The Gospel According To Judas

April 7, 2006 -- CAN a TV documentary change the course of Christianity for all time?

How should I know? I'm no prophet - just a TV critic who cannot remember the last time a TV documentary changed the course of anything.

While it's unlikely the National Geographic Channel's documentary, titled "The Gospel of Judas," will be remembered centuries from now, the scenario it proposes - the rehabilitation of Judas Iscariot's image from villain to hero based on a recently discovered and newly translated manuscript from approximately 300 A.D. - is already providing grist for debate.

The documentary, which premieres this weekend on Palm Sunday at 8 p.m., traces the strange story of the so-called "Gospel of Judas" starting with its discovery in an Egyptian desert cave in 1978 by a wandering farmer - a discovery that makes you wonder: With all the professional archaeologists in the world, why is it always farmers and shepherds who stumble on the best stuff?
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Um, because there are millions of farmers and shepherds and only hundreds of professionals at any given time searching around for such stuff?

Duh?

NONE of the gospels were written by ANY of the apostles. Constantine assembled as many literate monks as he could find to piece together what little they knew of Joshua ben Josef, yes the man's name was not Jesus and it's sad that we refer to him by the Greek version of his name, but let's face it, we like Greek better than Hebrew.

That's why so many of the "gospels" contradict one another. Illiterate fisherman and inn keepers and roustabouts weren't writting much of anything back then and old Consty wanted the definitive telling of the legend and at the end of the day didn't care all that much if they made little sense. It was a religion he was starting, and it would appear that they did a halfway decent job of it.

So the Judas deal is just another Greek assemblage of "facts" that bear little relationship to what really went on. The Jews knew that Rome liked to burn stuff but sort of liked keeping Greek stuff around and that's the route they went they went to preserve what they considered to be important information. Not that ANY Jewish or Roman, or Greek scholar mentioned Joshua ben Josef or Judas Escariot ANYWHERE, but I'll watch the documentary, for sure, just won't expect anything close to a revelation.