The story of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas gave a moral and religious rationale to anti-Jewish sentiment, and that's what made it persistent and vicious.
"Elaine Pagels", née Hiesey, is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is best known for her studies and writing on the Gnostic Gospels. Her popular books include The Gnostic Gospels (1979), Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988), The Origin of Satan (1995), Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (2003), Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (2007), and Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation (2012).
More Elaine Pagels on Wikipedia.When Jews talked about external enemies,they talked about them as if they were monsters.
He's an intimate betrayer. That's what's so troubling. Judas turned in his own teacher.
Whether or not one agrees with it, or finds it interesting or reprehensible, it's an enormously interesting perspective on it that some follower of Jesus in the early Christian movement obviously thought was significant.
The Gospel of Judas is a real surprise. It pictures Judas ..not as the worst villain in the history of the world as he's been thought of in Christian tradition..but as the one disciple whom Jesus entrusts with secret understanding.
These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion.
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