Author Topic: Judas Gospels  (Read 5550 times)

smart_s

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Judas Gospels
« on: August 10, 2007, 04:18:51 PM »
While reading Elaine Pagels book Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity I was amazed at how long the gospel had been around but had not be translated.  It seems the owners of the transcript were waiting for the highest bidder and literally had the document in cold storage.

Now that the time has been reached for it to be translated and released to the public it seems to be somewhat of a synchronistic event for humanity.  Perhaps we are ready to accept as a society a different view of Jesus, Judas and the crucifixion. 

According to the Judas gospel, Jesus asked Judas to turn him over to the Romans.  Jesus assignment on Earth was to sacrifice his body as previously prophesied in the Old Testament.  According to Pagels, this sacrifice was to be done to stop humans from sacrificing innocents to their God.

Also, Jesus, in the Judas gospel, told the disciples that they believed in a God of this world which is different from the God that sent him.  The God that they believed in was from the collective unconscious of humanity, the God of Jesus was the creator God who was a "good" God.

Pagels wrote of how the Bible's old Testament is a record of humanity since they moved away from being hunter's and gatherer's to become farmers.  People who plant crops and raise animals often have difficulty with the vagaries of nature which can be too hot, too wet, too cold, etc.  There can also be hurricanes, windstorms and even Earthquakes.  So they became wary and used sacrifices to hopefully ameliorate these problems so they could survive.

The Egyptians and Mayans even build giant pyramids to honor these gods to celebrate their successes and good fortune.   There is evidence that these societies collapsed because of overpopulation and deforestation.

Humanity has now moved away from a society dominated by agriculture.  Large cities with large populations are now the norm.  Very few people, percentage wise, work on farms.  There are so many people alive today that we threaten the world with global warming, the decimation of our forests and natural resources.  We are to blame for this, not some god.

We are still sacrificing out innocents.  We still send our young men and women to fight out battles.  Thousands have died and been maimed.  Thousands more are waiting for their chance to do this.

These innocents are not being sacrificed to a god, but for our own selves and our beliefs.  We have not been able, as a society, to resolve these issues.  We have no one to blame but our "selves". 
« Last Edit: August 10, 2007, 08:13:11 PM by smart_s »