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TestingPointDesign β The Gospel of Judas Iscariot
Published: 2006-04-05 06:00:43 +0000 UTC; Views: 18561; Favourites: 150; Downloads: 138
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This is a last minute piece I wanted to get done in time for the release of The Gospel of Judas Iscariot. This is thought to be a 3rd Century document from early Gnostic Christians and I have been looking forward to this event since I learned about it a year ago.I've also decided to make an Unlikely Icon series of 3 all together, this one being the 2nd and The Archangel Lucifer being the 1st.
Books of interest regarding Judas:
Judas: Images of the Lost Disciple by Kim Paffenroth
The Gospel of Judas by National Geographic Society
The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot
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Comments: 106
This is a really beautiful icon. I'm just starting to learn to draw and part of my intention is to get good enough to produce my own Gnostic icons.
Your piece has inspired me.
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Thank you so much for the kind comments! Let me know if you have any other questions. I'd be happy to help in any way I can.
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When they found the gospel of Judas I was... hmm how to put it... confirmed?
I always thought the story of Judas' betrayal was not very logical, like it had '
So here's a guy, he was one of Jesus' closest desciples, I even think he was the only person he knew before he gathered the apostoles, and one day he just, quite casually, betrays him?
What's stranger is that this betrayal HAD to be done, Jesus HAD to die, and Jesus knew it.
I always wondered if Jesus instruced Judas to do this... Wouldn't that make Judas a martyr in some secret way as well?
Oh well...
As far as the piece goes, good job, don't think I ever saw an early christian fresco-ish style on DA before 
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Thanks for the comments. I couldn't agree more and that's one of the reason why I made this icon. If you haven't yet, check out the movie The Last Temptation of Christ. It shows that Jesus asks Judas to betray him.
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Last temptation of teh Christ is a brilliant movie, it so wonderfly portrays both the religious and reslistic aspect of it, AND adds it's own twist!
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Totally forgot about it, thanks for reminding me!
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absolutely gorgeous work ! I love how it respects the style !
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Thank you for checkin it out!!
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wow, really well done, any symbology to the picture?
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Thanks! 30 pieces of silver, intestines, rope, the usual stuff. All from the Bible.
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Hm.. If its from the Gospel of Judas though, there should be more though, but dang, bloody good work though, needless to say I am impressed regardless
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I love the authentic look of it all. You need to take a second glance to realize what it's really about. Also, Judas holding his noose and bowels is an excellent touch. Instant favorite.
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Thank you!
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fascinating work! i am not a christian and despise this religeon however i must admit that icon art is indeed something unique! once again amazing colours and work in itself!
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Thank you! Personally, I am a Humanist and do not believe in Christianity either. I guess you could say that I am fascinated by the artwork and stories of this religion the same way that an historian is interested in greek mythology.
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Thank you!!!!
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You really need to read G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. I have learned more history from these two then in all the crappy high school history books combined. An amazing thing about these two is that they are never "politicaly correct" (or as was put in their time, "in good taste"), and yet are always elegent and polite. Chesterton said that "...in good taste, that most vile of superstitions", and when his first editor said he could write about anything exept religion and politics, Chesterton replied,"There is nothing else worth writing about." 36 years, and over a million pages later he was still writing about them, even as he lay dying. They were also good friends and aquaintances with G. Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Father McNabb, J.R.R. Tolkine, and, indirectly, C.S. Lewis.
And now I will share a bit of Belloc that I feel is relavent. To be fair,the Albigensians were a more extreme branch of later Gnostisism, but it can be argued that their extreme interpritation was an inevitable consiquence of matter hatered:
[link]
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By the way, don't you find the 'Gospel of Judas' discovery a bit too good to be true?
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Actually, I don't think it's too good to be true. I think if it were a forgery they would have made it much more interesting. To be honest, it's quite short and a bit of a let down. For example, an entire conversation where Jesus explains secrets of heaven to Judas is lost. There are some arbitrary words here and there but nothing intelligible. Other than that, I find it to be a very interesting look into the past of Christianity.
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I don't know very much about it, but the circumstances of the thing's appearence seem a bit vague, which makes me suspicious. It wasn't part of the Nag Hammadi Library or Dead Sea Scrolls descoveries, for example, as far as I can tell, it just turned up in the 70s.
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The whole discovery of this document is shady due to it's travels through the black market. However, that is not unusual for valuable antiquities and does not necessarily have any bearing on it's authenticity as an ancient document.
The Gospel of Judas was found to date around 150 AD and the surviving copy (through carbon dating) dates to the 300's AD. Now, if you're referring to the content as being questionable, that's a whole different story.
I recommend checking out The Lost Gospel by Herbert Krosney. It's a really interesting look into the discovery of the Gospel of Judas. A modern day Da Vinci Code quest.
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I finally got around to reading the scholars' translated Gospel of Judas. It does seem to be genuine, and to be the text Irenaeus alluded to in the second century. What a horrible book! More significant than the rehabilitation of Judas's character, I thought, was the villification of the other disciples - and the suggestion that they worshipped the wrong god, the blind demiurgue, and the ideology that only certain special people have immortal souls that will return to the ultimate heven.
The thing the gnostic gospels make me wonder is whether Jesus really had these secret teachings involving complicated polytheism (Barbelo, Sophia, Adamas Aeons and all that), and rejecting the Old Testament God, or whether the Gnostics took it upon themselves to put words in his mouth. It seems a hell of an idea to just make up.
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Haha. Do you say it's a horrible book because you don't like the teachings contained in it? Speaking as an atheist, I appreciate it for it's historical significance in showing us a bit more of early Christianity. I did think the Calvinistic pre-determining of immortal souls was ridiculous but then again I view most religious dogma in that light. I guess it's just the result of gnosticism mixing with Christianity, just as all religions pick and choose from each other, creating new variations every day.
I also wondered if Jesus did have these secret teachings intertwining gnostic tradition. It is certainly possible and even makes sense when considering some of what we read in the canonical gospels. But it's also possible that Jesus' original message and intentions are completely lost or so warped by the motives of men as to have no semblance of the initial thought.
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Horrible as in theologically disagreeable, presenting non-universalist, esoteric teachings.
I never cared for predestination, either (speaking as a waverer). One of Christianity's tragedies is that Pelagius lost his argument with Augustine of Hippo (or rather got shouted down). I can also sympathise with the Gnostic/Marcionite reluctance to recognize the Old Testament Jehovah as the God of Christ. There again I can hardly imagine that Jesus himself would have rejected the God of the Jews (or had a different God in mind), so it's a tricky one. Not a fan of gnostic Docetism either.
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Well according to the majority of surviving sources, Jesus was a Jew. I'm always surprised by how many Christians forget that. Being a Jew, I don't think he would deny the "Old Testament God" but there are no doubts that some of his views were radical and, at times, at odds with old testament doctrines. In that sense, I think Marcion had the right idea. Whether Jesus would agree or not, Marcion realized (or hoped) people would morally outgrow the more barbaric old testament god. If he saw modern mainstream Christianity, I think he would consider his ideas a success for the most part.
Modern Christians hardly ever mention let alone seem to care about the Old Testament. Sure, it's good for the popular stories everyone's familiar with but no one quotes when Moses orders his men to kill everyone except for the young women who "have not yet known a man." or when God had a bear kill some children for making fun of a man for being bald. Those are ridiculously ignorant theological/moral ideas and most people living in a modern civilized society realize that enough to ignore them. I think it'd be a step in the right direction if Christians just took out the Old Testament or at least edited all of the obvious terrible shit in it (e.g. Deuteronomy, Leviticus, etc). They're certainly on their way to doing that!
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Actually, I wish more American Christians would treat the scriptures no more seriously or literally than does the typical American Jew.
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Oh yes, there's some horrible stuff in the Old Testament, alright, the story of Jephthah is the pits (no angel intervene's to prevent that fellow's offspring being sacrificed to YHWH, unlike in the better known story of Abraham and Isaac. Then there's the reprehensible story (in Judges, I think) of the godly patriarch who offers his virgin daughter to be gang raped by a bunch of Bengamites instead of his Levite guest... Then as you say there is all the xenophobia and sanctified slaughter in Exodus and Joshua...
One is forced to concede Richard Dawkins' point that if believers pick and choose which bits of scripture to pay attention to then it undermines the claim that they are a source of morality, because through an independent moral criteria one is already being selective... The process of mental editing nullifies the notion of divine revelation.
There again, the Old Testament continues to have a massive and largely negative influence. Many Christians derive/justify from it an 'eye for an eye' mentality of retaliation, ignorigng to the contrary teaching of Jesus in the canonical gospels.
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Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself! Dawkins on the picking and choosing contradiction of divine revelation is a good point. But what I don't understand is why the religious choose to use logic for that and suspend it elsewhere. Christians have already "picked and chosen" their religion to death whether they admit or not (some have even gone as far as saying there's no hell.) I think it would be mentally, emotionally, and morally beneficial if they just openly edited the obvious horrific content out of The Bible and claimed that process as new divine revelation. They do it for everything else!
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The Bowdlerised version would end up like a child's book of Bible stories, one romove from a Disney cartoon, with all the nastiness expunged.
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Hahaha. Very true. Sounds appropriate enough to me!
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Looks like St Charlton of Heston to me.
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Haha. a la planet of the apes.
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Blessed are the monkeys, for they shall inherit the world...
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Thanks for checkin it out! I recommend it. Very interesting read indeed.
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bit busy right now. my list of books to read it's getting never ending:
the music of the primes - marcus du satoy
the gospel of judas
some new books by nick hornby
the end - lemony snicket
from heaven lake - vikram seth [started it]
walden - thoreau [half way thru]...
wat sort of stuf do you read?
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I know what you mean. I try not to allow myself to buy any new books before I read the ones I already have. Lately, I've been reading a lot on early Chrisitianity and religion and also a lot of graphic novels. Here's some of the stuff I've read in the past couple months:
Paradise Lost - by John Milton
The Hiram Key - by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas
Preacher vol. 1-2 (graphic novel) - by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (graphic novel) - by Frank Miller
Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Chrisitian Nationalism - by Michelle Goldberg
Currently reading:
The Messianic Legacy - by the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail
The Great Transformation - by Karen Armstrong
Watchmen (graphic novel) - by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
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wow! good stuf! i found a nice x men graphic novel [graphic novels just get better and better!]...read a few pages in the bookstore. i also wanna read the new lemony snicket!
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ahhh... :] I saw this Fake gospel... yep yep, fake; I saw in NatGeo and I've read about that..
man, your drawing is awesome! My congratz.. nice lineart and coloring.
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Thank you for the comments! The Gospel of Judas is an authentic document written from around 150 A.D. In that sense it is real. Now whether you believe that it contains truth about Jesus and Judas or not is a matter of faith.
Personally, I think it's interesting to learn about what some early Christians believed at the time. I don't necessarily believe it to be truth any more than I believe the Gospel of John (ca. 95 A.D.) to be truth.
I can certainly see why you would come to the conclusion of it not being true historical fact.
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Well, in the start I belived in the gospel, so I read about the gnostics and I discovered many things about they... like, they belive that the substance is bad, so in the past they killed alot of women with the babies. ^~;
This gospel is different of all the four, sure that it's from III-IIII A.D., but I think the gnostics weren't much christians...their point is so different ^.^; I heard the comment of some theologists...
anyway you're welcome!
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The gospel of Judas is quite different from the canonical gospels. However, within the canonical gospels, the gospel of John varies in many ways from Mathew, Mark, and Luke. I'm not sure what you've read about the Gnostics but if you choose not to believe an idea based on some acts of violence attributed to a religious group, good luck believing anything. Every horrendous and inhumane act imaginable has been carried out in the name of Christ and almost every other religion for that matter. My suggestion is read extensively (if you care to) and do your research. If an idea doesnβt sit right with you, move on and take it as knowledge gained.
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Very Byzantine. I like it (I suppose he was their best man.)
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This is very nice. I saw the recent documentary on the Gospel of Judas. and I've always been fascinated by the Ikons of Russian and Greek Orthodox, tho I myself am not a christian.
And you're a local to my area... Awesome work mate.
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Thanks for the comments! Its cool to see some more local people on DA.
I wouldn't consider myself a christian either by any tradtional sense at least but I do have a deep respect for the art of iconography. I think it's a very interesting form of art that is often overlooked.
I'm currently working on my next icon so keep an eye out for it within the next couple weeks.
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Good and beautiful detail. Very spiritual indeed.
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Thanks Lisa!
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