Garry W. Trompf, «The Epistle of Jude, Irenaeus, and the Gospel of Judas», Vol. 91 (2010) 555-582
A detailed case that the New Testament Epistle of Jude was written against the socalled Cainite sectaries, who were in possession of a Gospel of Judas as Irenaeus attests is presented here. Because the names Judas and Jude were the same, the good name of Iouda, especially as being that of a relative to Jesus, needed clearing, and subversive teachings — making Cain, Judas and other Biblical figures worthy opponents of the (Old Testament) god — had to be combatted. Since a Gospel of Judas has come to light, within the newly published Tchacos Codex, one is challenged to decide whether this was the gospel appealed to by the Cainites, and, if it was, to begin to grasp how they read a text which did not readily match their interests.
JUDAS 567
THE EPISTLE JUDE, IRENAEUS, GOSPEL
OF AND THE OF
redeemed from oblivion by a divine act. The latter idea we are fa-
miliar with from the Marcionites, who purportedly held that Christ,
upon descending into Hades, redeemed “Cain and those like him,
the Sodomites, the Egyptians (cf. Exod 1,11–18,10) and those like
them, and in general all the peoples who have walked in every pat-
tern of wickedness†35. But the first view, positing some kind of seed
and/or emanation, is suspiciously older, and a greater sense of a
Cain-Judas ‘spiritual lineage’ among the Cainites is preserved in
pseudo-Tertullian, as a line of those people who avoided “inferior
truth †(Adv. Omn. Haer. [xxxiii], 2). Its temporal primacy, indeed,
best explains the Sethian Gnostic appeal to Adam’s third son Seth
as the crucial connection with heaven (Gen 5,3-4.6-8; Wis 49,16;
Luke 3,38; cf. 1 Enoch 37,1; Jub 22,12 ; ApMos 35–42) in reaction
to the incongruity of the Cainites’ views. The above Marcionite
interpretation of Christ’s descent into Hades, moreover, is best taken
as a piece of theological finesse for grounding the rationale of oppo-
sition to the dispensable Old Testament deity, not as an excuse for
active libertism associated with the Cainites and other antinomian
groups 36.
The second clue, in the Latin version of Irenaeus only (and just
before the Judae Evangelium deserves a mention), lies in the Cai-
nite teaching that through Judas’ accomplishing of the mysterium of
betraying Jesus “all things both earthly and heavenly were thrown
into confusion†(et terrena et coelestia omnia dissolute — Adv.
Haer., I, xxxv, 9). That thought, as we shall see, bears a definite
point of contact between Judas associated with the Gospel in his
name in Irenaeus and Judas of the Tchacos Judas Gospel; but, aside
from Irenaeus’ brief reference to Sophia, this is the only evidence in
Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., I, xxxii, 2. Note how the Gnostic Mandaeans saw
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their ancestors as being on the side of the Egyptians at the Exodus, in Haran
Gawaita, DC 9/36 (Rome 1953) 1-8, where the ‘true children of Light’ (those
from the true seed of Seth and Shem or Sam and thus being Mandaeans) are
among those unfortunately killed with Pharoah’s soldiers trying to stop Moses
and Israel’s Exodus.
Pace J.D. TURNER, “Sethian Gnosticism: A Literary Historyâ€, Nag Ham-
36
madi (eds. HEDRICK – HODGSON), chap. 3 (on Sethian primal history); von
Harnack, Marcion : Das Evangelium von fremden Gott. Eine Monographie zur
Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche (TU 45 ; Leipzig 1924)
chap. 7 ; cf. Adamantius, Dial. de Ver. Fid. Deo, 826a-e (on Marcionite exe-
gesis).