The dividing wall of hostility: Some things never change

It was many centuries ago now that St Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus, in a passage which liturgical churches re-read in services today: 

For he (Christ Jesus) is our peace, who has made both (competing groups among his readers) one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances ... (Ephesians 2:14-15)

What some translators term "the middle wall of partition" and "enmity", other translators have rendered "the dividing wall of hostility." The hostility was over who was right -- who was better -- and whether keeping ordinances could show who was good and not.

Paul's readers seem to have contained two sides of a debate: people who thought they were better than others because they kept certain purity laws, and people who thought they were better than others because they did not rely on purity laws. Given human nature, there were probably also those who were not that interested in the debate, and others who were not yet convinced by either side, but fixated on finding the one right answer in that debate. At any rate, it appears that all the air in the room was being used up on the debate.

The debates have changed. But one thing has not: when debates cause hostility, the debate itself becomes part of the problem. To be sure, a debate is more what the ancients might have called an "occasion" for hostility -- a setting in which sin flourishes. It really is up to us whether we descend into hostility. The fertile ground there is not merely the debate, but the idea that the debate falls into such a simple situation that people on one side are good people, while people on the other side are bad people. After all, St Paul devotes several chapters at times to explaining that the question of keeping the purity codes is not as simple as some would make it seem: that there is value in the law, and value in freedom, and possibly more value still in humility and recognizing that we are not all alike except in our humanity. God, grant me humility. 

Another thing remains the same: to get beyond our arguments, it requires perspective that God is greater still.

The Gospel of Judas: Why Barbelo and Yaldabaoth are relevant to that conversation

End note, moved to the top: My apologies if some of the material in this post is not within the bounds of traditional Christian or Jewish belief. It comes with the territory of reading and commenting on the Gospel of Judas. Yet if we're going to assess that document at all, then we go into that territory.

Anyone reading the Gospel of Judas will come across the names of spiritual beings such as Barbelo and Yaldabaoth, along with a cosmic origin story involving emanations / generations and aeons. These unfamiliar names are flags that the Gospel of Judas comes from a certain Gnostic sub-group called Sethians. Without claiming any familiarity with Sethians myself, I'll pass along that some encyclopedia references suggest that the Sethians were a fusion of diaspora Hellenistic Judaism and some Greek beliefs. This fusion could have been early enough to predate Christianity, though the available sources so far suggest that without confidence, as the early range of possible origin dates for the Sethian movement. At any rate, it would mean the Sethians could have been an existing group in the Jewish diaspora at the time the evangelists brought the news of Jesus to the Jews scattered around the Roman empire.

On the consideration that the Sethians may have already been in the Jewish diaspora when the evangelists began to proclaim Jesus, I'd expect that the Sethians were less-than-mainstream in the Jewish community. More than one line of reasoning suggests it. We're familiar with several Jewish sects from the Jewish homeland from that era such as Pharisees and Sadducees -- not so much the Sethians. Also, some of the key figures in their cosmology such as Barbelo are never named in the Jewish cosmology of Genesis, never mentioned in Jewish Scriptures, never discussed in the conversations about Jewish controversies that are recorded in the New Testament. If we were to make a Venn diagram of mainstream Second Temple Judaism and its belief systems, several of the Sethian tenets about God / divinity seem to lie squarely outside the area shared by Pharisees and Sadducees, though with enough overlap to see that the Sethians owe some of their views to Judaism (or possibly: try to incorporate their Jewish ideas of origins into their Sethian views). 

The Sethian origin story (per the encyclopedia articles I've reviewed) has a sympathetic view of the serpent of Genesis and its role in humans' gain of knowledge, and possibly in humans' freedom from lesser religious systems. It is not a far reach to see a parallel with the Sethian Gospel of Judas and its sympathetic view of the betrayer's place in redemption. If the Sethians are as much about that alternative origin as the encyclopedia articles suggest, then the Gospel of Judas is a nearly-obvious interpretation of Jesus' betrayal from the Sethian point of view.

Why does this matter for us in our modern day? That depends on each person's interest in assessing the older texts that are presented as alternative gospels. I have mentioned before that I see some of these "alternative gospels" as coming from a stage in which the first Jewish-Christian evangelists met other cultures. While the New Testament shows us the Jewish disciples grappling with the Gentiles' non-Jewishness, it looks to me as though we see the opposite happening in some of the alternative gospels. We see non-Jewish cultures grapple with Jesus' Jewishness, or re-interpret Jesus within their own cultural and philosophical references. 

Because I have not at this point made any study of Sethians for their own sake, my knowledge of them is limited. Their worldview in the Gospel of Judas -- with layers of different generations/emanations and their respective divine beings -- comes across to this novice as complicated, tedious, and contrived. My underlying interest is where this puzzle piece fits into the classical world's understanding of Jesus. With its reliance on figures such as Barbelo and Yaldabaoth, the puzzle piece fits outside of the area that is bounded by Jewish Scriptures or grounded in Jewish Scriptures, edging into the esoteric beliefs of some sects in the diaspora.

Faith: A virtue that moves us

The gospel readings in church these last two weeks have made a serious contrast: Last week's reading told about Jairus' daughter and the unnamed woman who touched Jesus' cloak; this week's reading told about the unbelief of the people in Jesus' hometown of Nazareth. 

"Your faith has made you well." -- I've often privately in my heart found fault with that line of thinking: It was the power and benevolence of God that made her well! But Jairus benefited from it because he acted on his belief in it. The unnamed woman who touched his cloak benefited from it because she acted on her belief in it. Few in Nazareth did the same. So there is a real sense in which faith was a vital factor. It is true enough that God is not limited by our own thoughts; however, my relationship with God may be limited by my thoughts about God. 

The last few years I have been more like the hometown crowd in Nazareth. (Has the church become like the hometown crowd in Nazareth -- too accustomed to Jesus to see what is happening?) I find myself wondering about the line between the temptation of cynicism and whether it verges on maligning God's character. 

May I see Jesus again through the eyes of those who are not over-familiar.

Gospel of Judas: Geography and Named Places

Some time ago I ran a series cataloging and measuring different points about the Biblical gospels and the alternative gospels. This included an analysis of the extent to which they were rooted in the physical world of geography and named places. At that time that I ran the series, the Gospel of Judas was still somewhat new to an English translation and there had been recent disputes over the translation and meaning of various parts of the text. With some time having gone by, I'd like to add the Gospel of Judas to the analysis. 

In the surviving text, there is one reference to a named place in the earthly world: a single reference to Judea: "One day he was with his disciples in Judea," very close to the beginning of the text as we have it, setting the scene for what follows. 

For those who are used to the Biblical gospels, the entire surviving text containing a single mention of one geographical region is relatively little grounding in the physical world. Though to take the Gospel of Judas on its own terms, it is relatively little interested in the earthly world, and might take exception to the Biblical gospels for how little reference they make to spirit-beings, aeons, and generations -- without a single reference to the angel or spirit-being Saklas among the four of them.

Ultimately, the Gospel of Judas has a different focus, and takes place in a different spiritual setting than the canonical gospels. There is more to be said of the Gospel of Judas in general; this focuses simply on the geography.

Word Cloud: The Gospel of Judas

Some years ago I made word clouds of the better-known non-canonical documents that are sometimes labeled as gospels. I have always intended to revisit that and add a word cloud for the Gospel of Judas. Finally, this week, I found the opportune block of time. The source text used is the National Geographic Society 2008 text (the second edition).

Adam  (4) aeon (18) altar (8) angels (28) answered (6) appeared (12) become (4) called (8) cloud (11) completion (5) created (7) disciples (12) eyes (5) generation (39) God  (10) heard (7) heavens (7) holy (8) house (5) human (13) incorruptible (4) Jesus  (32) Judas  (20) kingdom (5) laughed (8) life (5) light (6) lord (5) luminaries (9) Master  (8) name (15) number (7) offer (6) others (8) people (11) power (4) priests (5) received (7) rest (5) rule (7) ruler (6) sacrifice (6) Saklas  (6) souls (6) spirit (12) stand (9) stars (16) together (4) Truly  (8) twelve (13)

created at TagCrowd.com

The threshold cutoff for the cloud was the top 50 most frequent word. This one has some points of interest compared to some other documents previously reviewed. 

1. While Jesus is a major focus, his name takes second place in the word rankings, mentioned less often than "generation". 
2. "Aeon" is mentioned more than "God". 
   
3. The only disciple whose name is in the top 50 words is Judas. 
4. While other disciples do not make the list, the spirit-being Saklas gets a fair amount of mention and makes the cutoff.
   
5. In the Gospel of Judas, one of Jesus' most common actions is laughing, often at the expense of people around him. 
6. When the name Judas occurs, it is not accompanied by a disambiguation-phrase based on an awareness of more than one man named Judas in the narrative.
   
7. The phrase "Holy Spirit" does not occur in the translation that I have. Neither do the names Mary, Joseph, Peter, James, John, Matthew, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, or any of the less-commonly-known disciples, as far as I can find. 
8. As in more familiar texts, "Truly" here is a translation of Amen, according to the notes from the translator(s).

Thank you for reading!

Be still 2021

For the last few years, the world seems increasingly loud and chaotic. Intentionally so. As if to drown out thought, or the clarity of thought that comes with calmness. As God's children, we can offer a measure of peace to this world. As God's children, He offers a measure of peace to us.

Be still, and know that I am God -- Psalm 46:10

He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in pieces.
He burns the chariot in fire.
Be still, and know that I am God. (Psalm 46:9-10, AV modernized)

He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth.
He grounds the war planes and missiles
He demolishes the tanks (2021 technology)
Be still, and know that He is God.

Who listens to His voice?
Who hears His word?
Who guards the value of a moment's silence?
Be still, and know that He is God.

The unknowability of God, and God's character

It's all about character.

Back when I taught teen Sunday school, at one point I used coins as an illustration. It's only really necessary to have two coins for the illustration: pennies and quarters are useful since the images on them are more readily recognized. 

If I hold up a penny, ask someone to look closely at the image, then ask "Who is that?", the answer comes back: Abraham Lincoln. If I do the same with a quarter, the answer comes back: George Washington. And with decent likenesses, we can answer questions from looking at them. "Who had a beard: Washington or Lincoln?" We can see that it's Lincoln. "One of them had a wig with a long strand of hair in back. Which one?" We can see that it's Washington.  

And then: I place the quarter on my thumb, flip the coin so that it spins in the air many times before I catch it, slap it face-down on my other arm in traditional coin-toss fashion, and with the coin still covered I ask one question: "Is George Washington dizzy?"

At which point they laugh but they get the point. You can tell a lot from an image. The better the image, the more you can tell. But the image is separate from the original. We could use the same quarter in a coin-toss all day, and it would never make George Washington dizzy. 

The word "character" is originally a Greek word, used in engraving and in minting coins which were made by stamping an impression. In this sense, "character" is used in a famous passage in the New Testament, discussing Jesus' relationship to God: "Who being a reflection of his glory and an impression of his substance" -- or in the words of a more familiar translation, "Who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person ..." (Hebrews 1:3). 

If you have ever spoken to someone who is not used to the ideas of Christianity, sooner or later we are called to explain what we mean about Jesus and God. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father," Jesus told his disciples. And yet when Jesus died on the cross, God did not cease to exist. Much like, when I tossed the coin, George Washington was not dizzy. The analogy is imperfect but it makes its point.

We can look at the image and learn about things unseen. It is often the purpose of an image: to make known or make present things that are not seen. The better the image, the more clearly we see what we could not otherwise see. Jesus was born in a certain time and place in human history; there was a time before he existed. Much like the coins were minted long after the time of the persons represented. Yet it is a key part of Jesus' essence: whoever has seen him has seen the Father. 

That is my two cents' worth for the day.