IbnBatriq Says: “…the fact that those who killed Jesus were Rabbinic Jews…” small correction: those who killed Jesus were Romans. It’s likely that were Rabbinic Jews who wished Jesus out of the way and probably collaborated, but Romans controlled Palistine, Jerusalem, and the administration of capital pubishment.

Personally, I find new revelations like the “Gospel of Judas” fascinating, and it does not really matter if they are “true” or not (if that term can even be applied to documents like these); they give us an opportunity to ponder deep issues.

As for anti-Semitism in Christianity: the fact that those who killed Jesus were Rabbinic Jews is largely incidental. According to orthodox Christian dogma, Jesus was ‘sent’ to Earth to be killed. Had he been sent to the Britons, they would have killed him and there would likely have been a great degree of animosity toward the Britons.

In fact, if we were to use Christ’s martyrdom as a reason to hate Jews, we may as well hate Italians while we are at it.

The question of whether there is ethnic anti-Semitism in early Christianity is a controversial one, but I for one am extremely skeptical of claims that it existed before the third century C.E. (I certainly don’t see it in the gospel of John).

As for anti-Judaism, yes, there are varying degrees of anti-Judaism in early Christianity, and it grows rapidly in intensity over the first few centuries. Some Christian authors were very anti-Jewish. Note especially an author like pseudo-Barnabas who claimed in the second century that J ews had completely misunderstood the Hebrew Bible, and holding that the commands of the Torah should have been understood metaphorically.

Christian anti-Judaism, however, pales in comparision with the anti-Judaism we find in Gnostic texts (the gospel of Judas being a representative example of a much larger corpus).

Gnostics taught and wrote that the God that Jews worship was one and the same as the Jewish Satan — that the creation of the world was an evil act, and that the God of the Hebrew bible was not only the weakest of all the divine beings, but also deluded and malicious.

This is a major theme in the gospel of Judas if you read it in its context, as it stresses that Judas is alone among the (Jewish) disciples of Jesus in correctly ascertaining:

A). that the physical (and Jewish) Jesus is different from the spiritual and exalted “Christ”

B). that the physical Jesus must die, to liberate the spiritual Christ from its prison

C). that “Christ” was not sent by the low and evil Jewish God “Yaldaboath”, but rather by the much higher and holier “Barbelo”

Note also that “Christ” himself is seen laughing at the stupidity of the other (more traditionally Jewish-Christian) disciples who worship Yaldaboath (the God of the Hebrew Bible), and believe in the goodness of Yaldaboath’s creation.

J.S.

On a preceding work on the subject by the French scholar:

Marcel Simon’s “Verus Israel� has dominated that era until quite recently…. Suffice it so say that he has covered every facet of nascent Christianity and it’s interactions with Judaism in the Roman Empire. In his treatment of Christian anti-Jewish polemic, Simon insists on the importance of distinguishing between (1) “anti-Jewish polemic� which represents an ideological conflict in which Christianity seeks to define it’s originality and to defend it’s legitimacy against the claims of Judaism; and (2) “Christian anti-Semitism�, which is born of the Jewish refusal of Christian claims and expresses itself increasingly as hostility towards Jews in general. Though Christian anti-Semitism draws in part on pagan traditions, it is finally to be distinguished from them by virtue of it’s religious and theological basis. Christian anti-Semitism goes back as the Gospel of John- but not to the letters of Paul-and attains it’s fullest expression in the fourth century. From that time forward, within the context of the Christian Empire, anti-Semitism ceased to be merely a matter of popular resentment and theological-exegetical debate. It became the ideological justification for anti-Jewish legislation and for the destruction of synagogues.

I think I will go with this and say that I am not convinced at all that

there was a cohesive system of thought call Gnosticism in which the Jewish God was considered evil, but rather many Gnosticisms: Jewish, Judeo- Christian, and Christian. There was a lot of competition during the first centuries of the common era between these and Rabbinic Judaism on other one end and early Christianity on the other, and consequently there was much argument and probably name calling. To invoke the cry anti-Semitism gets my attention every time. This term has been so abused that people just turn a deaf ear and roll their eyes. It’s important to use this term with discrimination if it is to have any meaning at all.

Fiddlesticks: With regard to the Gospel of Judas , when you said:

try reading the gospel before you post. The gospel of Judas is as anti-Semitic as the gospel of John.

Thanks for all the links and the odyssey.

http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/eric_voegelin_table_of_contents.html

http://home.salamander.com/~wmcclain/ev-index.html

http://www.artsci.lsu.edu/voegelin/

Voegelin is one of the 20C leading philosophers and one need not be a follower ( I am certainly not one) to see that his work is worth knowing.

Personally I am more partial to Schutz and Arendt:

http://www.questia.com/library/sociology-and-anthropology/sociologists-and-anthropologists/alfred-schutz.jsp

For Arendt:

http://library.wustl.edu/~listmgr/imagelib/Jun2001/0018.html

“The papers contain correspondence, articles, lectures, speeches, book manuscripts, transcripts of the Adolf Eichmann trial proceedings, notes, and printed matter pertaining to Arendt’s writings and academic career. Among these are correspondence with many of the leading literary and political figures of the twentieth century, including W. H. Auden, Mary McCarthy, Robert Lowell, Thomas Mann, Dwight Macdonald, Eric Voegelin, and Norman Podhoretz. The collection also contains various drafts of Arendt’s published work, in particular The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), and the controversial and groundbreaking Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963).”

“What is Gnosticsim?

It comes from the word “gnosis� meaning to know. Gnosticism was a philosophical system built on Greek philosophy. It added a Christian flavor when Christ impacted the world. Promoters of this ancient view were Simon Magus, Marcion, Saturninus, Cerinthus and Basilides. The Gnostics are traced to Carpocrates, and were supported by Valentius, Theodotus, and Artemas.

Gnosticism was built on Greek philosophy that taught matter was evil and the Spirit was good. They taught docetism, a dualism which promoted a clear separation between the material and spiritual world. Christian Gnostics said since matter was evil, God could not really incarnate in a human body, He only appeared in human form and only appeared to suffer, it was an illusion. It was stated when Jesus walked on the sand you could know by seeing his footprints that were left. In this Jesus could be a pure spiritual being in an evil world and not be contaminated by it.”

http://www.letusreason.org/Current48.htm

Jewish gnosticism deals in esoteric knowledge too but does not make Jesus Christ the center of their gnosis.

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=280&letter=G

I do not find one “Christian Gnostic” doctrine. I am not even sure where the “Christian” gnosticisms begin and Jewish gnosticisms end. Anything on that?

Regarding your Voegelin–read a little further in the Wiki:

To some extent, Voegelin’s use of the term ‘gnosticism’ might be unfortunate as it suggests some pseudo-continuity between religious movements. However, the prime feature which he uses to label something as gnostic is the idea of human perfectibility, and some kind of special knowledge. Thus Marxism becomes ‘gnostic’ because it suggests that we can have a perfect society when capitalism is overthrown. And thus Nazism becomes ‘gnostic’ because it suggests we can have a ‘pure’ race when the racially inferior are exterminated. and so on….

and this:

It is possible to think that Voegelin made every political and philosophical movement he did not like, some kind of offshoot of gnosticism, and thus joins many movements which would otherwise appear to have little in common (what would not be ‘gnostic’?), and there is very little exploration of what causes gnostic approaches in the first place.

Gee, and I thought you were all excited about the topic. Silly me.