The Gospel of Judas premiered one month ahead of The Da Vinci Code on the National Geographic Channel last Sunday. Everyday on the way to work this week, the pre-recorded voice of the Class 95 DJ (quite possibly following a standard trailer script of NGM used around the world) invited viewers to tune in the NG programme on cable "to understand the gospel like it never was understood before" and to discover "how the most hated man in history in fact knew more about the truth than anyone else". At church, fellow JFNers talked hushedly about it. "eh, have you heard?" and at one work luncheon, an articulate fellow member of the profession alluded knowingly to "the suppression of information for political means".
Being a minimum subscriber of Starhub Max Online, and having been brought up in a Hakka household to watch almost no TV, I am a happy survivor of Mediacorp TV, and do not have an SCV subscription for the Treehouse. So I missed both the premiere of the Judas story and the repeat telecast on NGC. However, there were enough second hand witness accounts to give one an idea of what went on during the programme. MOWL, on Thursday evening, gave us cable-less folks a particularly useful account of the program, including the casting of the characters. While Jesus was given the due and respectful glowing aura, Judas was clearly a cut above the rest of the disciples, looking smart and clean shaven beside the rather unkempt and bumbling Peter (poor dear Peter, always an easy target for this sort of thing!). One can imagine how entirely plausible it must have looked on reel for Jesus to pick Judas out from the band of twelve as the only one to whom the "mysteries of the kingdom" would be revealed. One was originally hoping that NG would perhaps have refrained from using these techniques - I have always had much respect for the magazine for being a "BBC" rather than a "CNN" of educational TV, i.e. choosing understatement over sensationalism. But I suppose the imminent Da Vinci blockbuster (expected to be the biggest of ALL TIME) is hard to ignore - NGM may not be able to get Tom Hanks to appear on the show, but it did pay a handsome sum for the text of the Gospel of Judas, and so there are bottomlines to consider, I am sure, and the DVDs need to sell reasonably well.
Now, all in all, I have to admit that I can't say that I was too "fazed" by the Gospel of Judas. Perhaps only a little more so than the Da Vinci Code (which read, so obviously from page 1, like a script prepared for Hollywood, that I almost feel sorry for Dan Brown for having to take so much heat from the church). The question of canonicity of the Bible books has always been a somewhat delicate one for this Bible-believer and perhaps others. When something shows up as a "Gospel", it's only natural to ask, oh dear, did we miss this out from "inerrant, infallible and all sufficient Word of God (not tolerable to a BP-molded mind, even a reformed one)? Or more scary, what else did the Fathers miss out and what did they exclude by mistake?
The "fazing" lasted for all of 20 minutes, thanks largely and ironically to the National Geographic Magazine. The TV special aside (which like I mentioned I haven't watched) there really is a lot of balanced and useful information on the NGM website on the document itself. The actual translation, as well the original Coptic manuscripts are all available for viewing on the NGM website (thanks here to the ever curious minded Mystery C., who first examined the primary materials and forwarded them to me). As one blog pastor points out, this is probably the first time that the average person has such direct access to the study of ancient texts. And any Christians who are minded to watch the TV special should read the translation of the "gospel" text before or after. The contrast to the canoncial Gospels is great indeed. Not to take lightly the job of the Church Fathers and various Councils who had to decide on the weighty issues of canonicity, but perhaps it is really not all that impossible to exclude (with or without impunity), a "Gospel" with a protaganist who purportedly said to Jesus "I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you."
The bigger puzzlement left in my mind from this episode (no pun intended!), like I was telling Mystery C. after we had a good guffaw about Barbelo, was why I didn't feel that terribly "worked up" about it (and for that matter, the whole DVC debate), as I would have as new believer or seeker years ago. I do remember those days of going through tomes of apologetic literature (or whatever one could find for free at the NLB or the church library) trying to figure out, with not a little fear and trembling, whether evolutionary creationism or German higher criticism would deal the death blow to my (newfound) faith in the God of the Bible. I figured it might be due to any or all of these (i) being a little more equipped over the years the "test the faith"; (ii) knowing that pure intellectual persuasion or dissuasion alone does not get one to Critical Point anyway; or (iii) [gulp] just being old and convinced like Solomon that "there is nothing new under the sun".
We were, of course, reminded by Pastor Chia last week during his DVC series sermon that as Christians, we ought always be ready to defend the faith against the current sensationalistic theories, and I gather, to be ready to give a reason for our faith. The power of the media is strong indeed - if seeing is believing, and if facts and information can be presented (manipulated) in a way that catches the [increasingly short] attention [span] of modern folks, there is real work that the church needs to do to bring the authentic gospel to the world.
It is indeed a very wonderful thing to come that stage of one's Christian walk where one no longer feels so easily "blown about by every wind" or affected every Holy Grail movie...but dear Lord, let it not be for the lack of diligence or failure of empathy for the sincere seeker, that this commissioned advocate for You stands down at the surrebuttal.
Being a minimum subscriber of Starhub Max Online, and having been brought up in a Hakka household to watch almost no TV, I am a happy survivor of Mediacorp TV, and do not have an SCV subscription for the Treehouse. So I missed both the premiere of the Judas story and the repeat telecast on NGC. However, there were enough second hand witness accounts to give one an idea of what went on during the programme. MOWL, on Thursday evening, gave us cable-less folks a particularly useful account of the program, including the casting of the characters. While Jesus was given the due and respectful glowing aura, Judas was clearly a cut above the rest of the disciples, looking smart and clean shaven beside the rather unkempt and bumbling Peter (poor dear Peter, always an easy target for this sort of thing!). One can imagine how entirely plausible it must have looked on reel for Jesus to pick Judas out from the band of twelve as the only one to whom the "mysteries of the kingdom" would be revealed. One was originally hoping that NG would perhaps have refrained from using these techniques - I have always had much respect for the magazine for being a "BBC" rather than a "CNN" of educational TV, i.e. choosing understatement over sensationalism. But I suppose the imminent Da Vinci blockbuster (expected to be the biggest of ALL TIME) is hard to ignore - NGM may not be able to get Tom Hanks to appear on the show, but it did pay a handsome sum for the text of the Gospel of Judas, and so there are bottomlines to consider, I am sure, and the DVDs need to sell reasonably well.
Now, all in all, I have to admit that I can't say that I was too "fazed" by the Gospel of Judas. Perhaps only a little more so than the Da Vinci Code (which read, so obviously from page 1, like a script prepared for Hollywood, that I almost feel sorry for Dan Brown for having to take so much heat from the church). The question of canonicity of the Bible books has always been a somewhat delicate one for this Bible-believer and perhaps others. When something shows up as a "Gospel", it's only natural to ask, oh dear, did we miss this out from "inerrant, infallible and all sufficient Word of God (not tolerable to a BP-molded mind, even a reformed one)? Or more scary, what else did the Fathers miss out and what did they exclude by mistake?
The "fazing" lasted for all of 20 minutes, thanks largely and ironically to the National Geographic Magazine. The TV special aside (which like I mentioned I haven't watched) there really is a lot of balanced and useful information on the NGM website on the document itself. The actual translation, as well the original Coptic manuscripts are all available for viewing on the NGM website (thanks here to the ever curious minded Mystery C., who first examined the primary materials and forwarded them to me). As one blog pastor points out, this is probably the first time that the average person has such direct access to the study of ancient texts. And any Christians who are minded to watch the TV special should read the translation of the "gospel" text before or after. The contrast to the canoncial Gospels is great indeed. Not to take lightly the job of the Church Fathers and various Councils who had to decide on the weighty issues of canonicity, but perhaps it is really not all that impossible to exclude (with or without impunity), a "Gospel" with a protaganist who purportedly said to Jesus "I know who you are and where you have come from. You are from the immortal realm of Barbelo. And I am not worthy to utter the name of the one who has sent you."
The bigger puzzlement left in my mind from this episode (no pun intended!), like I was telling Mystery C. after we had a good guffaw about Barbelo, was why I didn't feel that terribly "worked up" about it (and for that matter, the whole DVC debate), as I would have as new believer or seeker years ago. I do remember those days of going through tomes of apologetic literature (or whatever one could find for free at the NLB or the church library) trying to figure out, with not a little fear and trembling, whether evolutionary creationism or German higher criticism would deal the death blow to my (newfound) faith in the God of the Bible. I figured it might be due to any or all of these (i) being a little more equipped over the years the "test the faith"; (ii) knowing that pure intellectual persuasion or dissuasion alone does not get one to Critical Point anyway; or (iii) [gulp] just being old and convinced like Solomon that "there is nothing new under the sun".
We were, of course, reminded by Pastor Chia last week during his DVC series sermon that as Christians, we ought always be ready to defend the faith against the current sensationalistic theories, and I gather, to be ready to give a reason for our faith. The power of the media is strong indeed - if seeing is believing, and if facts and information can be presented (manipulated) in a way that catches the [increasingly short] attention [span] of modern folks, there is real work that the church needs to do to bring the authentic gospel to the world.
It is indeed a very wonderful thing to come that stage of one's Christian walk where one no longer feels so easily "blown about by every wind" or affected every Holy Grail movie...but dear Lord, let it not be for the lack of diligence or failure of empathy for the sincere seeker, that this commissioned advocate for You stands down at the surrebuttal.
