Around 180 AD, a gnostic religious group called the Cainites wrote a gospel according to Judas. The Cainites believed the Old Testament God was pure evil and trapped souls in human flesh to torment them. They saw Cain as the first victim of this Demiurge (OT God).
In the gospel, the writer makes Judas out to be the hero and it is only he who Jesus shares the Gnostic mysteries of the kingdom. In Gnosticism, Jesus is working against God to destroy the terrestrial and celestial worlds and set every soul free. This is revealed to Judas. At the end of the gospel, Judas betrays Jesus’ body after His soul ascends out of Creation. This implied only the flesh was crucified. Symbolically suggesting Judas only betrayed the ‘evil flesh’.
Ancient Gnosticism
There were several notable gnostic groups which overlapped with the Church. The Church Fathers spent time over the centuries refuting their ascertains and clear heresies. The gnostic practices ranged from mutilation of the body and extreme self-denial to lewd sexual acts and very unsavoury behaviour, even by modern standards. Even with these wide range of practices, they all held to the concept of the evil Demiurge and how Christ came to free humanity from Him.
Modern Gnosticism
We may think Gnosticism died out with the Middle Ages, but we can still see features of it in our Modern Western culture.
Majority of ancient Gnostic groups were against procreation, as a new born baby was another soul tormented by the Demiurge. So, they promoted any sexual act which did not end in a new life.
Another overlap between ancient Gnosticism and the Modern world view is how our culture believes that the soul is the person, the essence of who someone is.
This is not how the early Christians saw it. They believed the soul and the body equally make up a person. The body was as much ‘you’ as the hidden soul. The idea that someone was born in the wrong body doesn’t make sense from a Christian perspective, as person’s essence is more than their soul.
Gnostics believe that all souls ascend out of the grasp of the Demiurge. Unless someone is considered evil by Western culture, their souls go to Heaven to be with God. We use phrases like, ‘Free At Last’ or ‘now they are free’ when someone dies. But according to the Bible, the only way a person goes to Heaven is in Christ. All others go to the Hell/Underworld/Sheol to await the Judgement Day.
A final point to make is that Judaism and Islam contain Gnostic concepts, but Modern Christianity also can fall into this trap.
The main problem occurs when we give primacy to the soul over the body. They are equally part of God’s Creation and we must honour our bodies as much as our souls. We must tame our fleshly passions as well as our thought life, to bring them in line with Christ. We mustn’t disregard our bodies and treat them as lesser. For we are one whole person, body, mind and spirit.
Judas’s Motives
Ignoring the gospel according to Judas’s explanation of why he betrayed Jesus, there are other possible reasons.
He could have lost faith in Christ’s mission and wanted to bring it all to an end. He wanted to move on to doing something else. After the arrest of Christ, he realised what he had done and killed himself.
I have heard another theory recently. He stole from the money bag, and then needed to pay it back before he would be found it. He didn’t believe the priests would successfully arrest Christ. They hadn’t in the previous three years. He couldn’t believe it when they did and so killed himself to hide the shame.
He may have wanted to force Christ to bring about his Kingdom sooner. If Christ was faced with death, then He would rally the angels and set up His Heavenly kingdom on Earth.
No matter what rationale he used to betray Jesus, it was ultimately part of God’s plan to bring His children to Him.
Folklore and Judas’s Death
There are several stories about Judas’s death from the time of the early church. They are apocryphal, but they shed light on what the early church thought about Judas.
One story is that after Judas betrayed Jesus, his started to bloat. It became so painful, he gutted himself in the field and died. His dead body smelt so bad that even 70 years later, the inhabitants of Jerusalem couldn’t walk past the field.
Another story, told in the Gospel of Nicodemus, explains that when Judas went home, he cooked a chicken. He told his wife what happened. He explained he was worried Jesus would come back from the dead and judge him. His wife laughed and said, ‘No one comes back from the dead’. At that moment, the chicken came to life and started running around the kitchen. Judas then ran out into the streets and hung himself.
I hope you have enjoyed this series on Judas. He is someone who preachers rarely, if ever, speak on. Like so many people in the Bible, he is a complex character and a cautionary tale for us all.
The Andrew Lloyd Weber musical "Jesus Christ Superstar" was the source of some of my early christian formation, before converting to Catholicism. It sets up Judas as a tragic hero, and treats Jesus as merely a man concerned about his legacy--it's all very detrimental, but it's interesting how this portrayal of judas has it's roots in ancient gnosticism.
excellent series, thank you!