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 577
THE EPISTLE JUDE, IRENAEUS, GOSPEL
OF AND THE OF
Intriguingly. the Gospel ascribes to Michael the divinely
appointed role of giving spirits to people “as a loanâ€; and appar-
ently being made secondary to Gabriel, Michael gives them the op-
portunity to find their true home in the true God (13,12-13). This
home is not with the Lord (or Adonai) recognized by ordinary
Christians and thus Michael does not act in a role according to the
principle of continuity between the Jewish sacred inheritance and
the young Christians so testily uphheld by Jude, in his irritation
over the misrepresentation of Michael’s sacred function. Moreover,
although the stars (of the zodiac) are low-ranking celestially, and
vulnerable to cosmic change and “error†(14,14; cf. Copt. teplane ¯
nnsiou), Judas in the Gospel of his name is enjoined to look to
his star as a way of escape from being terrestrial (15,16), an aspect
of Cainite belief never mentioned by the heresiologists. This is
however an outlook cunningly and sarcastically referred to in Jude
(v. 13), when the subverters are painted as “wandering starsâ€
(asteres planetai) in a false cosmos that is already totally dis-
¯
lodged and removed from light (12-13); and it is surely worth
attention that in our Tchacos gospel Jesus warns Judas not to let
his star wander (apeksiou pla[na] mmok), with what could be a
catch-phrase (9,15) 65. Whatever these points of ‘ideational equiv-
alence’ may be, they are of little weight in our argument if the
messages of Cainites and the Judas Gospel do not really match;
and we must face up to problems of real differences as we
approach a conclusion.
VI. How the Cainites might have used the Gospel of Judas
It should be noted that the Gospel of Judas is hardly a libertine
text. On the contrary, its writer takes the “moral high ground†vis-
à -vis “ ordinary (orthodox) Christiansâ€, by accusing them, in Jesus’
On this reading, such a phrase could have been an antinomian general
65
formula for deviating from fixed order, already in use among the Cainites. I am
not suggesting Jude quotes from the Gospel of Judas (although here is the only
discernible possibility of this that we have), but that the Cainites found this ele-
ment in the gospel to suit their Weltanschauung. For stars as angels, note Wis
4 3 , 9 ; 1 E n o c h 86,1.3; Sibyll. Orac., 5,514; Basileides, apud Irenaeus,
Adv. Haer. I, xxiv, 7, etc.