Elaine Pagels' article in The New York Times about the Gospel of Judas, featured with much fanfare in a National Geographic Channel special, reflects the penchant for secret knowledge that the Gnostics, who penned the Gospel of Judas and other "lost books" of Christianity shared. In fact, it was secrecy that defined the Gnostics and motivated their writings. It was also this secrecy that was one of the reasons the early church considered and rejected them as reliable accounts of Jesus' ministry on earth.
Pagels claims that the Gospel of Judas was unknown to us. No, we knew of its existence from Irenaeus' reference to it. True, we didn't have the text itself, but its existence was not hidden and suppressed. So we have not "assumed," as Pagels puts it, that the only sources of accounts of Jesus were from the canonical Gospels in that now we need to consider the new revelations from the Gnostic Gospels. We know from the accounts of the Church Fathers that these accounts were rejected for a reason.
That reason is the secrecy and the time of their authorship. Consider what we have with the Gnostic Gospels: secret accounts written no earlier than 100 years after Jesus' ministry. Now consider what we have with the canonical Gospels: accounts of eyewitnesses written when other eyewitnesses could still attest to our challenge their authenticity.
Pagels claims that we know it was the habit of Rabbis to teach a more selective group of disciples; she claims that is what we have in the Gnostic Gospels. But how could the church test the accuracy of secret teachings not written down until long after the primary sources were dead? And we already do have the accounts of Jesus' more private teachings; those select disciples were Peter, James, and John who the Gospels tell us were often brought into Jesus' closet inner circle. But again, we have their accounts when they were alive to testify to the accuracy.
When Pagels claims that the canonical Gospels were the books "suitable for beginners" and the Gnostic gospels provided more advanced teaching, she is simply reflecting the exact philosophy of the Gnostics and the reason their teaching was rejected by the early church. Christianity is very egalitarian. The teachings are available for all for consideration. God's revelation is available for all.
Pagels says that Christians have labored under the misapprehension that Christianity was monolithic. Well, not in the sense that we presume there was a unanimity of viewpoints in the early church. The challenges and debate are well recorded. But we do believe Christianity is monolithic in the sense that there is one truth to the matter of what God has revealed and, from the beginning, the Church labored to evaluate the ideas and judge them accurately.
What Pagels and others promoting the secret gospels are really offering isn't Christianity, but Gnosticism. They're simply resurrecting a debate and discussion that the Church settled in consensus 2000 years ago.
(HT: The Christian Mind - More than a HT, read Keith's post and the links he provides.)
Here's a short and sweet analysis of the Gospel of Judas by Chuck Colson. Summary: Nothng new here.
