A Jewish conspiracy? So far God isn't talking...

When it comes to Judas, everyone "spins" the story. Both then and now.

What really happened? So far God isn't talking.

But some people say they are "in the loop."

"I think I was chosen by Judas to rehabilitate him," Ms. Tchacos Nussberger, 65, is quoted as saying in one of the National Geographic Society's books, "The Lost Gospel," by Herbert Krosney. Mr. Krosney is also an independent television producer who brought the project to the Society.

Ms. Tchacos Nussberger, Jewish, was instrumental in making the Judas Gospel available for translation and publication by the National Geographic.

The freelance producer of the National Geographic special, is Herbert Krosney, Jewish, an experienced journalist who lives half the time in Jerusalem and half the time in New York.

The second century A.D. Church leader Irenaeus seems to have raised the blackening of Judas to the fore in the battle against Gnosticism, a mystical religious strain which sometimes raised disciple Judas as Christ's "chosen one."

The Gnostic Gospel of Judas was excluded from the Christian Church canon.

As centuries passed from the day of Irenaeus, an increasingly black portrayal of Judas, based on the four canonized gospels, had become a central symbolic representation of Anti-Semitism. Judas the Jew selling out Christ for 30 pieces of silver.

In European pograms and in the ghettoes of American cities Anti-Semitic gangs screamed "Judas, Jesus killers" at the Jews they chased, stoned, sometimes killed.

So is raising up a new Gnostic gospel text from the third or fourth century A.D. a Jewish conspiracy to alter Christian doctrine, to protect, and elevate Jews by elevating Judas?

Nothing so grandiose.

Still the agenda is hardly hidden: --- to make a "real splash" in undermining (or broadening, depending on your viewpoint!) traditional pillars of faith canonized in the Christian New Testament.

And by upgrading Judas create an alternate image that undermines one popular historic theological rationalization for Anti-Semitism. The Gospel of Judas maintains Jesus himself asked Judas to betray him -- as part of a broader plan for salvation.

Just the latest use of media to "altar" the way religion is used to view the world.

For mass media is now the secularly religious "altar" upon which doctrine and theology is placed for stimulation, curiosity, discussion, debate.

A battleground for competing faiths and doctrines -- as Jews join others who would reverse the early Church's exclusion of a mystical "heretical" doctrine from the accepted canons of Christian faith.

So the "new Judas" is now one of our latest media scoops. Recycling through dozens of media outlets with a breathless "now it can be told." In a ripple of publicity that has raised esoteric second century theological debates into a lucrative modern media extravaganza.

In our current mass media age theology clearly "rocks."

One other thing:

Almost two thousand years ago the nature of Judas was debated by the Church fathers --- and by all kinds of thoughtful folk in the the tents and caves of Palestine. Today it is argued in thousands of postings on the internet. Sample the discussion and debate in other internet blogs on this topic.

Which blog -- if any -- is God talking?

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There appears to be little new in the Geographic's resurrection of the Gospel of Judas, a text rediscovered a quarter of a century ago. View parts of the "lost gospel" translated and printed by the Geographic.

What is new is the way the issue is raised to prominence, and promoted for mass consumption in a world with a mass culture appetite already raised by the titillation of "heresy" --- ie. the massive popularity of the Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code.

The National Geographic has a large campaign promoting the Gospel of Judas, featuring it in two new books, a television documentary, an exhibition and the May issue of the National Geographic magazine. Judas appears to be the favored disciple, given special disclosures from Jesus himself.

Two of the nine member Advisory Board are American academic specialists on Gnosticism, with a personal and professional interest in promoting awareness of this early competitor to the established Christian Church.

In this new old gospel the language is mystical, abstract, full of angelic symbols and visions of a heaven and an underworld. There is the familiar style of Jewish and early Christian Biblical apocalypse. Yet the abstract mystical linguistic flavor vastly differs from all four canonized gospels, each of which tells a different version of the birth, life, and death of Jesus.

And so Judas emerges as a favored disciple, with unique insights into the future, gained from special "access" to teacher Jesus. Saith this gospel:

"Jesus answered and said,
'You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations—and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent to the holy generation.'”

Judas
Judas Gospel
Anti-Semitism
Irenaeus
National Geographic translation and publication
National Geographics Advisory Board
Christian Church canon
Parts of the Judas Gospel translated and printed by the National Geographic
Da Vinci Code
Thousands of internet blogs discussing and debating the Gospel of Judas