The 2006 world-wide introduction of the discovery of the Gospel of Judas by the National Geographic Society was not only incorrectly done, it stated the exact opposite of what it really says because the scholars chosen to interpret it were all Christian-religion biased. Judas is the sacrifice and Master.
This energetic work serves as a beguiling introduction to gnosticism.
If a Dan Brown novel were turned into a dizzying, real-life unraveling of a newly revealed gnostic text, it might read something like Robert Wahler's Misreading Judas, a heady nonfiction tractate that attempts nothing less than a complete upheaval of traditional Christian exegesis.
Considering the scope of the work, the book, which is divided into four sections, is surprisingly short. Wahler, a lay researcher and writer, relishes in his "outsider" status, taking aim at both Christian orthodoxy and academic orthodoxy. In his introduction, he outlines his ultimate mission: proving that the biblical story of Judas was never a literal betrayal of Jesus but actually a description of the gnostic tradition of mastership succession and self-sacrifice.
To make this case, the book examines The Gospel of Judas, which was first translated in 2006 by the National Geographic Society, as well as selections from the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of gnostic texts discovered in Egypt in 1945. The book also examines various passages of the New Testament in light of these new gnostic readings.
Misreading Judas's energetic, investigative tone is at first alluring, though it becomes frenetic, puzzling, and hard to follow. Source excerpts are crammed together in long, uninterrupted litanies, with only brief, intermittent explications. The book succeeds where the sourcing is less indulgent, less tangential, and better layered into clearer, more authoritative conclusions.
The fervent tone also contributes to moments of presumption. The book's conclusion dismisses modern-day Christians as dupes misled by corrupt institutions, and simultaneously elevates its own status to that of a heroic sage. "It isn't a question of if, but when," the book speculates on its own importance to religious scholarship. "No further progress in New Testament study is possible until this report is recognized as true. It will be the standard in due time."
Such proclamations detract from the book's strengths. Misreading Judas serves as a beguiling introduction to gnosticism. The strongest passages detail the esoteric history of the spiritual movement, and the personal nature of mysticism. The book astonishingly connects Judas and Jesus's spiritual practices to Eastern mysticism in India. In striving to locate Eastern precedents in Abrahamic religions, the book offers interesting and novel perspectives on biblical narratives, such as the influence of karmic cycles in the New Testament.
Misreading Judas may prove too busily written and thematically arcane for the uninitiated reader. On the other hand, those interested in history, theology, and philosophy will find more than enough to keep reading.
Author comment on BlueInk review:
The New Testaemt Gospel "Betrayal" narrative is an inversion of the gnostic mastership succession narrative, the negative betrayal story built upon inverting obvious positive details from the James Apocalypses' mastership succession of James the Just. The infamous kiss is only the starkest of examples. There are many, and they are in roughly the same order. One or the other is the source, and it is provably the gnostics who wrote the original.
Author comment on Kirkus review:
There was no death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, since he never lived. He was a fictional character to help hide James, just as Judas was.
A revelatory interpretation of the Gospel of Judas.
In this book, Wahler (The Bible Says "Saviors," 2009) surveys the existing literature on an early gnostic Gospel that features Judas Iscariot as its main character, and he finds it lacking. He maintains that the Gospel's underlying narrative has been misread by biblical scholars, and he ascribes their errors to two main factors: a nearly unthinking deference to the orthodox New Testament texts (great chunks of which he dismisses as "Pauline propaganda"), and a scholarly ignorance of mystic gnostic traditions and their relationship to the canonical Gospels: "Is there no awareness in the ivy-covered academic halls of the long and storied tradition of the Eastern mystics?" he asks. Wahler provides an invaluable verse-by-verse close-reading of the Gospel of Judas and then widens his view to include other key works from the Nag Hammadi library of gnostic texts and, eventually, the canonical Gospels themselves. Along the way, he asks key questions, such as "who is this character, Judas? Is he the man that Paul never mentioned, the one he never knew, just like the Jesus he never knew?" Some of his answers to these questions are revolutionary ; for instance, he contends that the bulk of the New Testament amounts to a conscious coverup of the incendiary contents of the Judas Gospel, in which, he says, Judas essentially spiritually transforms from man to Messiah, supplanting Jesus. This is a comparatively short but densely packed exposition of a breadth of material that the Christian church has deemed apocryphal. Wahler offers readers very little in the way of introductory context, and many readers may wish that he'd slowed down at times to provide more explanatory information. However, his fellow experts will find thrilling, deep thought in these pages.
A tightly argued presentation of an explosive, Judas-centered counter-narrative.
Is it possible that orthodox Christianity is based on a lie? For Robert Wahler, the answer is an unequivocal yes, an argument he pursues in his new book.
The evidence for this radical idea, the author notes, can be found in the Gospel of Judas. This recently rediscovered manuscript paints Judas, not as a betrayer, but as an heroic figure who carried out Jesus's orders that helped set in motion Christ's death and resurrection.
Wahler believes there's even more to this story: that this text needs to be read, not in light of modern Christian scholarship, but through the lens of Gnosticism (in which it was written) with a focus on Western and Eastern mysticism traditions. The author argues that the obscure manuscript provides evidence of bait and switch, namely that Judas was a stand-in, or alias, for James the Just, whom the author believes is the truesuccessor of Christ (which undermines St. Paul's role in the development of the Church). Moreover, the text reveals hidden truths about the metaphysical nature of sacrifice and inner work that needs to be done to reach higher levels of consciousness.
This is all heady stuff, and for those not well versed in Gnostic thought, the author's exegesis of the text can be challenging. Yet, Wahler makes a valiant attempt to unpack the text, acting like a semiotics detective, exploring symbolism, and sometimes offering line-by-line commentary of ancient texts.
In his exuberance, however, Wahler's prose can turn dense and awkward, making his meaning hard to discern (e.g. : "The disciples ask that they be granted not to be tempted at 4:30, the same as Jesus tells them to 'watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.'").
As Wahler admits here, most scholars will balk at his claims. Still, the author's ideas are well-argued with citations, and while Misreading Judas sits outside the mainstream, it does provide an thought-provoking, if challenging, alternative look at Christianity.
