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H/T: April DeConick at The Forbidden Gospels Blog

I finally picked a thesis topic. It is harder than one might think. You have to think of a relevant topic where you think you can say something new. In the field of New Testament / Early Christianities, that is pretty difficult to find.

After much hand-wringing, I have decided to do a socio-historical analysis of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Most of the studies of the document have been thematic, or narrative criticism, trying to get at the theological points the author wanted to convey. I’ll try to take this a step further and look at the social and historical location of both the author and the community he wrote to in the Gospel of Thomas. Specifically, I’ll look at connections and departures from a the Lucan community and the connection to the second Zeno school.

Anyway, I fell a million times better having a concrete direction to go in.

Last week I posted about going to a talk on the Gospel of Judas by Elaine Pagels. It was a fascinating talk on something that I have never read. I have recently started reading The Forbidden Gospels Blog by Dr. April DeConick of Rice University. She has a book that is coming out very soon that contests the meaning of the Gospel of Judas. It makes me want to read the book by Pagels/King and the book by DeConick.

The Forbidden Gospels Blog: The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says

“I didn’t find the sublime Judas, at least not in Coptic. What I found were a series of English translation choices made by the National Geographic team, choices that permitted a different Judas to emerge in the English translation than in the Coptic original. Judas was not only not sublime, he was far more demonic than any Judas I know in any other piece of early Christian literature, Gnostic or otherwise.”

DeConick contends that the Gospel of Judas is not about a “good” Judas, or even a “poor old” Judas. It is a gospel parody about a “demon” Judas written by a particular group of Gnostic Christians known as the Sethians who lived in the second century CE. The purpose of the text was to criticize “mainstream” or apostolic Christianity from the point of view of these Gnostic Christians, especially their doctrine of atonement, their Eucharistic practices, and their creedal faith which they claimed to have inherited from the twelve disciples.

Audio from the Lecture (mp3 - 46mb)

I was lucky enough to attend Dr. Pagel’s lecture on the Gospel of Judas. It was a fascinating and informative talk. Here are some of my observations from the lecture. Pagels has just published a new book on this Gospel with Karen King, entitled Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity. I have not read the book, nor the Gospel of Judas.

While I have read some of Pagel’s work, most specifically, Beyond Belief, I have never heard her in person. She is a very effective speaker, humor and wit with are intermixed with history and background to illuminate her points, she approaches the audience on the popular level and does not talk above their heads. While some of her popular works are criticized for being sensational at times, she is very disarming in her approach - she does not start out shocking the audience with grandiose claims. Instead, Pagels introduced the text and presented 4 problems that she found contained within it and then lead the audience to the answers she came to during her research.

The talk centered around the Gospel of Judas, a repressed gospel dating to the early days of Christianity. Dating is always and estimate. The manuscript that we have was found in upper Egypt and written in Coptic. Most likely the manuscript was from a monastery in the region and dates to somewhere in the fourth century(300-400 CE). It seems to be a translation of a much earlier text, somewhere in the second century (100-200 CE). She did a good job introducing to the audience the issues surrounding the Gnostics, how the term “Gnosticism” is not a good category, but a convenient one that really does not do them justice. There are groups of Christians that deviate from what would become Orthodox views, but to categorize this very messy group as Gnostics is misleading and inaccurate.

To Pagels, the text seems to center around a dispute between Judas and the other Apostles and the topic of martyrdom. While I don’t have the texts that she was working with (see below for the NG translation), I’ll do my best to reproduce what she was talking about. The gospel opens with Jesus ridiculing the Twelve for how they were worshiping. The twelve get angry at Jesus and in response, he challenges them to stand before him. Only Judas is able to stand before Jesus and Jesus rewards him with teachings. The Twelve have dreams about people sacrificing children on an altar. Jesus explains that the people doing the sacrificing are the Twelve. Judas has had another dream, this one shows how he is different from the others. I don’t remember much else about it - see the audio for more.

Pagels looks at this text not as a window into the lives of Jesus and the Twelve, but as a window into the controversies in the early church, most specifically, the one about Martyrdom. She thinks it reflects, in part, a voice standing against “eager martyrdom.” A conception had spread that one should seek out being killed for Christ rather than fleeing to another city, like the Gospel of Luke would suggest. Instead, the best death a Christian could have is to be killed for the cause. The people behind the Gospel of Judas were concerned about this, thinking that this is not the way Jesus wanted us to live because God values life, not death, so we should not actively seek death.

That was the main gist of her presentation. It was more a look into the history of the Early Church than anything else, and for that, I throughly enjoyed the talk. Please see the MP3 for the audio of the lecture.

I’ll have the audio up later. See below for the audio

Resources:

• National Geographic Translation of the Gospel of Judas (PDF)
• Audio from the Lecture (mp3 - 46mb)

Jon Krakauer’s book on the Ron and Dan Lafferty’s religious slaying of Brenda and Erica Lafferty is gripping and sensational. In Krakauer’s exploration of why Ron and Dad committed these murders, he examines their fundamentalist background. He not only investigates how Dan and Ron were drawn to Mormon fundamentalism, but also illuminates the links Mormon fundamentalism has with mainstream Mormonism’s past. In doing so, Krakauer raises some interesting questions that he teases the reader with though out the book, but never really deals with seriously. The work is an excellent account of the Lafferty murders, recounting vivid details and well-crafted turns of phrase. Krakauer’s skill at writing for effect cannot be discounted. However, after reading the work, one feels as though they are only getting one version of the events, especially as it when the book describes and analyses Mormon history. It as if his interpretation is driving the book rather than the sources.

The only real nuanced discussion of Krakauer’s sources comes in the interesting point-counterpoint appendix to the book. Krakauer reprints the entire review of Under the Banner of Heaven by Richard Turley Jr., the managing director of the Family and Church History Department of the LDS church. In a scathing review, Turley makes many of the same observations as I do here. The best part of his review for the reader of the book is the discussion of sources. Turley claims that Krakauer has cherry-picked his sources and does not critically analyze the entirety of Mormon scholarship. Perhaps the most damaging is Turley’s criticism of the heavy uncritical use of Fawn Brodie’s biography of Joseph Smith, especially in regards to the 1832 castration attempt by an Ohio mob. Turley’s overall point is well founded, since all of Krakauer’s sources tend to agree, there is no mention or use of conflicting reports. It is as if Krakauer only used the sources that agreed with him. There is not any discussion of conflicting sources or scholarly working throughout the book. Krakauer does admit to several errors in the work, which he has corrected in the more recent editions of the book. He also defends his selection of sources in his rebuttal, but this is the only real place any dissenting views are considered instead of just the ones that support his clear and simple narrative. The best counter-point Krakauer offers lies in his point of the selectivity of inside Mormon scholarship noting that all LDS accounts of Mormon history have to be “faith promoting” and therefore exclude any real critical analysis of the history of the LDS church. Within this interesting point lies a rich discussion that is barely broached by Krakauer in his rebuttal. An interesting discussion could be had between the writers of critical Mormon works, like Krakauer; and the sympathetic writers of Mormon history, such as Richard Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling.

Krakauer tries to situate the Lafferty case in terms of the early history of the Mormons. Among the major themes that he links from the early Mormon Church to the fundamentalist Lafferty brothers were the propensity to hear the voice of God, the idea of blood atonement, and most prominently, the ideal of plural wives. Very carefully, the narrative switches back and forth from accounts of Smith, Young, and other early Mormons to the events leading up to murders. This serves to form in the reader’s mind a close attachment – an almost casual one – between the two eras. The reader cannot but help to think that Krakauer wants his readers to think that the Lafferty’s were being true to the foundations of their religion and that there is something inherently wrong with the LDS Church. While he is not explicit in this connection, he also does not try to avail these concerns. This connection is one in a series of connections that Krakauer flirts with, but does not ever really come out and defend or refutes.

The subtitle to the work is as lengthy as it is controversial, “On July 24, 1984 a woman and her infant daughter were murdered by two brothers who believed they were ordered by to kill by God. The roots of their crime lie deep in the history of an American religion practiced by millions.” Here is an example of Krakauer showing his intent to connect the murders not only to Mormon fundamentalism, but also to mainstream Mormonism. It does not stop here, however. In the first few pages of the introduction, he states that his work will raise questions about the nature of religion itself. In doing so, he must connect the murders not only to fundamentalist and mainstream Mormonism, but also to Christianity and religion in general. Over all, he fails in this respect. While he makes a very damning case in terms of the violence and the damage polygamy does to those involved both in the early Mormon Church and in the fundamentalists that have separated themselves from the LDS Church; he is unable to connect the larger threads. This is because he either does not take into account or fails to discuss the purposeful separation of the current incarnation of LDS Church from these doctrines and events. An analogous situation is linking fundamentalist terrorism with all of Islam, or all Christians in the actions of the Crusades. It is an example of contamination by proximity.

The book is most successful when looking it examines the religion, motives, and history of both the Laffertys and the fundamentalist Mormon movement, in its journalism. It is least successful when it tries to link historical themes together in a nuanced manner; in fails as a scholarly work. If Krakauer were to nuance his work and leave out his larger, under discussed implications, a much better book would be had.