Judas, the Traitor no More

“… you will be greater than them all. Judas, you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

By: Josef Angelo Quero and Marcel Lawrence Emil Agpasa

For more than two thousand years, the Catholic Church has stood against the whips and lashes of time. It has endured countless issues against its doctrines and teachings. For more than two millennia, we have been taught of the same thing…

But what if latest discoveries in our time reveal the greatest scandal of the Church, so shocking it could spell its downfall… and the Church could be willing to silence those who would speak of it? The truth is about to be revealed. There is no turning back. Prepare to open the GNOSTIC GOSPELS, THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS!

Who is Judas?

The name itself sends a wicked feel. Judas Iscariot. It has been equated to treachery and deceit. For many centuries, Judas has been the world’s most hated figure. He has been portrayed as an evil incarnate forever damned to burn in hell. Judas Iscariot – the apostle who pawned Jesus to His death.

With the advent of the discovery of an ancient leather-bound book in Egypt, the story of Judas’ betrayal turns unimaginably upside down. What happens when we see the side of a story in the eyes of a betrayer? What if the lie behind the world's most famous kiss is a lie in itself? The answers could take us back to the Garden of Gethsemane and deeper into the rowdy history of the Catholic Church.

Mystic Secret

When the Church was young, early Christians preached in groups to spread the Word of God. There were no standard Gospel (“good news”) to teach that time. Things got worse when Roman soldiers started persecuting those who had professed as Christians. During those daunting days, the Christian community was in massive disarray. Different sects of Christianity emerged, each having its own versions of Christ’s teachings and contradicting one another’s interpretation. Some of them: the would-be Catholics and the Gnostics.

Gnostics propose a more abstract belief: that salvation can be achieved by achieving gnosis or secret knowledge. It suggests that each man holds a divine spark within him that needs to be freed from the material body, and that one can attain divine perfection or reach heaven by deciphering the mystic teachings of Jesus Christ. They suggest the ultimate key to salvation is by self-activating the ‘latent God’ within every soul to a path to self-mastery and spiritual enlightenment. Hence, Gnostics were in no need of priests nor bishops.

This view bothered the early Church leaders. It spelled confusion among followers of conventional Christianity which had gained rapid spread over Asia Minor and the entire Mediterranean and had won the heart of the Roman Empire.

Survival of the Simplest

Then came Saint Irenaeus to the rescue. As a Church Father in 180 A.D., he severely denounced the teachings of Gnosticism, proclaiming that it was a dangerous doctrine never to be read by any righteous Catholic. He was then given the ultimate task of saving a very confused and threatened Church: to choose the righteous gospels that would take the Bible center stage.

Irenaeus had to make sure the selected gospels would not raise questions among its believers. After a private conclave, he declared “there are four gospels and only four… like the four directions of the wind… four corners of the earth…” Since then, the rest of the Gnostic gospels were discarded, burned and banned. And thus started the fame of brothers Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

But the Gospel of Judas refused to fade into eternity. After almost 1800 years from hiding, it had finally seen the light of day.

The Bombshell Unearthed

History has repeated itself. In 1896, the Gospel of Mary shocked the world. Then in Upper Egypt in 1945, a peasant accidentally discovered the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of 12 ancient leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar. It contained the Gnostic Gospels like the Gospel of Philip, Thomas, Truth, the Egyptians, and other apocalyptic writings. Two years later, two shepherds accidentally uncovered the “Dead Sea Scrolls” in a cave in Wadi Qumran in Israel.

And finally in 1978, near the Egyptian Nile River, a farmer in search of gold and treasure came across an old burial cave. There laid a rugged stone box with a leather-bound book inside. He never knew the language was written in Coptic, an ancient language by the Egyptian pharaohs. Never did he know that he discovered what could be one of the greatest biblical archeological find – the Gospel of Judas.

Then Judas’ devastating journey began. After having been found by chance, sold twice and stolen once, little by little the pages of the Gospel of Judas slowly turned to fragments, the remaining pages bore many unrecognizable traces of blank ink. About 15% of the whole texts were completely wiped out from history but the remaining texts were just enough to finally redeem Judas from mankind’s mockery…

Fragments of the lost Gospel of Judas were subjected to a very precise time test, a test that measured when these ancient papyri had been made. The result? Radiocarbon dating revealed the papyri dated back 50 years before or after 200 A.D. – the years when the early Church was still beginning. There is thus no doubt. The Gospel is an authentic ancient artifact.

What’s with this gospel that so got into the nerves of Catholic conservatives? At long last, the world is ready to hold the secrets of the Judas Gospel.

The Gospel of A Hero

In the Gospel of Judas, the author reverses the story of Jesus’ betrayal. Judas is not a traitor. Instead, he is the greatest among the apostles and the closest to Jesus Christ. He is cursed and envied by the other disciples.

The Judas Gospel unfolds with an opening remark “This is the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke to Judas three days before he celebrated the Passover.” Jesus then is described not as the authoritative preacher. He does not speak of sin and repentance. Instead, he presents himself as a guide for his followers to spiritual understanding (gnosis). It portrays Jesus among the disciples as a child who laughs a great deal.

A disturbing revelation by Christ was again made known. In the gospel, the twelve apostles see a vision: they saw a great house with an altar; near it were twelve priests; and the twelve were receiving many cattle as sacrifice to the altar; people around them were doing evil deeds. In response, Jesus very bluntly says to them, “Those you have seen receiving the offerings at the altar—that is who you are. That is the god you serve, and you are those twelve men you have seen. The cattle you have seen brought for sacrifice are the many people you lead astray before that altar.”

Is Jesus Christ predicting the future of the early Church? Did it mean then that that the 2.2 billion Christians worldwide are actually being led astray?

The Divine Revelations

Then, in another occasion, Jesus divulges an Apocalyptic message. He compares the human race to the “unperishable race”, which would be the only race to remain throughout eternity. Jesus says the human race and even the angels shall be destroyed, and only those who shall attain divinity will be spared.

Jesus also explains to Judas a very mystical Gnostic theme that Matthew and the other three gospels fail to mention – cosmogony. In Judas’ Gospel, Jesus narrates the entire process of Creation! From the Supreme God, the great angel Autogenes is created, He soon creates another league of angels (“aeons”) to aid Him. They create the luminaries who are to govern portions of the Universe. Figures like 6, 12, 72 and 360 are used to define the orderliness of creation. Then from the perfect aeons it branches out to Saklas and Nebro, then to Seth and Adamas until the “accidental creation” of the human race.

At the night of the Passover, Jesus and his apostles are talking. Judas shares his vision: he was being stoned, cursed and hated by the twelve apostles. He was hated by the entire world. In reply, Jesus reveals that Judas will have to make the ultimate sacrifice to release Jesus from the physical body that wraps him. Jesus says, “You will be greater than them all, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

The passage reveals a very deep-seated philosophy of early Gnosticism. It speaks of the doctrine of reincarnation! Jesus shows how the body is likened to clothing which the soul wears and removes in a given lifetime. For the Gnostics, the body is just a material vehicle which the soul uses for self-expression and self-perfection. In the end, if the soul has gained divine perfection through gnosis, the prison body must then be shed off. Jesus’ death would then signal the completion of Christ’s mission as a preacher of Gnostic truth.

Thus, in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus arranges his own death and asks his brother Judas to hand him over the Romans. Judas obeyed.

A Sudden Ending

The Gospel of Judas abruptly ends with Judas receiving the coins from the high priests, as Jesus is handed down to the Romans. In a few hours, the Christ’s ever-celebrated Passion-Death-Resurrection mantra would commence.

The author of the Gospel of Judas might have aimed to rehabilitate Judas’ identity in history. Throughout the gospel, the author assumed a very angry mood. He was despising the disciples…

Perhaps Judas might have foreseen that his unlikely obedience would turn him from the great traitor we know to the greatest hero in history. His ultimate sacrifice could sound the death knell to his life-sentence. If it be true, then he is not to be ridiculed but to be thanked.

The Gospel of Judas and the other Gnostic gospels are but reminders for us to reassess what we have as Christians. It is no more a question of whether the Gospel is authentic or not, but rather it is a question of faith.

We may never know who exactly wrote these gospels and why they were written. But their existence does not entirely mean that they are the absolute truth. They may be false. They may be true. But we do know one thing. We still have our own free will to choose what to believe in.

Judas had his…

Pottermore Interview

What's your Pottermore username?
PatronusOak114

What House do you think it sounds like?
It sounds like Gryffindor because it sounded generic. Wizards do use spells, and the number 114 sounds like it's a multiple of 7 (although it really isn't) which is a number that holds a very mystical meaning for me. There are a lot of 7's in the magical kingdom.

What House do you want to be in?
Ravenclaw! I always wanted to be in Ravenclaw because it thrills me to think that the house is very exclusive. Not to brag, but you really have to be smart to get sorted here, ‘coz if not, then you have to wait for someone else to arrive to give the correct answer to get past through the Ravenclaw entrance.

Does your username relate to you at all?
Yes, a bit. It seems to me a very magical username (but I guess all are). Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve always believed in magic. I’ve always thought that there are things in this world that could not be explained by orthodox science. Even up to now, I firmly believe in paranormal and psychic phenomena. Having been raised within a culturally superstitious community, I would have a hard time putting out this belief from my system.

(The Patronus charm is an advanced sort of incantation that wards off evil (dementors). It fits me well because I have mostly been part of an advanced class or a member of an honor organization that aims to dispel ignorance. The term Patronus suits me well. The term Oak does me well too! Oaks are ancient and mysteries. Some legends say that oak trees are dwelling places of magical entities like fairies and dwarves. I can't seem to find any relevance with the number 114 to my life.)

What kind of wand would you wish to get?
I would rather use a wand made from a wood or tree from my native land. I mean. I have never even seen a holly, elder nor a hawthorn tree. I would prefer my wand to be made from a special native tree called Kamagong tree (Mabolo fruit,  Diospyros blancoi) related to the ebony tree. Its wood is very dense, hard and “unyielding.”It’s very difficult to carve or break. The core should be that of a phoenix tail feather or a unicorn hair.

What I got was Black Walnut, 11 1/2 inches, with dragon core. I'm okay with it!

Are you pure, half-blooded or Muggle-born?
I think I’m a pure-blood. My father came from a remote locale where supernatural activities are almost part of daily living (I’m telling the truth). My mother is from an urban state, but she has this unusual affinity for the unexplained. She loves Feng Shui and incantations (prayers).

Which day did you get into Pottermore?
Day 2 (August 1, 2011)! On July 31, 2012, I visited the Pottermore website only to find out that there was this magical contest to find the magical quill. And Day 1 was over. So I decided not to sleep for Day 2. I was closely monitoring the Pottermore page for any changes. I even installed a Chrome extension that refreshes a page every 5 minutes.

What shape is your Patronus?
It would be a tapir. This will be a great Patronus. The Tapir – the eater of nightmares!

What does your boggart look like?
It would be me, in rugged clothing, begging for food and coin!

Would you rather be an Animagus or a Matamorphmagus?
Animagus. Although being a Metamorphmagus allows you to morph your anatomy (to which many males may find interesting), I’d still prefer being a total animal. Being an animal won’t look as freaky as being a human with a pig’s ear!

 If you were an Animagus, what animal would you be?
I’d rather be a tiny bird (a Eurasian tree sparrow). I would fly around houses and spy on people! They would never suspect that I’m an Animagus, because sparrows are pretty common. They perch on almost every spot!