A New Gospel?

Actually not. The latest religious to-do in Christianity is the publication of "The Gospel According to Judas," which proposes the argument that Jesus approached his "betrayer" and asked him to help Him become a martyr. Traditionally, of course, Judas has been portrayed as the fellow who is the root cause for Jesus' death. This has presented something of a problem from a religious stand point. Jesus has to die in order to redeem his followers. But the person who facilitates his death is seen as the purist form of evil. Logically, this implies that Jesus doesn't have to die, in which case his religious mission would have been a failure. Thus His martyrdom falls under the heading of "Christian Mystery," an inexplicable act.

The real issue the latest publication of one of the books formerly known as "The Gnostic Gospels" is that of "free will" versus "determinism*." If Jesus has to request Judas's assistance, then the sacrifice becomes a matter of free will.

Christianity has always walked a tight rope on the questions surrounding issues of free will and determinism, and that tight rope exists in almost all areas of our lives, including biology. Think about "genes vs. environment."

Ah, yes, then there are the issues of the millenia of anti-Semiticsm.

*de·ter·min·ism: The philosophical doctrine that every event, act, and decision is the inevitable consequence of antecedents that are independent of the human will.