News Feature:

The discovery of a 1,700-year-old copy of the "Gospel of Judas," an early Gnostic text purporting to contain a dialogue between Jesus of Nazareth and Judas Iscariot, is neither an authentic Gospel nor is it good news, scholars in the Seventh-day Adventist Church say.

"It was heresy then and it's heresy now," was the blunt assessment of Dr. Gerhard Pfandl, an associate director of the church's Biblical Research Institute who counts Near Eastern Archaeology among his professional interests.

According to a private United States organization, the National Geographic Society, the newly announced codex, or manuscript, of the Gospel of Judas, represents an advance in the scholarship of early Christianity.

"The Gospel of Judas gives a different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, offering new insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus. Unlike the accounts in the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in which Judas is portrayed as a reviled traitor, this newly discovered gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus' request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities," the Geographic society said in a news release announcing the project, which is the subject of a cover story in the May 2006 issue of its "National Geographic" magazine.

According to the Society, this book's focus is radically different from that of the gospels found in the New Testament: "The Gospel of Judas text begins: 'The secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover.' It reflects themes that scholars regard as being consistent with [Gnostic] traditions. In the very first scene Jesus laughs at his disciples for praying to 'your God,' meaning the 'lesser' Old Testament God who created the world. He challenges the disciples to look at him and understand what he really is, but they turn away.

"The key passage comes when Jesus tells Judas, '... you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.' By helping Jesus get rid of his physical flesh, Judas will help liberate the true spiritual self or divine being within," the Society news release states.

Such thinking may be interesting, Dr. W. Larry Richards, director of the Greek Manuscript Research Center at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, says, but it's not the Gospel.

Speaking by telephone from his office in Berrien Springs, Michigan, Richards said the underlying philosophy of the Gnostics, that the physical body is "evil" and must be destroyed for man to be saved, is "a very strong attack on the heart of our message," which stresses spiritual, mental and physical health, he said.

"I would want to do something that would inform our people about the basic viewpoint in Gnosticism and how it is surfacing in the 21st century for people to be on guard," Richards said in discussing the "Judas" manuscript. He said other popular works, such as the Dan Brown novel, "The Da Vinci Code," which sold 40 million copies and will be released as a major motion picture, include Gnostic ideas.

Moreover, Richards said, the Christian church long ago decided that books such as the "Gospel of Judas" were not to be part of the New Testament canon.

"We have a history, a tradition that the canon was closed in the fourth century and as a part of the Christian movement, we're going to stick with that. It's got centuries of record that we rest upon and we believe God had His hand on that; and for us to open the door for additional books would create chaos," he explained.

And, Richards said, Christians should reject Gnostic thinking because it subverts the way of salvation.

Gnosticism, with its concept of human effort to reach what it calls man's spiritual essence, shifts salvation away from God's gift to man's effort. "Christianity is the only world religion where salvation is outside ourselves," Richards said.

According to Dr. Greg King, a religion professor at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee, Bible-believing Christians should take an interest in the "Judas" manuscript, but not for the reasons its promoters claim.

"It shows the fulfillment of the Biblical verse where Paul, looking at the Ephesian elders, warned that 'I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them,'" King said, quoting Acts 20:29 to 30.

"A second point worth making is we should be interested in this because it demonstrates the heresies, the false teachings that had already multiplied during that time," he added. "I find it ironic that much of the mainline world of scholarship is so jazzed about this discovery when we have so much truth to discover in God's canonical revelation of the Scriptures, which is often ignored."

Adds Dr. Warren Trenchard, provost at La Sierra University, an Adventist school in Riverside, California, "I think the value of a document like this is simply to help us expand our picture of the varieties of Christianities that existed in the church's early experience. What we're looking at, actually, is a characteristic of expanding and developing Christianity." [Editor: Mark A. Kellner for ANN/APD; Mark Kellner is assistant director for news of the Adventist News Network.]