Due to Cable difficulties, I missed the Discovery Channels presentation on the "lost" gospels of Judas Escariot, but there shall be books aplenty on the subject and eSkeptic presents exerpts from one such tome:
The Gospel of Judas, by Mark Ehrman.
"...the Gospel of Judas and its doctrines were established as far west as Gaul by the later part of the second century. However, whether or not this gospel is as old as the gospels that made it into the Bible is difficult to say. Broadly speaking, the canonical gospels can be dated by two methods. First, they can be dated in relation to each other. Both Matthew and Luke copy the text of Mark almost verbatim, adding their own material on the Nativity, which is not mentioned in Mark, as well as their own resurrection stories.
They also include sayings of Jesus, possibly from a hypothetical lost source called “Q.” Some of these sayings also appear in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. These three gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, are referred to as the Synoptic Gospels, a term invented by Johan Griesbach in 1744, meaning “seen together.” These gospels are “seen together” because of the similarities resulting from Matthew and Luke copying Mark. The order of events in all three is the same, as are the miracles. The Gospel of John, on the other hand, inserts different miracles.
Both the raising of Lazarus and turning water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana are found only in John. Jesus scourging the money-changers from the Temple, seemingly the proximate cause of his arrest by the Temple authorities in the Synoptic Gospels, is placed right after the wedding feast in Cana, near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, in John. These facts, along with the more sophisticated theology of John, as witnessed by the beautiful poem that opens that gospel, lead most experts to conclude that John was written after the Synoptic Gospels. So, the relationship of the gospels in time is that Mark was written first, then Matthew and Luke, then John.
Thus, if we can date Mark, we can date the others in relation to it. In the “little apocalypse,” also called the Olivet Discourse, in which Jesus and his disciples are sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the Temple, Jesus predicts the destruction of the Temple (Mark 13:2). This happened in CE 70, when the Romans crushed the Jewish revolt and utterly destroyed Jerusalem. This is either divinely inspired prophecy, written before the fact, or history, written after the fact. In Mark 8:38–9:1 (parallel verses in Mt. 16:27, 28 and Lk. 9:26, 27) Jesus predicts the end of the world and the second coming within his own generation. Since this did not happen, we can safely dismiss divine inspiration and assume that Mark was written after the Roman sack of Jerusalem in CE 70. In fact, Mark is generally dated as having been written ca. CE 70, while Matthew and Luke are thought to have been written ca. CE 80 and John ca. CE 90. This squares rather nicely with the Rylands Fragment, a scrap of papyrus from the Gospel of John, dated at ca. CE 125.
Since Irenaeus found the Gospel of Judas already being expounded among an entrenched community of Gnostic Christians in the western half of the Roman Empire in CE 180 in what is now France, we must assume it was in existence earlier, possibly as early as the canonical gospels."
More can be found at www.speptic.com and only the strong need apply.Faith requires no proof or it wouldn't be called faith. Historical records are magnificent because they can be the antithesis, and blind to the inventions of man to make giants in his image. Together, they can be a formidable manner in which to frame a reference point for the modern intellectual.
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