Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia is quoted in a recent article on the Gospel of Judas on the CBC web site. Evans here claims that the text was misinterprted by National Geographic’s editing and translation team. John Turner is quoted in support of Evans’ position: 

Judas did an evil deed by betraying Jesus to his enemies, Turner said.

"The decision was made that this is a truly shocking, revolutionary document that throws into question all of the traditional Christian claims about the figure of Judas, and the document simply doesn't support that," he said.

Terry Garcia, leader of the society's Judas project, dismisses the criticism, saying those who say the translation is incorrect are a minority

 

Evans may have been influenced by a paper presented at September’s Christian Apocrypha Workshop by Louis Painchaud. Painchaud’s team is working on a new translation of the text which, in their opinion, corrects erroneous views advanced by recent scholars that the text portrays Judas as Jesus’ most loyal follower. Here is the abstract of the paper: 

À PROPOS DE LA (RE)DÉCOUVERTE DE L’ÉVANGILE DE JUDAS

Since its publication by the National Geographic Society last April, the Gospel of Judas has been interpreted and presented by the scholars in charge of its edition and translation as rehabilitating the figure of the apostle, who would be the true disciple of Jesus, the only one who understood his mission, to whom the spiritual Saviour would have asked to deliver him from his carnal body. This Judas would be a model of the perfect (gnostic) Christian.

A close reading of the Gospel of Judas reveals a totally different picture. Judas is guilty of sacrificing the man who wore Jesus, he is a demon, misled by his star, and he will never make it to the place reserved for the Holy Generation.

He is both demonized, in the same way as he is demonized in the Gospel of John, and assimilated to Juda the patriarch eponym of Judaism through the question “What advantage…? (GosJud 46:16; Gen 37:26). Like his homonym, he will inherit the government over the lower world, over the other apostles and the generations who will curse him (GosJud 46:23; Gen 49:10). The Judas of the Gospel of Judas is the very symbol of the betrayal of the name of Jesus through the interpretation of his death as a sacrifice in a proto-orthodox Christianity perpetuating the sacrificial cult of Temple the of Jerusalem.Partly misled by the expectations raised by the reader of a Gnostic revelation dialogue concerning the main interlocutor of the Saviour, the scholars who presented the GosJud in such an erroneous way read into the text what we already knew from Ireneaus and Epiphanius instead of the text itself and saw in Judas the perfect disciple according to their opponents. This led to a reception of this new text perfectly in harmony with the expectations of the Western World in the second half of the 20th century, in need of a rehabilitated Judas in the context of the reappraisal of Jewish Christian relationships.

 

A few days ago I posted a brief summary of two events I attended in September and October. Looking back at what I wrote, it seemed to me that some clarification about the events was in order.

First, they are not “conferences”—one was a workshop attended by a small group of invited scholars, one was a colloquium open to the public. Both had their attractions for me: the workshop featured scholars whose work I respect and focused on texts that I find fascinating (indeed, don’t we all?); the colloquium brought together scholars from a number of different disciplines (Patristics, Rabbinic Judaism, Gnosticism, OT and NT Apocrypha) to share their work and to honour the work of Dr. Charles Kannengeiser. Two very different events with very different goals.

My discussion of the events may have come across as an unfair comparison. Of course, the post was not intended as a “review” of the events, but merely an offering of comments about my experiences as a participant. The Montréal colloquium was of interest to me because of the diversity of the fields represented; but I did feel somewhat out of my element during the papers from outside of my own discipline, and assumed others might have felt the same (though such feelings may reflect only my own inadequacies). I commented in the post how it would be useful to see scholars of such diversity approach a more specific topic so that they could all benefit from working more closely together. Of course, that was not the goal of the colloquium, but it would be a worthy goal of any scholarly project.

More to come on the colloquium/workshop papers in the days ahead…

Peter Dunn suggested at the Ottawa Conference that it would be helpful to have a database of links to on-line doctoral dissertations on the CA. In response, I have dedicated a section of my web site to such a database (see here). If you would like to see this list grow, please submit a link to your own dissertation or other known on-line dissertations. Include also a three or four-line summary of the work.

In September and October I had the pleasure and the privilege of attending two CA-related conferences. The first, a workshop at the University of Ottawa dedicated solely to the CA and attended by prominent North American CA scholars, has been discussed elsewhere (particularly by Jim Davila; see the post here) but deserves mention in this forum. The second, a Patristics conference at Concordia University in Montréal, is also noteworthy for CA studies and, again, deserves mention.

Ottawa, September 30-October 1, 2006: Pierluigi Piovanelli of the University of Ottawa hosted a workshop titled Christian Apocrypha for the New Millennium: Achievements, Prospects and Challenges. Invited were some of North America’s best and brightest, including (among others) François Bovon, F. Stanley Jones, Dennis R. MacDonald, Ann Graham Brock (though Ann was, ultimately, unable to attend), Cornelia Horn, Stephen Shoemaker, Paul-Hubert Poirier, Craig Evans, Annette Reed, and (ahem) me. With the kind permission of the organizer, the complete list of papers is featured below:

Lorenzo DiTommaso (Concordia University), “Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Christian Apocrypha: Definitions, Boundaries, and Points of Contact”
Timothy Beech (St. Paul University), “Unraveling the Complexity of the Oracula Sibyllina: The Value of a Socio-Rhetorical Approach in the Study of the Sibylline Oracles”
Michael Kaler (McMaster University), “Gnostic Irony and the Adaptation of the Apocalyptic Genre”
Robert R. Phenix, Jr. (Saint Louis University), “The Problem of the Source of Balai’s Sermons on Joseph and the Nachleben of Pseudepigraphical Joseph Material”
James R. Davila (University of St. Andrews), “More Christian Apocryphal Texts”
Louis Painchaud (Université Laval), “À propos de la redécouverte de l’Évangile de Judas”
F. Stanley Jones (California State University), “Jewish Tradition on the Sadducees in the Pseudo-Clementines”
Annette Y. Reed (McMaster University), “New Light on ‘Jewish-Christian’ Apocrypha and the History of Jewish/Christian Relations”
Dominique Côté (University of Ottawa), “Orphic Theogony and the Context of the Clementines”
Nicole Kelley (Florida State University), “Pseudo-Clementine Polemics against Sacrifice: A Window onto Religious Life in the Fourth Century?”
Timothy Pettipiece (University of Ottawa), “Manichaean ‘Apocrypha’? From Mani to Manichaeism”
Theodore De Bruyn (University of Ottawa), “The Power of Apocryphal Narratives in Late Antiquity: The Testimony of Amulets”
Tony Chartrand-Burke (University of York), “Researching the New Testament Apocrypha in the Twenty-First Century”
Peter W. Dunn (Faculté de Théologie Evangélique de Bangui), “The Acts of Paul as an Experimental Control for the Criticism of the Acts of the Apostles”
François Bovon (Harvard University), “The Revelation of Stephen or the Invention of Stephen’s Relics (Sinaiticus graecus 493)”
Dennis R. MacDonald (Claremont Graduate University), “The Gospel of Nicodemus (or, the Acta Pilati) as a Christian Iliad and Odyssey”
Cornelia Horn (Saint Louis University), “From Model Virgin to Maternal Intercessor: Mary, Children, and Family Problems in Late Antique Infancy Gospel Traditions”
Stephen J. Shoemaker (University of Oregon), “Mary in Early Christian Apocrypha: Virgin Territory”
Craig A. Evans (Acadia Divinity College), “The Apocryphal Jesus: Assessing the Possibilities and Problems”
Ian Henderson (McGill University), “The Usefulness of Christian Apocryphal Texts in the Research on the Historical Jesus”
Adriana Bara (Université de Montréal), “The Convergence between Canonical Gospels, Apocryphal Writings and Liturgical Texts in Nativity and Resurrection Icons in Eastern Churches”
Paul-Hubert Poirier (Université Laval), “La Prôtennoia trimorphe (NH XIII,1), le Livre des secrets de Jean et le Prologue johannique”
Pierluigi Piovanelli (University of Ottawa), “Using Labels and Categories in a Responsible Way: The Making and Evolution of Early Christian Apocryphal Texts with the Gospel of Mary as a Test Case”

I will comment on some of the papers in future posts. For now, I’ll make some comments about the workshop on the whole. Pierluigi should be applauded for taking the initiative to assemble these scholars. At present there is no association of North American CA scholars—l’AELAC primarily caters to European scholars and, while the SBL has a Christian Apocrypha Section, scholars who contribute from year to year do not meet with any regularity. Pierluigi has begun what is hoped will be a regular event. There was discussion also of putting the energies and experiences of the participants into a publishing project. Some (myself included) registered their discontent over the lack of awareness of current CA scholarship by non-specialists in the English-speaking world. English CA collections, for example, are woefully out-of-date and are limited in scope. The publishing project, whatever form it might take, should correct such oversights.

It seems so un-Canadian to take on a project such as this—the major studies of the CA have come out of England (M. R. James’ collection and the update by J. K. Elliott), France/Switzerland (the l’AELAC projects, including the new two-volume Pléiade CA collection), Germany (Hennecke-Schneemelcher’s volumes and the forthcoming update by Christophe Markschies), and even the US (Robert Funk’s Polebridge Press titles). But Canada has its experts on particular CA texts (including Pierluigi on the Book of the Cock, Scott Brown on Secret Mark, Zbigniew Izydorczyk on the Gospel of Nicodemus, etc.) and so too does the US (Jones on the Pseudo-Clementines, MacDonald on Acts of Andrew, Shoemaker on the Dormition of Mary, etc.). A Canadian/American CA project is not so absurd at all.

Montréal, October 11-13, 2006: Lorenzo DiTommaso and Lucian Turcescu of Concordia University hosted a conference on The Reception and Interpretation of the Bible in Late Antiquity. In part, the event was designed to honour the publication of Dr. Charles Kannengeiser’s Handbook of Patristic Exegesis. But the spirit behind the conference was somewhat novel: to bring together not just Patristics scholars but also scholars of Rabbinics, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Gnosticism, and the CA. The complete program is available here, but the CA papers are as follows:

Annete Yoshiko Reed (McMaster University): “Pseudepigraphy, Authority, and Biblical Interpretation.”
Pierluigi Piovanelli (University of Ottawa): “The Reception of Hebrew and Christian Scriptures in Late-Antique Apocryphal Texts.”
Tony Chartrand-Burke (York University): “Completing the Gospel: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas as a Supplement to the Gospel of Luke.”

Lorenzo and Lucian should be commended for attempting to bring scholars of such disparate disciplines together. It was hard not to feel out-of-place, however, particularly after participating in the more focused Ottawa conference. Participants from the other groups (Rabbinics, Gnosticism, etc.) probably felt the same. Perhaps, if an event such as this were to take place again, the various scholars could be asked to contribute to a more tightly-focused topic, so that the different perspectives would be more apparent and more constructive dialogue could take place.

If any of the topics of the papers are of interest to you, take heart: both conferences will have their proceedings published in 2007. There is much still to say about the papers and the discussions among participating scholars at both events. But that will have to wait for future posts.