Day By Day

Friday, April 07, 2006

The Judas Gospels -- A Plea for Calm

Of course you've heard about it. National Geographic has launched one of its periodic publicity blitzes based on an unpcoming broadcast. This time it's another one of the apocryphal gospels -- the "Gospel of Judas" which was declared heretical by the Church more than fifteen centuries ago.

The Judas Gospel holds that when he betrayed the Christ, Judas was doing the lord's will [a view that is not incompatible with Christian belief] and that the world was the creation of an evil demigod opposed to the true God. It was this second argument, not that involving Judas' guilt, that caused the document to be declared heretical. The gospel is clearly the work of an early Christian heavily influenced by Gnostic, and perhaps Manichaean doctrines.

Read the NYT piece on it here.

I plan to watch the show and will have more to say then. For now, it will suffice to call upon Christian leaders to issue statements to their flocks urging to remain peaceful, to not riot, burn and behead people beause of this attack upon their true faith.

Oh wait, it's Muslims that do that...,

Never mind.

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