Superstar and the lost Gospel of Judas -- Jesus Christ Superstar (5 of 5; Episode 28) Artwork

Theater History and Mysteries

I take a musical theater production and do a deep dive to find a richer understanding about the lessons the show has for theater and life. And, I’ll never miss an opportunity to pursue any mystery, bizarre coincidence, improbable event, or supernatural suggestion along the way because, in the words of Dirk Gentley, it is all connected.

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Music by Jon Bruschke and Andrew Howat, arranged, performed, and recorded by Andrew Howat.

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Theater History and Mysteries

Superstar and the lost Gospel of Judas -- Jesus Christ Superstar (5 of 5; Episode 28)

November 04, 2025 • Dr. Jon Bruschke, PhD • Season 1 • Episode 28

It is the 4th century AD…Jesus has been dead for at least 300 years but the stories and ideas about him have not. After having been persecuted for decades, and fed to lions in the Coliseum, the Christians are now becoming the dominant religion under the new emperor Constantine. But they aren’t the only Christians, and they aren’t the only ones with ideas about who Jesus was, and who Judas was. They are becoming the institution that would later start the inquisition, and torture and suppress every other form of thought.

We aren’t there yet, but non-catholic ideas about Jesus are being actively suppressed.

In upper Egypt, on the west banks of the Nile, there is a true believer in Gnosticism. The gnostics have their own writings, their own theology, and even their own gospels. And one of those Gospels is the gospel according to Judas. And books like this are exactly the sort that Rome is seeking out to destroy.

To protect these ideas, these books, and this knowledge, the gnostic believer takes his manuscripts, stores them in a clay container, and hides them away in a cave. There they will sit for 15 centuries and when they are final discovered in the 1980s, and finally published in 2006, they will have the exact same approach to understanding the crucifixion that the musical JCS superstar launched only decades earlier. What are we to make of that? Let’s excavate together on this episode of THM.

[Footnotes in episode 24]

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It is the 4th century AD. Jesus has been dead for 300 years at least, but the stories and ideas about him have not died and having been persecuted for decades and fed to lions in the Coliseum, the Christians are now becoming the dominant religion under the new emperor Constantine.

But they aren't the only Christians, and they aren't the only ones with ideas about who Jesus was and who Judas.

They are becoming the institution that would later start the Inquisition and torture and suppress every other form of religious thought. We aren't there yet, but non Catholic ideas about Jesus are being actively suppressed in Upper Egypt on the West banks of the Nile. There is a true believer in Gnosticism.

The Gnostics have their own writings, their own theology, and even their own gospels, and one of those gospels is the gospel according to Judas and books like this are exactly the sort that Rome is seeking to destroy.

To protect these ideas, these books and this knowledge, the gnostic believer takes his manuscripts, stores them in a clay container, and hides them away in a cave. There they will sit for 15 centuries, and when they are finally discovered in the 1980s and finally published in 2006, they will have.

The exact same approach to understanding the crucifixion that the musical of Jesus Christ Superstar launched only decades earlier. What are we to make of that? Let's excavate together on this episode of theater.

History and mysteries.

I'm Jon Bruschke and you are listening to theater history and mysteries where I take out musical theater production, go into a deep dive on the questions it raises and the answers it provides. I hope that this approach will have a deeper understanding about the lessons that the musical has for theater and for life. And I will never miss an opportunity to pursue.

Any mystery? Bizarre, coincidence, improbable event or supernatural suggestions along?

The way because.

In the words of Dirk gently, it is all.

All right, so this is me reaching out in an unscripted way just to ask you for whatever help you can spare. It is my delight, my true joy, to put these episodes together. I honestly just enjoy learning about these things that I'm researching as I turn them into podcasts. But it is much more gratifying when there are people listening to what you're producing.

And we are doing pretty well. We're going to make another map.

Push. But if you're enjoying this podcast and you can spare me 5 minutes just going ahead and giving it a rating is great. Taking your favorite episode and putting it on your social media where others might see it or specifically pointing it out to a friend. Those would be great. I know all podcasters say this, but that's cause it works and if you could help me out that would be terrific. There's also a main.

E-mail that is sitting there on the web page that you can find on bus route. So if you can drop me a line even just know that you're listening or.

If you have no idea or.

Request. I would love to hear from you. It is like I said, just a lot of fun to hear how people are reacting to the show. All right, let us dive into Jesus Christ Superstar and the Lost Gospel of Judas and see how those fit together. Let us start by recapping what we already know. Jesus was born.

In one CE, one of the common era and that one is famous, the entire calendar is off by one year because the guy who originally put together in person calendar did not count year zero to 1. It just starts in year 1.

And anyway, that's when Jesus is born, and that is pretty much a historical fact. Time passes. He develops a following. He has a ministry that is somewhere between one and three years long, depending on who you read. And he definitely also has a core group called Disciples. There were twelve of them. Now, who was 12? Who were is.

Not entirely clear. The lists don't always match, but all of them put down that there is 12, so we know for sure Jesus has a ministry. He gets some followers, he's got 12 of his core inner group and we know that he was crucified and everybody raised on those sacks.

Those are pretty much the things that we can say for sure happened. Jesus is not dead, but there is a guy named Paul who is very much not. He once persecuted Christians. He has a version famously and converts to Christianity and becomes a major missionary. He is one of the leaders of the new church and the new Jesus movement and tries actively to convert.

People to the Christian cause.

To do this, he writes a simple epistles rather to many different churches, and these are actually the earliest writings of what we now call the New Testament, and they are starting sometime after Jesus dies and before about 70 of the CE system in their first generation after the death of Jesus.

That is when Paul is writing these epics.

Now the Gospels, the kind of narrative accounts of life of Jesus and his ministry. They arrive in about 70 of the common area. The very first one is Mark. It's pretty sparse. John is the last one, and it is much more elaborate. And there is actually Mark, Matthew and Luke. And then if you stick accent, then there those are the first four and they.

All pretty much tell.

Mostly the same story, some of them almost word for word, but they elaborate in some of them the the later the version you get the more details are in there and it it's not always entirely consistent, but the last one is kind of John that ends by.

At least 150 CE, maybe earlier. So the last gospel comes out about somewhere between 100 and.

During this time, as these gospels are coming out, there are many contestants for the mantle of Christianity. Jesus is not around anymore, but his ideas are going to live on. There's going to be a church founded around him that's going to be one of the most.

Successful of all time.

And there at least four different groups that are all in believing that they have the right version of who Jesus was. There is the Jerusalem Church. That's where those original disciples were. That's where Peter famously stays. There are the Gnostics, and they have, as we will discuss in a moment, a totally different origin story for.

How the universe is created and who God is and what heaven looks like, who angels are, what angels are, they've got a completely different origin story, so they have a very different understanding of who Jesus is than anybody else.

There are the Jews, of course. Jesus was Jewish. So were all the disciples. So were the high priests who turned him over to the Romans. But Jesus was called the king of the Jews. And so the Jews and the Jews who follow Jesus are definitely one of the groups that has a claim to the heritage of Jesus and his legacy. And then finally there is Paul.

And he kind of hangs out closer to Rome and not in Jerusalem, but is definitely founding churches and definitely influencing.

The beliefs that will come to define Christianity and come to become part of that big part of that New Testament.

OK, so there are different people, different groups that are vying for it and they have a very different interpretation of what's going on now here I'm going to quote, I am Maccabee. He is from founder of Jewish Studies at Leeds University. He was also active during World War 2 as a code breaker has written a very influential book on Judas in the way that he's perceived you can find.

Footnotes for him and everybody else way back in that first episode and transcript for that, I just refer to some of that work now. But if we want to look up the exact titles of the books and whatnot, you can easily find them.

Right here is what Maccabee has to say about how the Jesus story developed over time. He says that up until about 50 CE, there is no record that Jesus was betrayed by anyone. He was definitely crucified by the Romans. But did somebody betray him? There is no record of that. It doesn't say he was not betrayed.

But doesn't say.

That he was and you know the.

Absence there is probably meaningful.

And then up until the book of John, which is like 100 common era, so a generation or two after Jesus has passed, there's not even a clear claim that he is divine. And so we can line up the contestants on that divinity claim is Jesus, the God? Is he human? Is he both?

We can line up the different contestants for Christianity, kind of on that dimension.

Though for the Jews in the Church of Jerusalem, they think he's a king, but he's not necessarily the Brian Solomon Solomon was king. David was a king of the Jews. They keep building the temple in Jerusalem and hostile forces keep defeating them and tearing them down. But as far as the Jews in Jerusalem are concerned, and some early adherents that come from the disciples, Jesus is just a mortal king.

He's not necessarily divine, but he is trying to deliver salvation from those who would oppress God's chosen people, Jews, and at that time, it's their romance.

And that that is who they think Jesus is and his legacy should be true to that. There's also in that group there are some references to Jesus having a biological family, in particular, even in the canonical New Testament, he has some refer to him as having a biological brother named James, who they were and exactly how they related to Jesus. And his ministry is.

Unclear and covered by a lot of commentary that is not in the Bible, but that's sort of where the Church of Jerusalem is coming from. There's where, you know, if you believe Jesus was just a guy and he had a family and you know, well, not just a guy, but, you know, a guy capable of leading the Jewish.

People he might be a biological guy. He might have biological family and he might hang out with them as much as he's hanging around with the divine disciples. So at the Far Jesus is human, and if things are the Jews and the Church of Jerusalem at the middle part, there is Paul who thinks that he's divine and that's necessary for Paul because.

Paul never met Jesus and the people who were from Jerusalem had. And so Paul needs to explain why is it that when he disagrees with the Jerusalem Church where I listen to Paul while Paul says one over to to Damascus and I have this.

And thee, Jesus, now risen. Heaven comes to me and tells me what the real scoop is. And he told him that to me night you guys in Jerusalem. And that's why I've got scoop on who this guy really is and what a religion ought to be. So for Paul, Jesus is divine and he has to be divine and he is definitely a son of God. And that's from this.

Pauline conception that the Trinity kind of emerges. There is the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost, and the are they different are the same. Are they all equally defined? Is it a divine mystery that is?

Kind of the middle Rd. that.

Jesus definitely has a divine component and then on the other far end, when as far you can get from Jesus being human are the Gnostics who are way more spiritual even than Paulus and it gets a little confusing. We're going to review why later, but they definitely believe there is a divine plan. Jesus is a divine being.

Everything that happens, especially during the crucifixion, is part of the divine plan.

All inspired by people who are more than mortal, who are definitely creatures.

All these different groups are writing all of their own stuff.

And that kind of resolves by about 200 CE, where the Paul view prevails, at least in the Christian.

Church for Paul.

There is a war that Jesus goes through. It's definitely a spiritual war. It's not just the Jesus is trying.

To lead a political.

Revolt against Rome Jesus definitely has some conflict. He's tortured by especially his own.

Death. And he, you know, he's got that time in the wilderness and he's like, take this cup from me. I, you know, I've got to do this, but I it's a huge burden to bear. I don't.

Client, but eventually chooses that he will go ahead and sacrifice himself. Moral humanity. And that is all centralizing when Paul's views prevail. Also, an important part of that is the sacrament or that at the final supper. Jesus says this bread is my body. This wine is my blood. Take this in the moments of me that eventually becomes.

Into a big discussion about whether or not when you take that communion, does it literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ?

That's still something that is talked about, but that's an important part of the Church of Paul, and he's reading about it and other people who believe in kind of that legacy and the tradition of Paul are also writing their own stuff.

Now the other things are still around, but most people who are Christian are now Pauline Christians around the.

200 CE's and maybe a little later than that, so there is now a Christian Church. It is mostly following the teachings of Paul, but not exclusively. But all that changes once the church centralizes. So in about 303 to 3:05 there is a Roman emperor named Diocletian, and he persecutes the crap out of the Christians. You know if.

You think of the.

Traditional early Christian murder.

Is getting crucified upside down or fed to lions. He's the guy who's doing it. If there's a bad thing that you can do to people you don't like, Diocletian is doing it and he's doing it to the Christians. But you'll notice that his reign is fairly short at 3:03 to 3:05, so he does a lot of damage in his very short period of time, but he is succeeded by Emperor Constantine.

Rules from 3:05 to 3:37, that's a lot longer. That's like 30 years, not three years. And he converts to Christianity, and he makes it a state religion. So the church.

Which once had many contestants, is now centralized under the Pauline Church and is now the Roman church under Constantine and the late through hundreds. There's an author named Jerome pulls together that 27 books. The New Testament. There's not really a vote or a group, it just kind of gets adopted by common practice. But.

Jerome is the first person to write that, but even then, most of the people recognize that there are other writings out there and they are worthwhile so that Jerome pulls together.

What will eventually?

Become the canonical New Testament. But even at the time it's getting pulled together, no one saying like this is the Bible, and this is only the Bible. Everything else has got to go.

I am going to turn now to David Frankfurter from the University of New Hampshire, writing in about 2007, and his history goes like this and about the one 50s to two hundreds. I'm going to butcher both these names, but there's a writer named Irenaeus and Insidious. Those are two separate writers, and they're insisting that there is a unity to Christianity.

For them, it is important that there is one church and.

There's one Christian.

Beliefs. But Frankfurter says for sure that's not true. It's true that Uranus.

Our ireneus and recipients want there to be and they are writing things that say they are, and in fact they're pulling together a continuous series of popes that make it seem like the church has always been just that one church that goes straight back to Jesus. But that is not actually the case. Thanks David frankfurter. But this is part of the consolidation of the Christian Church.

And it's the one that gets championed now by the people who are in control of the dominant church.

Maccabee believes that although the book of.

Acts says that.

Peter reconciles with Paul that just can't be historically accurate, and so there are some fairly substantial scholars of the Bible who are saying that this account, that there's a single unbroken series of popes that goes from Peter, come straight to the Catholic Church.

That is not what actually happened during that time, but it was a lot more conflict and a lot more different people trying to become the ones that I got followed.

I know that's a lot, especially if you're a traditional Christian and you haven't really thought about it or if you're a Protestant, as I think most of us in the United States are. And you haven't really thought a ton about the early Catholic Church, so.

Quote here Heiman Maccabee, because he can just kind of concisely summarize it for us and that way I don't have to worry.

About screwing up the explanation, McGee says, quote. It was the contention of the Pauline Church following the doctrines of Paul himself, that Jesus had intended to die in the cross all along, that this was his main purpose in descending from above.

The Jerusalem Church, on the other hand, regarded Jesus as a human figure sent by God to the liver. Israel, like Moses and the other saviors of the past. They believed that he had been resurrected not by way of design ascent, but by miracle like Lazarus, and would soon return to complete his human mission.

This fundamental difference between the churches is obscured in the book of acts, which presents an unhistorical scenario of reconciliation between Peter and Paul and which Peter is represented as struggling painfully toward the higher truths advocated by Paul and quote.

That is what Maccabee thinks is going on with those earlier churches. And part of those retellings of Irenaeus and insidious involved putting together a list of popes that rather dubiously starts with Peter, which is what Maccabee is referencing there. And Maccabee just thinks none of that, none that ever happens.

Where there are.

Definitely a Jerusalem faction. That means Jesus as human. Now we don't have to resolve that question is Maccabee, right? Is our neus right. But it does show that there's definitely some consolidation going on that there are different viewpoints and even now people can look back and have different viewpoints, but the church.

It can to make it seem like there's a single.

Unified Christianity and that there always have been.

And so, after this consolidation, the writings that are not in the New Testament, because when Jerome was pulling the Bible together and people were studying it, it was fine to have those other things out there. But now, as the church is consolidating things that are not part of that New Testament are declared to be heretical.

Heretical, I think is probably the actual way that you pronounce that word, but if it ain't in the Bible, it's not in that canonical Bible, then it's a dangerous, bad idea that should be suppressed, which gets us to the burial of the nastic text in question. There are a bunch of writings out there that are called May.

The apocryphal that is, they are contenders for being in the Bible, but they are ultimately not accepted and the church then eventually comes to you. Those apocryphal documents as her radical, especially the Gospels. So in the three hundreds or 4 hundreds and unknown person.

Probably agnostic. Took a bunch of books, put them in a big jar and bury them in some caves, presumably to preserve them and save them from getting destroyed by the church, who had declared them after all.

Michael, this book is eventually discovered and the story of this I'm going to hand over to Gretchen Allen ready in 2021. Now Gretchen Allen is a library conservator. The only thing that gives me greater joy in the world as an occupation than library is the library conservators. But she's sort of a big wig.

And a group of people that get antiquities and preserve them, and it's got a bunch of thoughts about, like, what about those ethical and what do you do if you're getting something?

Someone anyway, she's a library conservator at Maynooth University in County Kildare in Ireland and here is her story about how those books got there. Rediscovered, they're definitely buried in the 300 to 4 hundreds. Here's how they get discovered quote.

The manuscript was looted from the Al Minya province of Egypt at some point in the 1970s, after which it followed A decades long path to the US. In 1984, the codex was abandoned in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, NY. Alright, I'm stepping out of the quote just to say.

Hicksville, NY, like if you were in a movie script and saying this great biblical thing got lost in a place so obscure, I'm going to call it Hicksville NY. You probably spelled it out and say no code, something more believable. Literally. In Hicksville, NY, the name is going is in the safe deposit box. Going back to the quote where it remained undisturbed for 16 years in 2000.

The manuscript was purchased for $300,000 by antiquities dealer Freda Chacos that is spelled TCHACOS, then Freda Tacos Musburger, who took it to academics and experts for identification.

During this period, the manuscript was placed in a freezer which heavily exacerbated damage and led to the extremely fragile condition of ink and substrate.

The manuscript, now known as the Codex Chacos, was formally identified by Yale's Beinecke Library as containing 4 early Christian works. 2 of.

Which the letter of Peter to Philip and the first revelation of James were shortened or varied versions of work previously discovered in the non commodity library. The remaining 2, the book of allowed Jeans that is LOGEN.

ES, That's great.

For the stranger and the Gospel of Judas had never.

Previously been discovered. End Quote and that Gospel of Judas is, as the name suggests, a telling of the crucifixion story from the perspective.

Of Judas and it had never been discovered before. Now there had been references.

Scholars knew that there was a book out there that had been called the Gospel of Judas that had been written by the Gnostics, but nobody had a copy of it, and until it was discovered in the 70s and eventually identified in 2000.

It is finally published, translated into English in 2006, and then there's a bunch of books that have stuff to say about that, of course, but let's just reflect on that timeline.

In no later than late 4 hundreds, a mastic believer hides a book of Judas 1500 years later in 1972, Jesus Christ Superstar opens on Broadway and also tells the crucifixion story from the perspective of Judas. A decade later, the ancient Gnostic text is finally uncovered.

And 1st periods in print in 2006 or just about.

20 years ago. That is absurdly coincidental. It is like the universe is inviting us to compare the two Judas centered stories, the one in Jesus Christ Superstar, and one.

Gospel of Judith. So here we go. Let us compare those two books. What does this ancient gospel of Judas?

Say, well, it's gnostic, but what does that?

Nastic per David Frankfurter of the University of New Hampshire, who we met just a moment ago, points out that this grouping is probably too much to say that these people were Gnostics. It's a pretty loose collection of people, to the point where now some serious scholars have been saying I don't even know the monastics would have seen themselves as agnostic, or they would have identified.

Central unifying thing front side side note of course in Hedwig and the angry inch. Another fantastic musical. Tommy Enosis is one of the protagonists in there that Edward plays off of Jackie's Dee main antagonist in the show, and his Tammy Nosis is of course goes back to agnostic, which of course means knowledge.

But the main thing the Gnostics are focused on is knowledge. The idea is.

That there are core truths out there and you got to find them. And if you can, they will reveal important things. With this knowledge, you can do profound, spiritual and maybe profoundly physical things, but only if you completely devote yourself.

This idea, and only if you can find this elusive.

And divine knowledge. Now, if you're looking for a 20th century analog, I want you to think of.

Physics say you wanted to be a physicist near Albert Einstein or somebody, and the idea is there is knowledge out there and it's in the universe. And if you study hard enough and you are brilliant enough, you can find something about physics that will allow you to make.

Advances in knowledge about the universe that no one has had before that are extremely unusual, and they can have a huge difference on just about everything you know. If you're Albert Einstein and you posit this theory of atoms and their relationship to everything else.

You know Einstein did that in like 1905, and by 1944 we had split atoms to release bombs. That is kind of what the Gnostics thought would happen with their religious ideas. Just substitute physics for religion and I guess I'm doing that to say that these.

Mastic ideas are.

Definitely religious, but they're not all that different from the way that we approach knowledge generally.

All right, now they also have a whole cosmology that goes way beyond the Trinity and the creation myth that you would find in Genesis. They definitely do not believe in.

The Eucharist that.

Is they don't believe in communion and they don't think that Jesus is fully human, but they don't think he's the son of God either. According to Simon gaffer.

People who is an author who talked a bunch about this Gospel of Judas.

Jesus is not the son of God, but an emissary from the Aeon of Barbella who is a female or androgynous deity who's really up there in the gnostic hierarchy. OK, Jesus is not the son of God, OK? What is it? He is an emissary from the Aeon of Barbello and Pro Michael.

Coach and Nash will talk about later. He has a Masters degree from Yale, a PhD from the Claremont.

School of theology.

That the Gnostics, and even the Gospel of Judas in particular, are based on what the Seth Myth where Seth is the spiritual third child of Adam and Eve, and as part of that belief they believe that some but not all humans have souls. This is the same premise as the book Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.

Who also wrote the lust lizard of melancholy.

Holly Cove, in my professional judgment, going super deep into these weeds will take us away from the main concerns here. What did the Gnostics believe? Well, they believe in Anna Barbella, who's an introgen's deity, but not necessarily God. That is based on the Seth Myth where Seth is the spiritual third child of Adam and Eve. Ooh.

If we try to get into the Gnostic theology and their belief in what heaven is, it gets really elaborate and it is really different from Genesis story. It has curious overlaps with contemporary humor writer Christopher.

But it is very important to the Gnostics. It is the secret knowledge that they believe they possess, and it's way less important to the Church of Rome and the Church of Paul, who pretty much get through the creation of the universe in about four verses in the 1st chapter of Genesis. OK, so the Gnostics have this really elaborate theory of heaven.

Who God is and what the spiritual world is like. And if you know, if you were to ask, even a Catholic would say what's the what's the spiritual world like and like? Well, there's God the father and probably Jesus the son there.

Are demons and.

Satan, who are fallen angels, and there are angels and yes.

To get more elaborate than that, probably not. But if you asked agnostic in 400 CE, they would talk here for hours about what heaven was like for sure. And so for them they understand that they know what heaven is like and other people don't. That makes them and and that's that is the backbone of the nasty beliefs, OK.

So that's who the mastics are. What is this lost gospel of Judas about? Well, according to Frank William, who's writing in and to pronounce this wrong? The gillier. That's like vigil, IAE. Christianity.

Christ IANAE. That's a lot of elves in the were in there, but I looked it up and that means Christian watch the Gospel of Judas is a revelation dialogue, and it substitutes what it sees as the inaccurate passion stories in the Roman gospel. So it kind of says, all right, we know what the Gospels are, that those Romans are putting, what they're now calling the New Testament, but they're missing a whole bunch of stuff. So I will rewrite.

The Gospel of Judas to tell you.

What really went happen?

A revelation. Dialogue.

Means Jesus is revealing things to his disciples, doing so by talking to them rather than lecturing. So these aren't parables. This is Jesus talking to his disciples and giving them revelations, telling them what the world is like and what the afterlife is, is like the story is set in that.

8 days prior to the Last Supper referenced in Mark. It does include account of Jesus's ministry, but it's not.

Really a narrative of?

But importantly, Jesus does identify Judas as the disciple who's going to betray him. But in this gospel he's not calling out Judas and saying you wicked man, you're the guy who's gonna betray me. He's commiserating with Judas, and it leans hard into the idea that the crucifixion has to happen and Judas has to play a key role in it.

And that in doing so, he's facilitating a key event he's working with Jesus because he's the best disciple, not the worst. He's helping Jesus.

Get rid of his mortal coil, his physical body.

So that he can return to a pure spiritual form, which is what the Gnostics always want, and that that is a gift. That is the Jesus and Judas working together in this gospel. There is no angst or the any of this. Please take this cup from me thing Jesus gets what's going on and he's totally cool with it. He wants to free his spirit from its born of body. And that's something that he's looking forward to.

In the story, he is constantly challenging the disciples who constantly get embarrassed and can't provide the answers. Judas keeps getting singled out as the top student in the class. Now in the now Nicole Matthew Chapter 24, so the standard New Testament, chapter 24. Jesus talks about how there's going to be a period of persecution.

In the end times, and this is apocalyptic, this is the part of the Bible you've heard, probably in a bunch of horror movies where it says this is where nation will turn its nation. There will be famines, there will be earthquakes. So Jesus has an apocalyptic element to his message shows up strongly in Nancy 24.

In the Gospel of Judas, he's still apocalyptic and revelatory. That's what makes it a revelatory dialogue that is apocalyptic. He's telling the same stories, but he's only telling them to Judas and it's positive people of the spirit will shed the mortar coils as the earth burns and all that pain is only going to be.

To the unenlightened, so to shorten our discussion. It basically takes elements of the Catholic gospel stories, and it retells than the way that is more consistent with the Gnostic beliefs. The general idea is that the Gospels are incomplete and some of the things the gospel.

Girls have portrayed as really good or actually really bad, and in particular it really goes after the Eucharist, that is communion in the Catholic Church. They do not like the Catholic vision of a single creator. They dissociate Jesus completely from the creator. The crucifixion only kills the outer Jesus and in doing so it sets the soul free.

The agnostic viewers that the Catholic leaders are tyrannical and arrogant, but even worse than that, they are ignorant. They do not have the knowledge, the gnosis that the Gnostics have.

And that is all to be put in a negative light. Our friend Williams has this quote quote clearly than any gospel passage that is derogatory of Judas must either be misunderstanding or falsehood and quote. So when you're done reading all that, when you're done listening to the Gnostics retell.

The crucifixion story.

Judas is now in a positive light, not in a -1.

Now there's one more thing about the text. Michael coaching Nash, who I had referenced earlier, is writing in the Journal of Early Christian Studies. And what is interesting about him is he has some very strong parallels.

With the Joseph story from Genesis to briefly recap that Joseph is a reader of dreams and in the Gospel Judas is a sequence where the disciples have a dream that Jesus interprets, but Judas has his own special dream. So just like Joseph has dreams and reads the dreams as kind of a prophetic way.

The same thing is happening in the Gospel Judas and Judas is got a special role and all that.

Joseph is one of the 12 sons and he's killed by the other 11. Judas is one of the 12 disciples.

Out by the other 11, Joseph goes on to rule over all of them, and in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus predicts that Judas is going to rule over the other.

Disciples here is a quote quote the least ambiguous connection between the Gospel of Judas and the Joseph Story in Genesis, however, is the verbal parallel between questions asked by Judas and by his Genesis namesake. End Quote. This includes what Prophet have I gained from you seeing me apart from that setting me apart from that race.

And Judith, saying he quote, will receive his special authority End Quote, both of which mirror the language Genesis.

And so let's just continue with Williams quote, Jesus response that he quote will be cursed by the rest of the races and will rule over them anticipates judas's betrayal of Jesus and also partially indicates the narrative evaluation of both this act and the consequent crucifixion of Jesus. That is to say Judas will be universally.

1st but he will also receive a reward.

It is presumably better to rule over the corruptible race rather than to submit to the rule of another. As a member of that race, Raiders with the cultural competence to recognize the parallels identified so far, especially the connection of a question about profit posed by a man named Judah slash Judas in the context of betrayal, are equipped.

To consider the extent to which the logic of the Joseph story can be projected onto the Gospel of Judas and quote, that is to say, in the view of Williams, the.

Author of the Gospel of Judas wants to point out a parallel between the New Testament Judas and the Old Testament. Joseph and Joseph, of course, is celebrated in the Old Testament, and so leaders of this text would see that parallel and celebrate Judas the same way they would have celebrated Joseph.

And the core question of Judas is that he betrays Jesus, but it's for a higher cause. So that makes Judas's betrayal both necessary and kind of OK, coach.

Spanish thinks this is the basic question. The writer of the Gospel of Jesus is try and answer, and so he calls back to the Joseph story where the brother's betrayal of Joseph is also unpleasant but necessary for the hate that fate of Israel. One last quote here quote the rhetorical force of the distinctive parallels between the Gospel of Judas and the Justice Strangenesses.

Thus, likens Judas's act of betrayal to that of Judah, and the value of the betrayal of Jesus to that Joseph End Quote. In other words, Joseph can't.

Any of the good stuff that he did if he wasn't portrayed in the 1st place, so let's not get all judgy about those other loving brothers. And in the same way, Jesus can't really ascend to heaven if he doesn't die. So let's not condemn Judas for helping him leave his moral body. That is coaching Ashes leading of the Gospel of Judas.

Now that sounds a little convoluted. Let's just say it is not subtle. In the Gospel of Judas as per the previous episodes on the question of what makes Judas's betrayal kind of central to the.

Story you have to explain.

Pain. If Judas betrayed Jesus, why did he do it? There's a bunch of different answers to that question. And why did he need to be betrayed? There aren't as many good answers to that question. Everyone knew who Jesus it was. Why? Why?

Get betrayed at all, but.

The question of why did Judas betrayed Jesus? If you're a Judas hater?

As many of the early Christian writers were, you say he was evil, or many even possessed by Satan, and that's why he betrayed Jesus. It was an act of evil.

But if you're agnostic author, the Gnostic believers in the Gospel of Judas, then you say he turned Jesus over to be killed. But Jesus didn't even really suffer any pain, and it was just an attempt. It was just what needed to happen for Jesus to get out of his mortal body so that he could read ascend into heaven, into his true spiritual.

So in the Gospel of Judas, there is no kiss, there's no purchased field, just not hang himself. He does not explode. Yeah, if just exploding sounds weird to you. I do encourage you to go back and just in the first couple of episodes of this, I have read the Bible once and I always never. I totally missed that. One of the stories about Jesus that he goes running.

Away and it explodes.

So what does all this mean? What is the Gospel of Jesus about? Well, for Williams, it shows.

How much tension?

There was between the Gnostics and the early Catholic Church. There was so much that they might not even have seen themselves as both Christian, like you were gnostic and your.

Christian, you now.

Have thought you know well, basically contenders for this thing that will become the Christian Church.

Hope you pretty much just hated each other and you view them as rivals or others or evil or the enemy. So for Williams it shows that there's a lot of antagonism between the agnostics and the early.

And maybe that there was some antagonism throughout the entire Christian Church and all that is sort of calling into question these early writers like you serious and Irenaeus, that there is a continuous Christian Church. He's saying, look, there's a lot of conflict there. So for Williams, that's one important message of the Gospel of Judas. Simon Gathercole, who I mentioned earlier is.

Of the University of.

Aberdeen very much agrees.

With that, he emphasizes that the gospel highly.

It's that Jesus was never truly human and he has to be human for that Jerusalem Church for its view to be correct, and it has to be at least partially human for the Paul's church and their belief that, you know, he's really struggling at the end. He wanted God to take the burden from him. That was the human part of Jesus and for the.

For the Gnostics, this is just a complete acceptance of the idea that Jesus was not human and in the same way David Frankfurter for him is a serious exploration of the idea that Jesus was a deity and never really human. A key implication of Jesus always being divine is that Judas is seriously redeemed in Frankfurt.

He does talk about there are some of the five other books that all have various and slightly different interpretations of the text. I'm not exhausting all of those here, but I do think it is fair to say.

In the Gospel of Judas, there's a strong sense that Jesus is all divine and that the human part of him is kind of incidental, and that definitely sets the Gnostics apart from both the Jerusalem Church and the Roman church. Paul, for me, it is strange that so much of the disagreement centers around things that nobody can possibly know.

And that is the structure of heaven you want to hear about. What did Jesus say? Or what did Jesus do, or what did that mean?

Well, in theory there are documents that can speak to that or people who really did see them, but nobody has ever seen heaven. The only way you can claim to know what heaven is like is if you've had a defined revelation and part of the divine revelation.

Being is that it is only something that you experience if it happens to a bunch of people, then that's not how it works, right? No religious leaders.

Whoever said that appeared to be and 500 other people who can verify what I'm saying about the structure of heaven. It is only a revelation that comes to one person. So you know there is faith. And then there's belief. But this whole deal like I know for sure exactly what heaven looks like. And it's Aeon, Seth, who's the I know.

For sure is a deity and the third.

Son and I know you know. Third child, vanam and eve. That's if that is.

What you should.

Believe that is total like individual belief is just individual belief, but if you're picking as your individual belief something that is not partially verifiable, a complete leap of faith, then that is far less certainty. And then to say I'm so certain about that, even though I myself.

Did not experience that revelation. Let's go to war over this. Let's kill some people. Let's have a great big fight. That, to me is weird. And it says something strange about humanity. Hopefully I will get to resolving that later in this episode.

But for coach Nash, it is a long story that explains how turning Jesus over is a favor that Judas does not a betrayal, and it elevates Judas or the other disciples, and all agree that it is a veneration of Judas. It is a retelling, the story where he's the hero and not the villain and all for some very gnostic reasons involving the hierarchy of the afterlife, or at least the Kingdom of him.

OK, so let's get back to Jesus Christ Superstar and the amazing coincidence between Nacho and his lost gospel of Judas. So starting with the Judas angle, the first connection between Jesus Christ Superstar and his the Lost Boy.

At the very start of Christianity, there's a big dispute over Jesus and how divine he is, and he splits the early Christian Church. Jerusalem says he's human and diagnostics say it's only divine. And the Catholics say there's a Trinity.

Both books retail to crucifixion from Judas's perspective, and the Gnostic Gospel goes much more full by our into divinity. Jesus is way more God than he is man. If he's human, is only incidental and its body that he needs to get rid of so he can return to his spiritual form. So for the gnostic gospel they go, albeit.

God Jesus Christ Superstar goes full humanity. Jesus is way more human than God in that music production. Maybe he's not even God at all. Since the show is kind of silent about the resurrection. But even though quotes from the show's authors, so we want to talk about, you know, if you believe and I I think that as a.

Anglicans, both Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber did have this belief in the Trinity that if God is part human and.

God then they were saying those last stages of his life. There was the human part that was tortured, and so they're going all in on the human side of Jesus Jesus Christ Superstar. However, it's all about raising questions. It famously does not answer them. It just, you know, Judas keeps going on saying, Jesus, who are you, who are you? And Jesus never really answers the question.

Doesn't really gets the answer either, but the Gnostics are sure that they have all the answers. That's the whole name of their religion, right? We are knowledge we have the answers, we know what it is, and it's this elaborate structure of heaven.

Now both of them are kind of dubious. Both of those conclusions are kind of dubious. Jesus Christ Superstar just ask questions. It doesn't have answers, and Mystics say they have answers, and they're sure about it. But just asking questions doesn't really satisfy. It's not. You have brought up an important pointed subjects and then you just keep asking questions about it without taking the stance on it.

That just leaves it open and unsatisfying. On the other hand, saying you have all the answers but basically exclusively on revelatory visions, really ramps up how much faith you gotta have. So to me it is curious that both Jesus Christ Superstar and the Lost gospel of.

Judas retell the story of the Christ fiction from the perspective of Jesus. They are both very sympathetic to Judas, but they have one goes all in on we only have open questions we can answer and the other one goes all in on their answers. And if you don't know those answers and you are part of the generation of the damn and not the generation that's going to get.

Enlightened and and both of those answers strike me as not quite being the right, leaving something to.

Be desired so that.

The first strange coincidence overlapping between these two one is they are both retailing. Chris, Fiction serve the perspective of Judas. The second angle is the Joseph angle. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wrote Joseph and the Technicolor dream quote before they wrote superstar in fact.

It was kind of their first production. They were putting together shows that.

They could get shown mostly at religious schools, but originally when they did was Joseph and it went so.

Well, they thought.

OK. Well, we can roll with that. Maybe we can get superstar done and then they were able to get superstar made into a musical album, which became the most successful double album of all time. But its precursor was Joseph and the amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. And then as soon as superstar.

In it, they produced that thing as well. So Rice and Lloyd Webber definitely have the Joseph story kind of at the center of the theatrical productions.

In the Gospel of Judas is also a call back to the story of Joseph and the Old Testament of both. Connections are distant, but I think it's just weird that of the hundreds of stories to choose from, like we went to the Old Testament saying we could tell the story of Moses or the pillar of fire in the desert, or the story of worth, or the story of job.

They do all these stories, but they picked out of all those the story of Joseph and both attempts to retell the crucifixion story from eyes of Jude.

This had, as their precursor the story of Joseph, and in both cases the connections are a little distant that the author of the Gospel of Judas is making clear efforts to call out to that story. But why pick that one? Why would that be anything that seals the deal? I don't know. Why did Lloyd Webber?

And Tim Rice decide that those were the 2 they wanted to do. Like there's no obvious connection that we've done a story about Joseph Burgo. We should now retell the story of this fiction from the perspective of Judas.

Let's just put a pin in that. Now, that's just a crazy connection. Alright, so now, what do we make of all of that? Well, the first thing that I make of that is this just kind of says something about the nature of Jesus, the nature of heaven. And the recurring questions. The idea of a God on Earth.

Portals is actually pretty ubiquitous, and it's not specific to the Jesus story. Lots and lots and lots of cultures, even like the Greek stories like they're gods. Sure, when they come down and they create offspring that are half human and half God, but that can only happen if the gods are walking. Once the mortals and then their offspring.

We're not partial gods. They also walk among humans, and there's many, many other cultures that have spirits or gods that come down either disguise themselves and interact with humans in some way, or just going around and hang out with us or mess with us or something. But that idea that a God living on earth.

Happens so often it just seems to me it's almost a transcultural general human way of thinking about the world. To me, this speaks to a nearly universal belief in spirituality. Almost everyone we had talked before, even if you just look at contemporary opinion polls and say, do you believe in spirits or ghosts or God, the overwhelming majority of Americans do, and the overwhelming.

People of the planet do have some belief in a spiritual world.

But at the same time, it's almost a complete inability to define what that's going to be. This is, of course, where faith lives, because you can't possibly know the answer. You can't really know what heaven is like was Jesus and God or not. Well, maybe Jesus Christ Superstar. He's got something there. They're saying it's an open question.

That open question is what means that faith is an inevitable part of the human condition, and no matter how you retell the story, you still got a scroll around to those points. You can say Jesus was mortal, or you can say he's a Trinity, or you can say he's a God, or you can retell the story of Judas, but you've got to somehow answer that question about.

What's it like to have a God?

Live among mortals.

Now, this does beg the question of why you would pick some answers over others and why.

Humans seem so.

Quick to fight and die over them. I mean, how dare you believe in your version of heaven? I have another who's in heaven that was told to me by something that someone else said.

Was real to them by God, but by.

By by blast. By God, I'm gonna kill you over it, or let's fight and see which one is still alive. To resolve that question.

In that sense, we are all the Judas of Jesus Christ Superstar. We need an answer to a question that cannot be answered, and to me this means it is the uncertainty that ultimately crushes Jews. And I think that's what happens in Jesus Christ Superstar. And with apologies to the anonymous author of the Gospel of Judas, I would say that.

Certain answers do not ring true.

That what we do is we live in uncertainty and I think the.

That key to peaceful existence on this planet is to find a way to live with the uncertainty so that.

It doesn't tear.

You up now for my.

I do believe in God, but I'm very comfortable with the idea that he probably doesn't want me to kill anyone, even the unbelievers, and that if we honor, it will be judged at all. It's going to be the judgment.

As described Nancy 25, God will look at us and say you will serve God by serving the least amongst you. When I was hungry, you gave me food when I was naked, you gave me clothes and that is how.

But that's my answer. It doesn't have to be anybody else's, but we all do have to find our own answer to that question. And if you don't find it, you end up like Hamlet forever. Question whether or not he should be or be not, or you end up like Judas at the end of Jesus Christ Superstar, so torn by the inability to answer the question.

That it leads to your demise.

Finding a positive way to live in this uncertainty that we all have all humans seem to believe in spirituality. All humans seem to be unable to define exactly how that originates or where it comes from, or what our.

Relationship is exactly to.

God and finding a positive way to live and answering, I think is the key to having our productive life now. There's also the Joseph angle.

Right. Both of these stories, curiously and uncannily, decide they're going to call back to Joseph. Or at least you.

I guess there's nothing Jesus Christ Superstar does, but Andrew Lloyd White and Tim Rice certainly were were thinking about the Joseph story, and it's just absolutely, absurdly coincidental that.

Thinking about the Joseph story and so would this lost text. OK, now to me.

This just says that life.

Is chaos and randomness near coincidences and it truly is all connected that just that it can happen at all, right, that they're going this lost in the book that's got this that has a callback. The story of Joseph and his musical that has no connection to the book that's written 1500 years later that also has a deep connection story of Joseph.

That just shows that there are crazy interconnections, and they happen like that all the time, that a whole bunch of life is probably hard work and talent, but some of it is definitely just being in the right or the wrong place, and either the right or the wrong time and then of the million things that could possibly happen, some of them do, and some of them don't. And some of those are probabilities, given enough different possibilities.

Are gonna come true and that is where we live our life at the intersection of these crazy, improbable events, I.

Mean what are the odds?

That the English language translation of a French book chronicling the sands as a Victor Hugo that I am only aware of because of the improbable Cypress that this podcast has led me down, would be written by a professor who also once hired my wife as a research assistant. That happened more than 30 years ago, that.

Finally figured out about in the last six months, they don't even make odds on bets like that, but that stuff happens and happens all the time. And if that reference is obscure to you and there's no reason it shouldn't be, do please go back and listen to our series on Les Miz. Yes, Victor Hugo.

You'd have some silences. I'm not going to say too much more about that now because they don't want to repeat myself with the people who did hear it. But if in my life I can pick up a book and read about this weird thing that happened to Victor Hill and it turns out my wife was closely connected to the translator of that book, I mean nuts. But it is in these crazy.

And probable coincidences that humans exist, and in that I find a sense of wonder, and maybe even a sense of.

Here, but in the end we are all products of unlikely events. There's Monty Python's song about it, of course. But of all the improbable things that happen in your birth is incredibly unlikely and another great mystery of life is whether that means anything. If so, what?

I do think there's something to be.

The advent of the Jesus and the Judas story is a call out to the almost ubiquitous questioning that all human societies have of our are there gods out there? Do they walk among?

I believe in spirituality, but I don't know what that looks like. What do I do with that uncertainty that seems to have been a defining characteristic of almost every human society and religion? And if we take a step away from that and say, OK, well, I don't believe in spirituality and what do I believe in? And the answer is totally bizarre. Random coincidences that come together and.

Is it all just totally random or is there some meaning attached to all of that? Man, I'm not going to end with anything.

Better than me?

Any but it does simply brain off taking a different direction and make me think that maybe the Hitchhiker's guide the Galaxy is a religious text after all. OK, that's going to wrap us up for Jesus Christ Superstar. It was quite a production. The music really made the show its original.

Staging was really weird. There was some feeling that it was going to spark a huge religious backlash or a huge religious embracing of it, and neither of.

Those things really happen.

Probably it turns out for some very good reasons having to do with nobody really being able to say definitively how the original Gospels were formed or what the Bible really says, or the absolute truth really is.

And then having.

Off there is this crazy connection with the Lost Gospel of Judas, so that there was a time in human history when when 1 little 20 year.

Period. There were two completely different attempts to retell the story of the crucifixion from the perspective of Judith separated by 1500 years, but at the same time that to me speaks to just incredible.

This is and that is sort of our my final take on the show. Jesus Christ Superstar. All right. And then we'll do it for this episode and for the series that we have been doing on Jesus Christ Superstar. Then next that we'll finish this series. But we'll not, of course, finish the podcast. We're going to take another production next this time.

We're going to do 80s.

Town and much more recent show than we have been taking on here. So we'll switch from Christian theology to Greek mythology, which of course also includes theology and.

We will trace that back.

To the musical that is now actually the most produced High School Musical in the year 2024, we will take that up in the next episode of Theater History and Mysteries. Thank you so much for listening to this.