Philosophy Judas Iscariot, betrayer, or not?

By my rational thinking:

In the beginning, there was the Old Testament. The Christ had known and learned from the Old Testament. Then, the Christ made his own journey. The Apostles, who followed Christ, learned and carried on the Christ’s teachings. Could we really assume that their successors were also “inspired” by only God? That is, during the time of the Christ, there was not a church that taught his teachings. Some time after the Christ’s death, we assume that the Apostles began a church. What had become of this Church after the Apostles’ deaths? Surely, their successors could not have seen or learned what they had seen or observed during Christ’s time. Somewhere and somehow after the deaths of the Apostles, the New Testament seems to be organized. I would reason that it was the origin of the New Testament, and I would reason that some meanings or writings of the Apostles were lost after their deaths. Their successors (or church) had to assemble and made sense of what they had of the Apostles’ writings. I would reason, then, that the text about Judas that we have found now was not available to those successors to take into account in the construction of the original Bible. Then, these successors tried to make sense of the available writings of the Apostles by supposing that Judas was the betrayer, because it is rational to believe/think that Judas was a betrayer when they had not known about this other text that was missing; so, the gap was filled with such a rationalization. Unfortunately, latter revisions/editions of that Bible seem to carry on that history through translations and interpretations. Fortunately, this unknown missing link/text about Judas was found. Therefore, we ought to wonder if there were other rationalizations made by those successors. The issue is still about what little we have known about the original Bible. We might trace a translation history of the Bible, but was the original Bible in Greek or some other language? Yet, does this not make us wonder about our “modern” version of the Bible? This question ponders about rationalizations/assumptions and translations/interpretations made by the chain of successors. :sweat2:

 

Interesting chain of thoughts, but there's an assumption that you have: That the teachings of the apostles were transmitted exclusively by writing, and not by teaching / training their successors.

A thought comes to my mind: The kung fu "masters" who train a successor (grasshopper) and teach him everything he needs to know, but also they confer him the responsibility to teach the next generation, and so on.

Catholics like me believe in something called "apostolic succession", it means that the apostles left successors and taught them everything they needed to know, and these successors taught the next generation, and so on, making sure that no error or misinterpretation was made.

 

And yet, everyone has their own will, and their own thoughts. Different people will take different knowledge from the same teachings. They would take away their own impression, and pass that impression onto the next, who would further change the message via his own beliefs and pass it on to others. People aren't computers, to be sure- you can't just insert knowledge into one of us and have it immutably retained as it was entered.

And then, who's to say that some of the successors along the way wouldn't have changed the writing on purpose, with whatever intent they could possibly have? People can have other motivations than following god, and that remains true for everyone, does it not?

Actually, if you've ever played the Telephone game, it's a lot like that. You start with one message, but by the end it may have been changed, deliberately or no, and usually by the end of the game the new message does not resemble the old in any way.

 

This is where the writings come to play. The flaw in the telephone game is that only one person carries the message. In a structured church, there are many people in parallel transmitting the message, creating the redundancy needed for accuracy - those that deviate from the original are excommunicated.

(If I recall correctly there are many copies of the gospel of Matthew, so it's reasonable to think that there's no corruption in it)

A practical example of this is peer to peer traffic, where corrupted packets are flagged and their origin IP's are banned.

 

And yet, what do you make of this text about Judas? :sweat:

Doesn't this text demand our attention and concern? Should we ignore it?

The Bible, writings of a history/tradition/culture, seems to be a primary means of transmitting information from people to people. People usually learn from and make interpretations of writings. Also, people tend to reason or make sense by inferring and speculating on more poetic/ponderous writings, as in an ealier version of the Bible (considering the difference in writings between earlier versions, the King James' Bible, and the Good News Bible). How else could the Apostles train or teach the Christ's teachings if not through written/spoken accounts? Yet, written/spoken accounts could change with society's development [ in accordance with ] people's wants/needs. Since the Bible depends on peoples' readings of it, Bible interpretations/teachings are subject to change and diversity (considering the many branches/impressions of Christianity, i.e., Protestants and Catholics).

The issue with consensus copies of any Apostle's/Gospel's account is whether the copies are accurate and true to the original. Then, we ought to wonder whether the original is still available for us to examine...Yet, isn't the text about Judas original?

 

Well, it depends. According to the scholars the text is of gnostic origin. Gnosticism isn't compatible with mainstream christianity, so it depends (keep in mind that the "gospel" of Judas wasn't the only book found, there were many other gnostic scrolls with it). As a catholic christian, I don't believe a word of what it says (note: I'm not saying it was forged - i'm just saying it was written by the gnostics, who obviously had an agenda)

 

Clearly, the Apostles also had an agenda/purpose in spreading the Christ’s teachings. An issue, which arises, is whether a rational person should follow the mainstream/popular translations or consider the Gnostic writings. If Gnosticism is incompatible with mainstream Christianity, then either one of them is the true/accurate or both are not entirely true/accurate; surely, at least one of them must be inaccurate/untrue. With our limited knowledge and capacity to err in reading interpretations/translations, how would we determine the correct one? Should we without doubt submit our hearts and minds to the supposed Apostles’ successors, the “modern” Church? Where would we find an impartial authority to confer on this matter? In Christianity, what/who is really the true authority, the Church or the Scriptures? If there is no definite solution to this question, the truth of the text about Judas seems to be undecided. Thus, no matter how ardent we are as religious persons, we ought to consider/give attention to the text, because we are not ignorant of the agenda/purpose behind religion itself.

 

Um yes, but I think the most controversy about this is whether christianity is "wrong" or not, and if the existence of the "gospel" of Judas is enough to discredit the entire christian teachings.

 

Even if the text is true, loyal believers will surely find a way to (perhaps indirectly) deny it; they will succeed to preserve their religion’s popular/mainstream form, once they appeal to the inexplicable faith they have in their religion. Perhaps there can be another reformation in editing/reinterpreting the Bible. If the religion has no intrinsic worth/appeal, then its believers can be considered as forgiving customers, who do not care for the past/present mistakes or wrongdoings of the Church/Scriptures and justify and maintain the religion as is. The most controversial issue here seems to be whether believers of the religion dare [ to ] question/scrutinize their religion or just jump onto the bandwagon that religion provides a supposed extrinsic appeal, namely, a better place in heaven. The immortality of faith can be observed sometimes in the ignorance of the believers; a consequence of such confusion is the branching of Christianity. The issue is disagreements about where the truth/authority is. By rationality, we ought to be open-minded about our acquisition of knowledge. We cannot reasonably ignore the text’s every word. Another issue is that whether we believe in our rational/reasonable selves, not our faithful/loyal selves. I find [ that ] rationality is more open and beautiful than faith alone.

 

Yes, but you can't deny faith for rationality alone, after all, isn't FAITH what religion is about? I mean, christians believe that the Bible is inspired by God (I won't go into details of WHY we believe this). The "gospel of Judas" isn't a scientific book (and not even a certified eye-witness account), it's a RELIGIOUS book. The moment you put faith in the equation you're assumming that there is something that cannot be proven by evidence alone.

 

That faith which is found in religion/beliefs is a lack of rationality; some claim that no logical/scientific proof can explain this faith. The text about Judas seems to give an account of a moment in the Christ’s history/life. Perhaps it is not so religious in that sense, because it does not seem to demand the reader to have faith in it. The Scriptures require the reader’s faith in the Christ’s miracles and God. Since the Christ’s mysterious accomplishments and God, the mysterious existence, cannot be explained entirely by science/rationality, faith in them is requested. Of course, it is the reader’s decision whether to have such faith in them. However, still, how does this reader justify or support his or her faith? (Surely, there must be at least one reason to hold onto faith.)

Indubitably, a person without such faith would rely on his or her rationality for justifying not having such faith. Rationality in this way precedes faith; that is, to the typical human being, faith is a result/consequence of reasoning. Thus, a way of justification by rationality brings about the notion of faith; that is, rationality causes faith itself to come into being. In other words, rationality does not explain/describe faith, but it is the reason/motivation behind faith. Rationality is but a given/inborn process of any typical/reasonable person.

 

I disagree with this bit (maybe I misunderstood), but I agree with the rest.

There are two kinds of faith: Reasoned Faith (which you can see in Aquina's Summa Theologica) and Blind Faith. Blind faith is the one which is blind to facts, history, reasoning or science. Like "faith healing", where people believe they're healed even if the doctors say the opposite, or creationism which says that God created the world in 6 days and that evolution is false (fossils must be a creation of the devil or something). Against blind faith there have been parodies like http://www.venganza.org which is a mock religion of a "flying spaghetti monster" that seeks recognition in schools just as Intelligent Design does.

To put it in other words, reasoned faith goes BEYOND science. It explains things that science cannot. Blind faith can go AGAINST science, which is
a very different (and wrong) thing. You can read all about it in Pope John Paul II's encyclica: "Fides et Ratio" (Faith and Reason), which is available on the web (google for it).

 

Faith, by itself or in itself, cannot be entirely explained by reasoning/science. Faith seems to be quite a mysterious thing. Perhaps a better observation of faith can be found in some psychology. Faith may be some sort of psychological tendency/habit/need.

If we are in agreement with rationality being one of the basic characteristics of typical/reasonable persons, then we ought to find that reasoning/rationality also takes place in “faith healing.” Just ask why some people believe in “faith healing.” There is at least one rationalization behind such a belief. For instance, if they find comfort/peace in having such a belief in “faith healing,” they will defend their belief dogmatically. Yet, in such a defense, they partake in a process of rationality. Thus, we may find that there is no such thing as “blind faith,” because there is some reasoning for faith; then, there may only be “reasoned faith” in that manner. These persons of faith may justify their belief in creationism through adopting a metaphoric/figurative stance towards interpreting of the words of the Bible/Gnostic text; they maintain/stick with an implicit understanding/intention of the Word. Here, all faith remains to be reasoned; that is, when observing faith at a closer point of view, all faith is [ a ] consequence of rationalization/reasoning.

Perhaps faith, in its essence, cannot be ascertained through science, but, so far, reasoning seems to be its guide. I wonder if faith is ever really beyond science, because faith can be observed through science/psychological study and it is still an elusive thing to grasp; and, what does faith really explain? :anime:

 

Yeah, very interesting thought.

Okay, I think I said all I had to say. See ya