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 581
THE EPISTLE JUDE, IRENAEUS, GOSPEL
OF AND THE OF
Surely this is the most sensible means of handling the im-
pending “logical deadlockâ€. Perhaps we could simply conclude that
the Cainites were unable or not prepared to see the inconsistency be-
tween their own view and the moral tenor of the Judas gospel; that
might indeed have been one among varied weaknesses in a move-
ment that could not last. This relates to another possibility, which is
that they read the Gospel of Judas selectively, or with their own
ends so in view, so that when it mentions visions (especially one ex-
perienced by Jesus’ disciples at 4,5-17) it had in mind the coming of
a people (themselves, and quite different from the ordinary, con-
temptible 75 Christians) who would readily perform heinous deeds —
against Adonai or whoever the Judas gospel identified as the erring
creator. Such an ancient exegesis is imaginable, if still leaving spe-
cial quandries in its wake 76. This approach might link Judas’ role as
the “human sacrificer†of Jesus (15,4) to the disciples’ disturbing
vision of the altar sacrificers (4,5.6.10; 5,1); and one could read the
summary statement about the workers of anomia as “stars which
bring everything to completion†(5.14 within 5,1-13) as referring to
the necessary cosmic workers of disobedience at the Last Days. But
this last alternative proposal would mean that we are reconstructing
Cainitism as propagating such heights of scandal as to be socially
unworkable, or a sociological absurdity too incredible for most
scholars to believe ever existed 77.
The University of Sydney Garry W. TROMPF
A20 John Woolley Bldg,
N421 Sydney, Australia
See 2,3-13; 3,6, yet cf. 9,3.
75
E.g., how does one imagine the Cainites handling Jesus’ denigration of
76
the priestly sacrificers who perform their actions wrongly but in his name, at
4,18-21? By presenting Jesus as misguided? or resolving the problem by accen-
tuating their hero Judas as the ‘human sacrificer’ of Jesus himself (at 15,4)? so
that “the great race of Adam†would be “exalted†(15,12)? The possibilities of
reconstructing a Cainite reading are there, but involve our lively imagination of
rationalization, a difficult methodological procedure.
There is of course an old view (by Pierre Bayle and entertained by J.L.
77
Mosheim) that Cainites and other such Libertine groups did not exist; but they
were brought to serious scholarly attention by W. BAUER, Orthodoxy and Here-
sy in Earliest Christianity (1934) (London, 1972) esp. Appendix. A.