The Thirteenth Apostle (Rev. ed.)
June 10th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Judas. 1 Comment.
April DeConick has announced on The Forbidden Gospels Blog that the revised edition of her book The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says is now available from amazon.com
I have updated the entry in the Other Early Christian Gospels Resource Center to reflect that there is now a second edition:
De Conick, April D. The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says. London: Continuum, 2007 [1st ed.]; 2009 [rev. ed.].
In the first edition of this book, DeConick challenged the idea that the Gospel of Judas presented the traditionally infamous disciple in a favorable light (an idea suggested by the scholars who published the first modern edition of the text on behalf of National Geographic). As she prepared her own translation and commentary, DeConick came to the conclusion that the recently recovered gospel was, in fact, “an ancient Gnostic parody.” The publisher’s website quotes her as saying:
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.”
For the second edition, DeConick reports in her post,
I revised this book substantially, including two new chapters – one on Judas and astrology (my paper from the Codex Judas Congress) and another on Judas and ancient magic (I cover the magic gem that I think is related to the ideology put forth in the Gospel of Judas). I also have a new preface, covering what has been happening with the Gospel of Judas since its initial release, and I added a section on Thomasine church in the chapter on early Christianity.”
While the question of whether the Gospel of Judas portrays Judas as a hero or a villain is far from settled, DeConick has clearly established herself as one of the leading proponents of the “Judas villain” position. Those interested in keeping up with this debate will definitely need to be familiar with the revised edition of The Thirteenth Apostle.
Leon Zitzer on June 20th, 2009
I am a little familiar with Dr. DeConick’s work, mostly on Thomas and from some personal communication. I sense in most of the scholarly world a fair amount of hostility (not skepticism, but downright hostility) towards any positive view of Judas. What is really disressing is that there is so little attention to carefully explaining what we have in the canoical Gospels. What almost no scholar acknowledges is that Judas’ betrayal is a theory, an interpretation of the texts, not a stated fact or datum. Most scholars treat the betrayal as if it were a piece of data. Elaine Pagels writes that Mark gives us “the bare fact of the betrayal”. That is wrong. Mark gives us the bare fact of Judas leaving the table and returning with the authorities. Betrayal is pure interpretation, pure theory. Another theory is equally possible, if not better.
The evidence supporting the betrayal theory ranges from poor to non-existent. Mark (and the other Gospels) does not use the Greek word, “prodidomi”, that definitely means betray. He uses “paradidomi”, which most scholars admit does not mean betray and some scholars would argue is ambiguous. Mark does not give a motive or describe any conflict between Judas and Jesus or other disciples. The bare minimum that you would expect in any story of betrayal is some kind of denunciation from the others after the deed is done. Even that is missing from Mark and all the Gospels.
In short, Mark is missing every solid detail you would expect in a story of betrayal. It is quite a jump from this to go to the conclusion, “therefore, Mark is telling the story of a traitor.” Mark does not even give us one unambiguously negative piece of information about Judas. It is all ambiguous. Every detail he gives could have a positive spin as well as a negative spin. What scholars have done is read betrayal and negativity into the text and then claim they found it there. The details of the real story in the Gospels are still so poorly understood and slanted in one direction only.
Leon Zitzer