Saturday, April 08, 2006

Gospel of Judas makes it onto Any Questions

I'll echo other bibliobloggers who have linked to the latest exciting news and publications on the Gospel of Judas in due course -- I've been very busy at work and play over the last week -- but this is just a quick mention that the Gospel of Judas even made it yesterday (I'm listening to the Saturday repeat while doing the housework) of Any Questions? on Radio 4. You always know when a NT / early Christianity story is big when questions find their way onto Any Questions?. You can listen to it streamed here, the question on Judas occurring about 25 minutes in (no download / podcast yet available for this programme). The encouraging thing was that the panel was well informed, and that the message clearly is getting through, that the Gospel is of great interest for the study of early Christianity, but sheds no light on the historical Jesus or the historical Judas. One of the panelists, John Selwyn Gummer, said that to treat it seriously as a source for the historical Judas would be like his writing now and claiming to be an eye-witness of the death of William of Orange, an enjoyable analogy, though not as good as Simon Gathercole's comment on Queen Victoria's CD collection.

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