Gospel of Judas inspires awe, wrath

Parishioners at morning Mass at St. John Chrysostom church in West Roxbury were buzzing yesterday over news reports about the release of the Gospel of Judas, which some scholars suggest could revolutionize people's understanding of early Christianity.

The Rev. David Michael sensed a teaching moment was at hand.

In his homily, the priest explained that the Catholic Church of today rejects the Gospel of Judas, just as it did in the early centuries of Christianity. The main reason, he said, is that the text asserts that salvation comes through special knowledge imparted by Christ to select people during his time on earth. Catholics and many other Christians believe that salvation comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

''These gospels emphasize knowledge that initiates have and others do not," Michael said, recapping his homily in a telephone interview yesterday afternoon. ''Jesus made a wide-open gift of salvation to humanity. In the real Christian tradition, salvation comes through faith."

Clergymen, theologians, and scholars reacted with elation, caution, and occasionally anger yesterday to the reports flooding the media -- stoked by a massive National Geographic Society public relations campaign -- that the reclaimed Gospel of Judas could, as one leading scholar put it, ''turn everything on its head." National Geographic announced in Washington on Thursday that a team of researchers had restored, authenticated, and translated the text, which dates back to roughly the second century.

Numerous parishioners came to Michael after the West Roxbury Mass to thank him for taking up the topic, which has created confusion. The New Testament includes four gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- and some at Michael's church wondered how to view the Judas manuscript in relation to the Christian Bible they were taught.

''People are wondering; people have questions," Michael said. ''Clearly it behooves us as priests to address this."

Interest is also boiling in academic and theological circles.

Some scholars say they are certain that the text will have a major impact, at the least in forcing a revision in thinking about the archvillain of the New Testament, a man so reviled in the Christian mind throughout the centuries that he is portrayed in Dante's Inferno being eaten by Satan at the lowest level of Hell. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas is portrayed as a favored disciple of Christ who turned him over to the Romans for execution at Christ's urging.

It's ''very exciting, a real boon," said Jennifer Knust, a professor of New Testament and Christian origins at Boston University. ''It makes a difference in the way teachers teach. I teach seminarians, and they are very interested."

Others are expressing doubts about the authenticity of the document, and some resent the way the news is being controlled, by National Geographic and the Swiss foundation that owns the manuscript, which this week put it on display.

The influential early Christian theologian Irenaeus of Lyon, a formative influence in the church's canonization of the four gospels, tried to make the authors and groups that embraced other gospels appear heretical and ridiculous, Knust said.

But she believes that because the Judas text and others of the same era have been discovered, Irenaeus will increasingly be viewed as just one of many sources on the beliefs of early Christianity, rather than the definitive source.

Both at BU and at her previous teaching post at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester -- where, Knust said, most of her students were religious Catholics -- some were already questioning the depiction of Judas in the Bible.

''Students were already coming in saying, 'Didn't Judas get a bad rap?' " Knust said. ''Wouldn't Jesus be sympathetic with him? Didn't he do a great deed, because Jesus had to die for salvation to happen?' "

Pheme Perkins, a specialist on the New Testament and other gospels, noted that modern portrayals such as the film ''The Last Temptation of Christ" and the Broadway hit show ''Jesus Christ Superstar" conveyed the idea that Judas was in league with Jesus and that there was a closer relationship between them than tradition has portrayed, a major theme of the newly authenticated Gospel of Judas.

But Perkins also said she is not yet convinced of the authenticity of the Gospel of Judas, and she criticized those involved in the rediscovery for presenting the text to the public before they made sufficient information available to the scholarly community.

''It could be a patchwork; it could be a modern forgery," Perkins said, criticizing one of the lead scholars involved in the translation for using phrasings that are similar to proven Christian texts, when other words also could have been used.

Many people have been promoting rediscovered early gospels that say salvation is based in knowledge, rather than on the death and resurrection of Christ, as ''spirituality for the 21st century," Perkins said. However, the texts do not involve knowledge in the modern sense, but complicated mythology and metaphysics, she said.

One of the leading international authorities on the gospels that disappeared in the early centuries of Christianity is James M. Robinson, professor emeritus of religion at Claremont Graduate University. Robinson was offered the Judas manuscript in 1983, but was unable to meet the price demanded by the antiquities dealer who possessed it at the time. He was not involved in the National Geographic conservation and translation effort.

Robinson said in a telephone interview yesterday that he is convinced the document is not a forgery. But he also disputed assertions that it provides new information about what happened on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, or Easter.

Participants in the National Geographic effort ''are making the sly suggestion that the Gospel of Judas is more or less equally valid" with the gospels of the New Testament and ''contains things that could pull the rug out from under Christianity as we know it," said Robinson. ''That is just ridiculous."

Robinson's new book on the Judas gospel is due out next week and will be in competition with two other new volumes authored by scholars associated with the National Geographic effort. He said that a principal reason the manuscript was kept secret until this week's mega-promotion effort was so that revenue from the books, the May National Geographic magazine, and a television documentary to be broadcast tomorrow night ''would allow them to recoup the $1 million they had to pay for exclusive rights."

Haley Robinson, a Methodist studying for a master's degree in divinity at BU, said it helps her to read documents like the Gospel of Judas that make Jesus more accessible.

''It strengthens my faith to see Jesus portrayed as more human than he is in the gospels," she said. ''It makes it lots easier for me to connect to him."

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.