Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity?

by N.T. Wright

Not too terribly long ago, the Gospel of Judas was “discovered”—that is to say, a document that was long known about was published, came to the attention of the media, and was at once another opportunity for mainstream society to question the reliability of the gospel records. N.T. Wright, the Bishop of Durham (Church of England) and a world renowned New Testament scholar, offers his response to the frenzy brought about by this gospel in this short volume.

After a brief discussion of the history of the Gospel of Judas and its publication, Wright delves into what is the main thrust of the book: Gnosticism, a religion that the Gospel of Judas clearly reflects and from which it clearly came. Ultimately, this little book makes three points about the Gospel of Judas: it tells us nothing about the real Jesus or the real Judas; the enthusiasm for this “new gospel” exposes the agenda “for what we might call the scholarly ‘Quest for an Alternative Jesus’ (13); it highlights certain features of about first-century Christianity that need to be drawn out more fully than is sometimes done.

“When we put these together we discover that the publication of this extraordinary find, over 1,500 years after it was first written, reveals more strikingly than before the bankruptcy of the worldview it articulated, and by contrast, the compelling and attractive nature… of the genuine Christian faith articulated in the New Testament, the faith for which those who opposed the second-century Gnostics suffered and died” (13–14).

If you know little or nothing about the Gospel of Judas and/or Gnosticism, this little book might be a good place for you to start your study. If, however, you are already well-versed in these matters, you can probably skip it with little loss—unless, of course, you are an N.T. Wright enthusiast and want to read it for that reason alone.