Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity - Hardcover

Pagels, Elaine; King, Karen L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670038458 ISBN 13: 9780670038459

Publisher: Penguin Group USA Inc., 2007

Synopsis

When the Gospel of Judas was published by the National Geographic Society in April 2006, it received extraordinary media attention and was immediately heralded as a major biblical discovery that rocked the world of scholars and laypeople alike. Elaine Pagels and Karen King are the first to reflect on this newfound text and its ramifications for telling the story of early Christianity. In Reading Judas, the two celebrated scholars illustrate how the newly discovered text provides a window onto understanding how Jesus followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it.

Most contemporary readers will find passages in the ancient Gospel of Judas difficult to comprehend outside of its context in the ancient world. Reading Judas illuminates the intellectual assumptions behind Jesus teaching to Judas and shows how conflict among the disciples was a tool frequently used by early Christian authors to explore matters of doubt and disagreement. Presented with the elegance, insight, and accessibility that has made Pagels and King the leading voices in this field, this is a book for academics and popular audience both. Pagels's five previous books, including The New York Times bestseller Beyond Belief, and Kings The Gospel of Mary of Magdala prove that there is a considerable audience eager for this kind of informed and engaging writing.

About this title

About the Authors

Karen L. King is Winn Professor of ecclesiastical history at Harvard Divinity School.
Elaine Pagels is Harrington Spear Paine Professor of religion at Princeton University.

Elaine Pagels is Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University.

Reviews

This accessible, engaging book has Princeton religion professor Pagels (The Gnostic Gospels; Beyond Belief) in a dream team pairing with King (The Gospel of Mary of Magdala), who teaches ecclesiastical history at Harvard Divinity School. Together they take on the controversial Gospel of Judas, published in April 2006 after some years of languishing in a safety deposit box after its initial discovery in the 1970s. In their hundred-page introductory essay, Pagels and King date the gospel to the middle of the second century and situate it amidst the deadly persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire. Such persecution, they say, drove the author of the Gospel of Judas, who "could not reconcile his belief in a deeply loving, good God with a particular idea other Christians held at the time: that God desired the bloody sacrificial death of Jesus and his followers." The key to understanding this gospel, they argue, is its relentless unmasking of the triumphant rhetoric of martyrdom. Though the gospel text appears angry and polarizing, Pagels and King have come to realize that they "cannot easily dismiss this author as either a madman or a lunatic." Instead, they delve deeply into his theological view that a pure, spiritual realm exists beyond the physical world that we see a Gnostic chestnut that recurs in other second-century texts. Alive to irony and historical nuance, this remarkably concise primer opens readers to a plausible and often persuasive interpretation of the disquieting Gospel of Judas.

*Starred Review* In fall 2006, the National Geographic Society made quite a splash, bringing to light the discovery of a new gospel in the Gnostic tradition told from Judas' point of view. There have already been several books on the subject, including one by Bart Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (2006), which provided an overview and placed the book in its historical and religious contexts. Now come two premier names in the field of religious writing to take a more intimate look at the gospel. Pagels, author of the classic Gnostic Gospels (2004), teams with translator extraordinaire King for a compact reader's guide into the heart of the new gospel. The Gospel of Judas can be a convoluted, even bizarre, reading experience, but the combination of King's translation, which appears at the end of the book, and Pagels' text will help general readers get past the difficulties and into the fascinating message, which emphasizes spiritual rather than physical resurrection for both Jesus and his followers. Pagels also shows why this message was so noxious to church leaders and explains how the gospel fits into the body of noncanonical literature. By showing how Judas' vision of life after death should be understood, this elegantly written book makes clear the relevance of a centuries-old text for a contemporary audience. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Group USA Inc.
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670038458
• ISBN 13: 9780670038459
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224