\u201cNational Geographic\u2019s promotion of their costly manuscript acquisition and television program, \u2018The Gospel of Judas,\u2019 is one of the most deceptive and brazen attempts to profit from the general public\u2019s unawareness of early church history since, well, \u2018The Da Vinci Code,\u2019\u201d seminary professor Fred M. Williams III said in a statement to Baptist Press.<\/p>\n
Williams, associate professor of history and languages at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., observed that the promoters of the Gospel of Judas and The Da Vinci Code imply that the Gospel writers had something to gain either financially or otherwise in their eyewitness accounts of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing could be further from the truth,\u201d Williams responded. \u201cThe only expectation that the New Testament Gospel writers — Matthew, Mark, Luke and John — and their followers had was exclusion from the polytheistic society of their day, fear of persecution from those misunderstanding the Christian message, or torture and death from the Roman authorities if they were identified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Referencing Irenaeus (130-200 A.D.), a disciple of Polycarp who sat at the feet of the Apostle John, Williams said, \u201cIrenaeus was aware of, and described the contents of, the Gospel of Judas just as it is being described by the National Geographic Society today. Irenaeus said that it was a product of a cult known as the Cainites who deliberately honored every wicked figure in the Bible so as to promote their own immoral lifestyle. The Cainites considered the God who created the world as evil and Satan as good.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, they would especially glorify the traitor Judas,\u201d Williams said. \u201cWe have known all this for more than 1,800 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is the National Geographic Society promoting this as the most sensational and important archeological find in the last 60 years?\u201d the professor asked. \u201cObviously, National Geographic has a lot more to gain financially from all this than Matthew, Mark, Luke and John ever did.\u201d<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cNational Geographic\u2019s promotion of their costly manuscript acquisition and television program, \u2018The Gospel of Judas,\u2019 is one of the most deceptive and brazen attempts to profit from the general public\u2019s unawareness of early church history since, well, \u2018The Da Vinci Code,\u2019\u201d seminary professor Fred M. Williams III said in a statement to Baptist Press. Williams, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1181,2895],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}