Whoops! Corrections to the Translation of the "Gospel of Judas"

We all heard about it last year - a Gnostic gospel in which Judas was the hero, not the betrayer. It made a big splash, including the usual accusations about the suppression of texts by the early Church - accusations that suggest that some part of God's word was somehow sequestered away and lost to the ages. (I am always amazed at believing that Christ could be raised from the dead but God could not prevent the apostles, presented as either self-centered or simply ethnocentric, from squelching the Word that was proclaimed.)

An Op-Ed - not a headline - in today's New York Times has some revealing information about that perspective. Simply put, they got it wrong. Badly wrong.

April D. DeConick, a Coptic scholar and professor of Biblical studies at Rice University, re-translated the Gospel according to the accepted standards. She used the usual method of translation of fragmented and difficult documents - which includes consultation and collaboration among scholars. In her new book, The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says, she reveals the problems with the National Geographic Society's exclusive translation - they required their scholars to secrecy - and paints a different picture.

This is not one scholar nit-picking with another. The NGS scholars referred to Judas as a spirit - which is the English usually used for the Greek pneuma. But the manuscript actually referred to a daimon - a word universally rendered into English as a "demon" with all its negative connotations.

The entire plot-line of the manuscript was misrepresented by a few word changes in key places. The story that got all the headlines showed Judas as the trusted disciple asked to hand Jesus over - with the promise of ascent to heaven with the others. He receives all knowledge and is set aside "for" the other disciples.

When the corrections are made, another Judas is seen: a demon, a traitor, given all knowledge so that - when he hands Jesus over - he is making this horrendous decision with full knowledge that he is the Messiah. For this, he is separated from the holy generation, and it will be "impossible for him to go" where they go.

In one place, the NGS translation left out the word "not." Jesus tells Judas, "You will not ascend to the holy generation." It's a pretty poor place to lose a word.

DeConick asks, "How could these serious mistakes have been made? Were they genuine errors or was something more deliberate going on? This is the question of the hour, and I do not have a satisfactory answer."

I do not think the National Geographic Society would purposely push such an anti-Church, anti-Christian interpretation - if only because later scholarship would surely uncover the errors. Rather, the mindset of skepticism and the phenomenon of groupthink (common when work is done behind closed doors) probably took over. Once the idea that the document challenged the traditional view took hold, dozens of small but necessary decisions in the translation would be unconsciously made - each adding just a pixel to the portrait of Judas that was emerging - but the pixels added up to a portrait.

I see two lessons in this episode. The first is prosaic: the standard practices of scholarship are designed to prevent this sort of thing and should be followed. DeConick says, "the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution in 1991 holding that, if the condition of the written manuscript requires that access be restricted, a facsimile reproduction should be the first order of business. It’s a shame that National Geographic, and its group of scholars, did not follow this sensible injunction."

The second is a warning. The deepest belief in modern society is that things are not what they seem. In general, this works out as avidly seeking the clay feet of everyone who seems to be good - and sometimes trying to understand or exonerate or explain away the evil in all that is bad. In this instance, I am grateful to Dr. DeConick for this work.

This Lent, when we read and ponder Judas' betrayal, let us recognize - as we have for centuries - the frailty of the human spirit and the potential to turn aside from the face of God even when He is before us filled with love and mercy. This - more than a convoluted plot of arranged killing and exalted betrayal - is where we will encounter the Paschal mystery.