Library/New Testament apocrypha
Gospel of Judas
Judas is the one who understands that the god of the twelve is not the high God. A Sethian cosmology of aeons and luminaries, and a Jesus who asks to be handed over so he can leave the body. The most aggressive rewrite of a passion in the apocrypha.
- Status
- New Testament apocryphon
- Date
- 2nd century CE
- Languages
- Coptic (from Greek)
- Setting
- Jesus laughing at the disciples’ Eucharist; a cosmology of luminaries
What it contains
- Mockery of the twelve
- Cosmology
- Judas’s star
- The handing over
Why it sits outside most canons
Irenaeus already names it as a Cainite/Sethian production. No church could live inside it.
Themes
- Aeons
- Luminaries
- Judas
- Body as trap
Passages
Gos. Judas
You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man who bears me.