mark both had passages that suggest that Jesus not only picked Judas to betray him, but actually encouraged Judas to hand him over to those he knew would crucify him.

In a key passage in the new-found gospel, Jesus had talks with Judas "three days before he celebrated Passover." That is when Jesus is supposed to have referred to the other disciples and said to Judas: "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."

By that, scholars said, Jesus seems to have meant that in helping him get rid of his physical flesh, Judas will act to liberate the true spiritual self or divine being within Jesus.

Rodolphe Kasser, a Swiss scholar of Coptic studies, directed the team that reconstructed and translated the script, which was written on 13 sheets of papyrus, both front and back. The manuscript was a mess of more than 1,000 brittle fragments.

The effort, organized by the National Geographic Society, was supported by Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, in Basel, Switzerland, and the Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, an American foundation.

The 66-page codex also contains a text titled James, a letter by Peter and pages provisionally called Book of Allogenes, or Book of Strangers.

Discovered in the 1970's in a cavern near El Minya, Egypt, the document circulated for years among antiquities dealers in Egypt, then Europe and finally in the United States. Dr. Robinson, of Claremont, said that an Egyptian antiquities dealer offered to sell him the codex in 1983 for $3 million, but that he was unable to raise the money.

The manuscript moldered in a safe-deposit box at a bank in Hicksville, N.Y., for 16 years before being bought in 2000 by a Zurich dealer, Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos. The manuscript was then given the name Codex Tchacos.

When efforts to resell the codex failed, Ms. Nussberger-Tchacos turned it over to the Maecenas Foundation for conservation and translation. Ted Waitt, founder and former chief executive of Gateway, said the Waitt Institute gave the geographic society a grant of more than $1 million for the restoration.

Officials of the project announced that the codex would ultimately be returned to Egypt and housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo. For now, the Gospel of Judas will be the center of attention in a television show, magazine article, two books and an exhibition by National Geographic.

In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal

[Mockingbird]

In an "unrelated" story, Dan Brown has begun work on his new book,  What a Friend I Have in Judas...."

 

My favorite quote: 

"The manuscript tells us nothing about the historical Jesus or the historical Judas," said Ben Witherington III, professor of New Testament interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky. "It tells us a lot about a group that were labeled heretics in their own day."

[Soldier4Christ]

Personally I prefer the statement "It tells us a lot about a group that were labeled heretics in their own day."

[Shammu]

Here comes satan, hard and strong, y'all know W.W.J.D. right. Well D.J.W.W. means Devil Just Won't Win!!

'Jesus Dynasty' Author Asks: Were There Two Messiahs?
Scholar Also Argues Historical Evidence Shows Jesus Had a Human Father   
By MARTIN BASHIR

April 7, 2006 — - Israel remains a land of holiness and of controversy -- and not just in political terms.

Almost by the month, religious scholars and historians propose a new way of understanding the life and impact of Jesus Christ.  In his new book "The Jesus Dynasty," James Tabor is the latest addition to this hotly contested catalog.

Tabor, a historian with the Religious Studies Department at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, has spent his entire career studying the life of Jesus.  He says his new book is the culmination of 40 years of research.

"I first traveled to the Holy Land with my parents over 40 years ago," Tabor told "Nightline." "It was that experience that set me on my lifelong quest for the historical Jesus."

His conclusions are certain to provoke intense controversy and skepticism among other scholars and followers of the Christian faith. Tabor argues the historical evidence shows that Jesus had a human father, and that he was joined by a fellow messiah.

We took Tabor back to where it all started, the city of Jerusalem, to assess the major claims in his book.

'Unbelievable' Discovery

We began our journey at the location of Tabor's most remarkable archaeological discovery: an ancient hillside tomb outside Jerusalem that had been recently ransacked.

Inside, there were compartments hewn from ancient stone where corpses had been laid to rest.  They were empty, apart from one that appeared to contain an old newspaper laid out within the chamber.  In fact, it was a burial shroud -- a linen fabric into which a corpse would have been placed.  Test results proved almost beyond Tabor's wildest dreams.

"We had to believe the unbelievable," he said. "We had stumbled upon the only example of a burial shroud from the first century."

Analysis showed the shroud had contained the remains of a first-century man who died of tuberculosis.  In the same tomb, Tabor's group also found an ossuary -- a box used to contain the bones of the deceased -- that had the name Miriam or Mary inscribed upon it.  Tabor also believes the recently discovered ossuary of James, which some scholars have dismissed as a forgery, may have also originated in this tomb.

"There's some circumstantial evidence that the ossuary of James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus, came from this particular tomb," he said. "We have entertained the possibility that this tomb might've been the family tomb of Jesus."

And it's with regard to Jesus' family that Tabor levels his most controversial claim.

"I'm ready to let the average reader know what we scholars actually discuss.  And if it's shocking, it's shocking.  You don't have to accept it. Jesus had a father."

Did that mean Tabor does not believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus?

"I don't," he said. "I think all humans have a human father."

Tabor, who studied first- and second-century Rabbinic and Greek texts, suggests a possible name for the human father of Jesus.

"They begin to call Jesus, 'bar Pantera,' son of Pantera," Tabor said. "And we even have an early Greek source.  He's a philosopher named Kelsus, who seems to know a bit more about it.  He says that Jesus was the son of a man named Pantera, who either was or became a Roman soldier."

The tombstone of Pantera is in Germany, says Tabor.

"Pantera is from Palestine. And he dates 62 years old when he dies ... He's on the frontier in Germany.  And if you figure his date and where he was ... he's a teenager.  You know, a young man maybe 19 or 20 at the time Mary becomes pregnant," Tabor said.

The suggestion that Pantera may have been the father of Jesus has been proposed before, however.

"It's not some new discovery," said Dr. Donald Carson, an expert in New Testament history from Trinity University in Illinois.  "It's presented in the book as this great find that has been suppressed ... But it's been discussed and carefully weighed by centuries of scholars.  There is nothing new here except the association of names that go back, at the end of the day, to reports of the enemies of Christianity from the second century.  Pantera was an incredibly popular name at the time of Christ."

Twin Messiahs?

Carson argues that Tabor's views are shaped by his own materialistic philosophy, which does not allow for any supernatural or extraordinary elements -- such as a Virgin Birth.

"What Dr. Tabor has done is assumed that the whole thing cannot be," Carson said. "It is a sham and therefore the evidence has to be jiggered, it has to be selectively appealed to in order to take away the evidence of God actually doing something in space, time, history.  At that point, no amount of evidence will ever convince him unless he's open to the possibility that Dr. Tabor himself is wrong ... and that God has disclosed himself in space, time and history through a man.  Namely, Jesus of Nazareth."

If Tabor's book is controversial on the birth of Jesus, it also raises questions about Jesus' early ministry.  Tabor suggests there were two messiahs, not one.

Tabor took "Nightline" to a second cave on our visit to Jerusalem -- this time to the East.

The Suba Cave, as it is now known, is the site of a major archaeological dig.  Inside the cave are primitive, centuries-old etchings, which Tabor believes depict the life of John the Baptist.  The cave also contains thousands of first-century pottery shards.

Tabor suggests that given the number of individuals, who may have been baptized in Suba, it's likely that Jesus, not John, was actually performing the baptisms.

"I like to surprise with my answers," said Tabor.  "Are you ready for this?  This is John's area but you know text-wise, we have no record of John baptizing here near Ein Kerem and Suba.  He's up along the Jordan River in the Jordanian wilderness.  The person we have a record of baptizing here is Jesus, Jesus the Baptist."

Tabor believes that, contrary to the New Testament, Jesus and John the Baptist were twin Messiahs.  He says that early texts anticipated more than one Messiah and that the practice of baptism suggests that they were acting similarly in their respective ministries.

"It hit me, how this would have electrified the country," Tabor said. "You see, all these predictions of two Messiahs, and we've got two Messiahs on the ground, operating, one in the north -- John the priest -- one in the south -- Jesus the king. And they're baptizing thousands of people."

Carson, however, strongly disagrees.  "Now the texts do not say they did it [baptism] at the same place at the same time.  If they did, it wouldn't bother me one way or the other.  In other words I don't think the Suba cave adds anything to the account in that respect ... Merely numbers of people being baptized by itself doesn't say very much about the relationship of the two men or that they were both Messiahs or anything like that."

According to Carson, John the Baptist is absolutely clear as to Jesus being the one Messiah.

"John the Baptist says that he is not worthy to even undo the sandals of Jesus," Carson said.  "When Jesus asks for baptism, according to Matthew's account, John the Baptist says, 'Wait a minute, I should be baptized by you, not the other way around'.  He sees himself as announcing the coming of another.

Whereas, by contrast, when Jesus talks about John there is not a sort of mutual admiration society of colleagues, still less a kind of a minor admiration for a predecessor.  In other words, it is correct to say that John the Baptist does initiate the movement.  But to say he is therefore the first Messiah simply goes beyond the evidence."

In addition to Tabor's claims that Jesus had an earthly father and a fellow Messiah, his book also argues it was Jesus' intention to build a dynasty on earth.  Tabor says that it was Jesus' half-brother James who would inherit the title role of dynastical king after the crucifixion.

But again, Carson is adamant that the title of the book, "The Jesus Dynasty," is plain wrong.

"The dynasty bit presupposes that there is continuity. That is, there's succession. But the New Treatment evidence, such as it is, is that Jesus is the final king who goes on ruling and reigning. He doesn't need a dynasty, precisely because he is the ongoing king."

Carson insists there was no plan to build a Jesus dynasty.

"No. None," he said. "Jesus was king forever."

The book itself is bound to raise questions and arouse debate.  And the argument about the historical Jesus will continue for now.

'Jesus Dynasty' Author Asks: Were There Two Messiahs?

[Shammu]

The Judas We Never Knew
Disgraced disciple actually conspired with Jesus, according to newly released Gospel of Judas. Should we believe it?
by Collin Hansen | posted 04/06/2006 04:30 p.m.

The Gospel of Judas debuted Thursday in Washington, D.C. What's the Gospel of Judas, you ask? Well, it's not a gospel. And it's not written by Judas. But it's still important, if not the most important nonbiblical text discovered during the last 60 years, as a National Geographic Society executive told The New York Times.

The text, a copy of the document written during the second century, reveals some big news. Turns out Judas wasn't the renegade disciple who betrayed Jesus and committed suicide after remorse overwhelmed him. No, this Judas was just doing what Jesus told him to do. Jesus explained to Judas that he would "exceed all of [the disciples]" by getting Jesus crucified.

Well, that sure would change things. If it were true. This "news" isn't what makes the Gospel of Judas significant. Rather, thanks to this text, we can further confirm what we already know about Gnostics—those pesky heretics condemned by early-church leaders like Irenaeus. Don't get confused by mentions of Jesus and Judas. This is no Christian text. The Gospel of Judas did not circulate until about 150 years after Jesus died. Let's put it this way: This new text tells us nothing more about Jesus' relationship with Judas than does Jesus Christ Superstar.

Until the release of the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic texts discovered decades ago near Nag Hammadi in Egypt, we learned about Gnosticism mostly through the polemics of Christian apologists. Now thanks to the Gospel of Judas, we can further verify two major Gnostic teachings. According to many Gnostic teachers, Jesus either did not actually appear in the flesh, or he at least wanted to shed his skin as soon as possible. Jesus longed to return to the spirit world. Judas helped make that happen. ("You will sacrifice the man that clothes me," the "spiritual" Jesus tells Judas in this document.) Also, Gnostics believed only a select few would truly apprehend the knowledge of heaven. The Gospel of Judas teaches that only Judas, Jesus' favorite disciple, fully understood.

Christian belief contrasts sharply with Gnosticism. Fully God and fully man, Jesus endured birth in a manger and death on a Cross. He shared in our humanity, "so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death" (Heb. 2:14). This message is not restricted to a few who will ascertain gnosis (knowledge). The gospel "is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile" (Rom. 1:16).

Nevertheless, some claim the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic texts throw orthodox Christianity into doubt. "As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities," New York Times reporters John Noble Wilford and Laurie Goodstein wrote, "they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out. For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers."

Who are those troubled believers? We're not sure, because Wilford and Goodstein apparently didn't talk to any of them. Karen King and Elaine Pagels revive their Gnosticism act. We also meet James Robinson, a jilted scholar who wrote a book on the Gospel of Judas without having access to the text. The Times doesn't mention that Robinson believes the Gospel of Judas tells us nothing about the historical Jesus or Judas.

I talked with Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary hours before he was scheduled to lecture at Princeton, Pagels's employer. He explained some peculiarities about the group that gave us the Gospel of Judas. Turns out these "Cainite Gnostics" earned their moniker rehabilitating disgraced biblical figures, including Cain, the Sodomites, and Judas.

Bock also pointed out that Scripture does include some contrasting perspectives on Judas. Mark portrays Judas as a bumbler, just like the other disciples who misunderstood Jesus' teaching. Writing later, John explains Judas differently. Judas exploits his position as treasurer to steal from the till, and Jesus calls him a "devil" (John 6:70).

According to Bock, the balance of Scripture indicates Judas expected a different type of Messiah. Disappointed, he turned in Jesus, whom he considered a threat to the Jewish nation. "Judas is a reflection of anyone who ends up rejecting Jesus," Bock said. "It's a tragic story—not something to shake your finger at, but something to be sad about."

Much more tragic and sad than rehashing an old debate about the legitimacy of orthodoxy.

I can't post the link because of advertisment.

[Shammu]

I watched this last night on the History channel. Talk about lying, cheating, and stealing, satan really has his hooks in these people. The whole program was a lie about the Bible. Several Theologist saw through the lie as well.

[Soldier4Christ]

more of this sort of thing will be coming out, of that I am sure. Fortunately there is also much more coming out that supports the Bible as being true. The question is whether people will believe the truth or the lies. Unfortunately too many will believe the lies.

[Shammu]

Unfortunately too many will believe the lies.

That brother, is the sad state of affairs of man.