Foster—Irenaeus and the Non-Canonical Gospels 107many would be likely to claim. This leads DeConick to suggest that Irenaeus has con-
structed an anti-genealogy to undermine the group and the text. Thus she states, “Since
the people who wrote the Gospel of Judas understood themselves to be descendants of
the great Seth, not Cain or any of the others whom Irenaeus names, this suggests to
me that the genealogy is fictious, serving only to undermine the Gospel’s credibility.”^5
Irenaeus portrays the Gospel of Judas as representing a Judas who perceives the
true significance of the act of his betrayal, which is different from the depiction of
the betrayal in the canonical narratives. In effect, he accuses those who hold to the
perspectives of this document as valorizing Judas, rather than representing him
according to the canonical perspective as a person who betrayed Jesus for financial
gain. This raises a number of complex issues concerning the identification of the
Gospel of Judas text known to Irenaeus with the recently published text bearing the
same name. First, one must ask whether the newly discovered text presents Judas in
a heroic fashion; secondly, if not, whether Irenaeus could have understood the text
that way (either intentionally or mistakenly); and finally, whether Irenaeus knew
this text directly and had read some of its contents, or if he only had second-hand
knowledge of the existence of this text.
When the Gospel of Judas was initially published, it was read as supporting the
notion that Judas was an anti-hero. Wurst cites the following passage from the Gospel
of Judas in support of such an understanding: “But you will exceed all of them. For
you will sacrifice the man that clothes me” (Tchacos, page 56). He draws the impli-
cation that “Jesus teaches Judas that he will have his part to play in the history of
salvation.... Judas’s task is to sacrifice the body of Jesus. For what reason is not pre-
served, but we may guess that by this sacrifice the inner spirit of Jesus is liberated.”^6
This interpretation has, however, been strongly contested. After reassessing the trans-
lation of the text, DeConick convincingly argues that Judas is not commended but
rather is condemned. Her translation of the passage in question is that Jesus says to
Judas, “You will do worse than all of them, for the man that clothes me, you will sacri-
fice him.”^7 Regardless of which side of the debate one finds convincing, the possibility
remains that Irenaeus either intentionally misrepresented the text as promoting a type
of Judas-devotion based on a complex cosmology that rejected the material world, or
alternatively and perhaps more likely, misunderstood the text’s subversive parody of
the type of apostolic Christianity that Irenaeus and others represented.^8
Caution must be exhibited in assessing whether or not Irenaeus had directly read
portions of this text. This is due to the lack of evidence. Although the title is given, no
direct citations are provided and there is little description on the contents of the text.
In fact, the description relates more to the beliefs of the “Cainites” than outlining the
contents of the Gospel of Judas. Notwithstanding this, some of the things the group is
charged with believing appear to be found in the recently published text. Judas is cer-
tainly the central figure in both the description provided by Irenaeus and the Gospel of
Judas, and the protagonist’s betrayal of Jesus is seen by both as having cosmic ramifica-
tions. Admittedly, these are only brief similarities, but they do lead DeConick to state
that Irenaeus’s “description is a highly accurate account of the manuscript we possess.”^9
It seems, therefore, highly likely that the text known to Irenaeus was indeed at least a