Thoughts on 'The Gospel of Judas'

On two separate occasions, I've been in group discussions where each participant was asked to pick one person — past or present, famous or not — that they'd like to have dinner with.

Although seven years passed between those two communiques, my response was always the same:

Judas Iscariot.

Yes, that's right. The man who purportedly betrayed Christ (whatever your faith, history tells us "the man" existed. Now, whether or not you believe he was the son of God is another issue altogether).

I've always harbored some sympathy for Judas. His betrayal of Christ was foretold; in which case, if a man is fated to do something, can we condemn him for the follow-through? Did he really have a choice? How does "free will" figure into all of this? As a kid dutifully attending church on Sundays, I lost hours of sleep wondering about questions such as this.

But this is all merely back story:

Whatever you were raised to "believe," once you hit that stage in your life where you start to question your parents, your government, your whatever... you also tend to open up to a world of other possibilities you might have otherwise never explored.

For me, the Gospel of St. Thomas — which I "discovered" in high school — helped with this. Some scholars believe the gospel was written by Christ himself; whether it was or not, in it the messiah tells mankind that the only true church is within (i.e. stop killing people for your beliefs; don't think you need a priest to save yourself; etc. It's all very Zen really). When the Catholic Church caught wind of this, they opted to keep St. Thomas (among other so-called "Gnostic Gospels") out of the Bible. When you consider these gospels called into question the very foundation upon which the Church stood, you can understand why. At this point in time, the Church was essentially Government. They would've lost a world of power.

And now I hear that the Gospel of Judas, discovered in shambles some 30 years ago, has been reconstructed and translated. The translation was published yesterday, and is creating quite a stir among religious scholars.

In it, the author writes that Judas was "asked" by Jesus to turn him over to Roman authorities. The question now becomes: was Judas simply trying to redeem himself among the disciples? Or perhaps offer some relief to his own tortured conscience?

Or was he, even more intriguing still, telling the truth?

I won't claim to know; and any guesses I make are far from educated. The important thing to me, here, is that we have something to think about. Or, rather, something to rethink.