Two religious studies professors painted a fantastic picture of the Gospel of Judas and the early Christians who wrote it — now labeled heretics by some — at the Stanford Humanities Center last night. Using examples from the text itself, they outlined some of the Gospel’s more outrageous claims; including the notion that Judas is destined to ascend to the kingdom of heaven and return one day to rule the Earth.

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Joel Lewenstein

Two religion professors spoke about the controversial Gospel of Judas at the Humanities Center last night. New evidence challenges long held religious theories about Jesus' final days. The scholars discussed their findings and considered its potential significance.

The heavily attended talk was conducted by Emeritus Religious Studies Prof. Robert Greggand and Wabash College Prof. Robert Royalty, who was a professor of religion at Stanford from 1993 to 1999.

According to Royalty, the Gospel of Judas was only recently translated from a handful of fragments written in Coptic — an ancient Egyptian language — which languished in a bank vault for thirty years. It has been dated to approximately the second century after the birth of Christ. This text was among many documents, including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter and Mary, which were written by a splinter sect of Christianity called Gnosticism.

Gregg and Royalty described the central contention of the Gospel— that the God of the Israelites, and by extension the Christian Bible, is a lesser celestial being named Saklas. In the Gospel, it is this being who created humanity in his own image. Because of this, humanity is a lesser, material race whose soul is on loan from Saklas and is not immortal.

According to their reading of the Gospel, Jesus is not the son of the Israelite God. Instead, he is an emissary who has been sent by an even higher being to deliver the truth to humanity. In the Gospel, Judas is the only disciple capable of recognizing Jesus’ true nature. For this he is one of the only humans who can ascend to heaven, and the Gospel states that Judas “will come to rule over them.”

Royalty remarked on the science-fictional aspects of the Gospel.

“When I talk about Gnosticism I talk about each element of the myth with a clip from the Matrix,” he said. “There are a lot of similarities. The idea is that there is something wrong with this world. And you really want to escape from this world. But there are enforcers to keep you here. And there’s a messenger who has been sent to guide you.”

Royalty described why there is so much interest in the Gospel of Judas.

“This is a very religious country,” he said in an interview with The Daily. “It’s a very Christian and a very post-Christian country. And there are a lot of people who are still interested in orthodox, mainstream Christianity, but are not quite happy with it. And they are looking for something that they can sort of fit in.

“And if there is a rejected vision from early Christianity that fixes it, that’s just great,” he continued. “And that’s what’s feeding the popular interest. Christianity took a wrong turn somewhere. That’s been said since the second century. The history of Christianity is reformers saying that you took a wrong turn somewhere. This is just one more version of that.”

Gregg added that the purpose of the seminar was to delve into what the Gospel actually says.

“We advertised the event as something where we expected people to read the text and try to understand what the text said,” he said. “You cannot adopt a spiritual sensitivity on the basis of a document not yet accepted as canonical. I don’t see how it’s possible to endorse this Christian writing that did not make the cut unless you read and understand it.”