Sunday, June 20, 2021

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).

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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!

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