Publisher's Synopsis
Judas As the Greatest Disciple of Jesus
Judas means one thing throughout literature and throughout the history of the Christian Church. - "Traitor." Dr. Yitzhaq I. Hayut-Man, working with the newly-discovered Judas Gospel published in 2006 by National Geographic Society, demonstrates Judas to be anything but a traitor. In those pages he is, instead, the disciple whom Jesus chooses for his moment of ecstasy and martyrdom on the cross. -- "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me," Christ says to Judas in that Gospel. Christian Gnosis as the Basis for Understanding Judas
How could this traitor possibly be a saint? At the time of Christ and in the centuries afterward, Christianity faced a competing system known as Gnosis (which means "direct knowledge.") The Christian Church emphasizes doctrine. Gnosis emphasizes direct experience of the divine. In the light of Gnostic teachings, this disciple was capable of supreme acts of obedience and devotion. He was a direct knower of God and, as such, could be the one to do for Christ what no others would do.
As Christ says to Judas in the Judas Gospel, "You will become the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations (i.e. those of the disciples and of the orthodox Church) - and you will come to rule over them. In the last days they will curse your ascent (or transfiguration) to the holy [generation]."
The Qaballah As Source and Validity for Christian Gnosis If Gnosis were simply something new at the time of Christ, it might seem to be merely a movement that arose and failed. However, Hayut-Man shows, Gnosis is a later form of the widely known and respected Jewish Qaballah. The Christian Church may have repudiated mystical doctrines like those in the Judas Gospel, but the world has known them in many forms. And one of the best-known of all of those forms is the Jewish Qaballah.
Signaling Another Type of Apocalypse
Now may be the time of fulfillment for Christ's words, "you will come to rule over them." The Judas Gospel might usher in nothing less than an anti-Apocalypse, a new time of harmony and peace where Jews, Christians, and Muslims enjoy the direct experience of God through teachings in the Qaballah, in sacred Muslim writings, and - most clearly and most recently - in the 2000-year-old Gospel of Judas.
