Readers of GetReligion are familiar with that mainstream media holiday tradition of releasing news stories that are supposed to shake the foundations of Christianity. Easters over the last few years have featured stories that Jesus walked on an ice floe (not water), that he wasn’t crucified in the manner in which people think, that Jesus’ father was a Roman soldier named Pantera, not Joseph, and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross so much as pass out after being doped up.
Easter 2006 featured an unrelenting public relations offensive (emphasis on offensive) by the National Geographic Society and its National Geographic magazine that argued that Judas was unfairly maligned by Christians. The story was covered far and wide by all the major media outlets.
In December of last year, I noted April DeConick’s op-ed in the New York Times arguing that the National Geographic version was completely wrong about Judas as hero.
The latest Chronicle of Higher Education, which I found via Peter Smith, the religion reporter of the Louisville Courier-Journal, analyzes what went wrong. As the name of the publication indicates, the story deals mostly with the politics and personalities of higher education. But it’s also an indictment of the media:
[S]ome members of the team were sent to a one-day media-training seminar in Manhattan to prepare them for the coming onslaught of attention. They would have to explain to reporters, repeatedly, that the Gospel of Judas was probably written in the second century, long after the actual Judas was dead. There is no scholarly debate over whether the conversations in the gospel actually took place. Everyone agrees that it’s fiction, but it’s fiction that reveals how a certain sect of Christians viewed the meaning of the crucifixion and the role of Jesus’ disciples… .
One of the questions the National Geographic team was asked most frequently was “Is it the real thing?” — which, of course, depends on what you mean by “real” and “thing.” The manuscript is real in the sense that it’s not a fake. And it does appear to be the Gospel of Judas referred to in the writings of one early church father. But it is not a journalistic account of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, nor could it have been written by the historical Judas. That message didn’t always come through: Some of the news reports read as if the gospel came straight from Judas’ pen… .
Reporters ate it up. Word of the discovery made the front pages of newspapers around the world. “Ancient Text Says Jesus Asked Judas to Hand Him to the Romans” was The Arizona Republic’s headline. USA Today said the gospel “recasts” Judas. The Austin American-Statesman put it this way: “Ancient Judas as ‘good guy,’ not Jesus’ betrayer.”
The Chronicle article explains in detail the myriad ways in which the team of bible scholars hired by National Geographic messed up. They translated the word diamon as “spirit” instead of “demon.” There were other problems:
Then there’s the number 13. The Gospel of Judas is thought to have been written by a sect of Gnostics known as Sethians, for whom the number 13 would indicate a realm ruled by the demon Ialdabaoth. Calling someone a demon from the 13th realm would not be a compliment. In another passage, the National Geographic translation says that Judas “would ascend to the holy generation.” But DeConick says it’s clear from the transcription that a negative has been left out and that Judas will not ascend to the holy generation (this error has been corrected in the second edition). DeConick also objected to a phrase that says Judas has been “set apart for the holy generation.” She argues it should be translated “set apart from the holy generation” — again, the opposite meaning.
DeConick’s problems with the translation are now shared by a growing chorus of scholars. The scholars who mistranslated the work, who largely agree that they messed up, feel that she should have handled her concerns privately rather than outing them in the New York Times. DeConick disagrees, saying that all most people will remember is the Judas as good guy impression created by the media.
She is, of course, correct. The media offensive during Holy Week two years ago cast major doubt on the historic teaching of the Christian faith. The revelation that there were major, major problems with that story? Well, unless you happened to read a December New York Times op-ed or subscribe to the Chronicle of Higher Education, you won’t hear a word.
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Comments (9) |
May 31, 2008, at 12:41 pm
That caught my eye. I don’t see why that is a significant point since the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible were not written down by Jesus himself. From what I’ve read, Mark and Luke were written by those who knew them closely. So the question is not who wrote down the Judas document, but what meaning should be ascribed to it.
May 31, 2008, at 1:48 pm
I’ll grant them this much: “daimon” is a hard word to translate.
The rest of it - it certainly was publicised as “the very words of Judas himself! The secret truth revealed at last!! Now we know the story from the inside!!!” and it was only much later, in embarrassed footnotes, that we got “Er - um - well, actually, this isn’t the actual words of Judas. It’s a Gnostic document from one or two centuries later. It’s not the inside story, but an interpretation.”
And as for shoving the blame onto Irenaeus - “DeConick thinks the translators were overly influenced by Irenaeus and read the gospel with his interpretation in mind” - what part of “He mentioned it in his polemic “Against Heresies” as, you know, A HERESY that was WRONG and FALSE” did they somehow manage to miss? If you went by this, you’d believe he was a cheerleader for Judas and it was his fault - oh, and those overeager reporters! - that such an impression was wafted abroad.
Nothing to do with the scholars, no dearie me.
May 31, 2008, at 3:04 pm
#1 - the stories I read about The Gospel of Judas presented it as though it were the words of Judas, or, rather, an historically significant strain of thought within the Church. Not blatantly, but the stories I read slid over the whole issue of canonical authority, which is to say the authority given to a text by the community. Judas was a text that belonged to a particular sect that is long gone. It was never a part of the Church, or, perhaps, it was, but separated over it’s gnostic doctrines.
But, hey, I was just glad to get through Easter without another barrage from the Jesus Seminar or Bishop John Spong. Of course, I stayed away from the local papers that week.
May 31, 2008, at 4:48 pm
The media is a double-edged sword. Rather than follow the normal academic path of conference papers and peer-reviewed journals, National Geographic et al. decided that mass media was the best means to communicate their findings. It was their choice to forego private discussion of the document.
I think the Chronicle did an excellent job of dissecting this mess.
May 31, 2008, at 8:40 pm
The first questions to ask about any ancient work are who wrote it and when. No one is arguing that Jesus wrote any portion of the Gospels, but there is a great deal of evidence that Mark was written by Mark, that Luke and Acts were written by Luke, that Paul’s letters were written by Paul, etc.
From what you’ve read where? What is the evidence? How credible is the source?
The credibility of the Gospels and the letters of Paul start with who wrote them and when. If you believe that few or none of the works were authored by the stated authors (as in the case of Luke, Acts, Paul’s letters, etc.) or by the person whose name is associated with the book (as in the case of Matthew, Mark, John, etc.), then it is much easier to consider something like the Gospel of Judas — written a century or longer after the suicide of Judas — as very similar to a book of the Bible. I contend that most in the MSM are completely ignorant about the evidence that supports the premise that the books of the New Testament were written within 40 years of the death (and resurrection) of Jesus and by those who claimed authorship or whose authorship was claimed by the early Christian church.
That question stems from your premise and your assumptions, which I believe are shared by most in the MSM.
Dead for over a century, and still cranking out the chapters. You can’t keep a good traitor down!
May 31, 2008, at 11:33 pm
In the Bartlett article, a lot of the blame goes straight to the desire for a scoop, so that they could make money (to get back their huge investment on buying the manuscript).
So they didn’t allow the translaters to talk to others in their fields, and the most controversial parts were emphasized in the ads and program..
And despite the debunking, the NG still has the site up on their website claiming the original story was wrong…
June 1, 2008, at 6:28 am
Thanks for this update, Mollie. I was unaware of The Chronicle’s article. There’s also an article about this issue in The New York Review of Books (May 1, 2008 issue). It looks like April DeConick’s view is becoming accepted by most mainstream scholars who have actually read the text.
I wonder if the NatGeo guys got their definition of “daimon” from “The Golden Compass” instead of from ancient Coptic. :0)
June 1, 2008, at 6:36 pm
Are you guys aware that National Geographic has already shot back at this piece? In my opinion, not all that effectively, but it’s notable:
http://press.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/index.jsp?pageID=pressReleases_detail&siteID=1&cid=1212171846974
June 2, 2008, at 9:53 am
[…] June 2, 2008 by episcopalian Excellent posting at GetReligion blog. “Easter 2006 featured an unrelenting public relations offensive (emphasis on offensive) by the National Geographic Society and its National Geographic magazine that argued that Judas was unfairly maligned by Christians. The story was covered far and wide by all the major media outlets.” But now: “The Chronicle article explains in detail the myriad ways in which the team of bible scholars hired by National Geographic messed up. This is a must read: Betrayed by the media » GetReligion. […]