Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at BU, wrote an excellent review of Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity, by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King. Some outtakes…

In the New Testament, Judas Iscariot is a Satan-possessed traitor who turns Jesus in for 30 pieces of silver; the other disciples are the heroic founders of the church. In the topsy-turvy Gospel of Judas, branded heretical in A.D. 180 by the church father Irenaeus, the disciples play the goats and Judas the hero. The other disciples, who go by the ganglandish name “the 12,” are murderers and fools. Judas is Jesus’ closest confidante, the one man who truly understands “the mysteries which are beyond the world and the things which will occur at the end.” …

I prefer to take my religious history free from demands for contemporary relevance, so whenever someone in the historical-Jesus fraternity makes Jesus mutter moral maxims that might as easily have been uttered by President Bush or Oprah Winfrey, my anachronism antenna goes up. In this case, Pagels and King massage the multicultural sensibilities of their readers by opining that the Gospel of Judas represents a “sharp, dissenting voice” against the “single, static, universal system of beliefs” of official Christianity. Preaching to the “spiritual but not religious” choir, they tell us that, like other noncanonical texts they have championed elsewhere, this gospel aims to “encourage believers to seek God within themselves, with no mention of churches, much less of clergy.” …

Although Pagels and King attend with care to the ironies of a text that both attacks Christian martyrdom and sets Judas up as the first Christian martyr, they are less effective in dealing with the most disturbing feature of this gospel: Jesus’ sarcastic laughter. In the Gospel of Judas, Jesus laughs no fewer than four times. He laughs not with his disciples but at them — for worshiping incorrectly and for misunderstanding his teachings. “Teacher, why are you laughing at us?” Judas asks. Good question. Pagels and King devote scant attention to it, responding simply that this laughter is intended to spur Jesus’ disciples on to “higher spiritual vision.” To me, however, it just sounds mean-spirited, turning Jesus into the sort of person you wouldn’t like, much less worship.

The Gospel of Judas will have its champions, not least Pagels and King, who laud its hero for inspiring a text that makes early Christianity look like contemporary American religion — more pluralistic, more wild and more contested than most imagine. But this gospel is not long for the world, or at least the American corner of it. Most Americans will rightly prefer Luke’s Jesus, whose heart breaks over the oppression of women and the poor, to a smart-aleck Jesus who guffaws at the stupidity of his listeners. America is supposed to be a happy place. Americans want their Jesus to channel Paula Abdul rather than Simon Cowell, Dorothy rather than the Wicked Witch of the West.

Maureen gives us a new translation of a poem by Elpis, the wife of Boethius.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review reviews Adam H. Becker’s Fear of God And the Beginning of Wisdom: The School of Nisibis And the Development of Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia.

Nisibis was home to many great lights of Syriac Christianity. The city’s theological school flourished until the province was handed over to the Persians in 363 A.D. St. Ephrem reestablished it on Roman soil at Edessa. (Hat tip on the book: Rogue Classicism.)

The Apostle Thomas is a figure of fascination for both believers and doubters. Since the Enlightenment, he’s been a sort of patron saint for the “seeing is believing” crowd. The ancient world celebrated him as the apostle of the East, the man who seeded India with a mystical Christianity and an enduring willingness for martyrdom. He is for the East what Peter and Paul are for the West. Alas, for us in the West, the story of Thomas’s apostolate remains little more than a rumor, sometimes further obscured by the New Age fascination for the heretical Gospel of Thomas. Some day I hope to draw together the story — from scriptural, historical, archeological, ritual, and legendary sources. Pray that I get the opportunity. In the meantime, celebrate the feast of St. Thomas by reading these posts:

Without a Doubt

Hindu Traditions of St. Thomas

Spice and Spirit

Friends, Romans, Christians … in Ancient India?

If you’d like to learn more, try to track down a copy of this book or this one.

Last year I posted on the “evil eye” (malocchio), drawing not only from my childhood in a Sicilian-American ghetto, but also from recent scholarship on the Fathers — Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Eusebius, and Tertullian. Rabbi Ari Kahn offers a study of biblical and rabbinic sources on the same subject.

Andrew Louth of Durham is justly renowned for his many outstanding patristic studies.

Now, from my friend Vito of Youngstown, comes word of Reverend Doctor Louth viva voce on the Web. A young student of philosophy and theology — and recent convert to Orthodoxy — Daniel Greeson has posted two lectures, The Relevance of the Fathers and St. Maximus the Confessor and Modern Science. Go get ’em.

I love the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome.

I discuss them in the early chapters of The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, and the Hope for Tomorrow. And I’ve written about them in Touchstone magazine.

I talked about them in Rome, and you can hear that fervorino at my audio page. Scroll way down to the bottom of the page, to “The Roman Martyrs and Their Mass.” For my KVSS interview, scroll about halfway up the page to “The First Marytrs of Rome.”

A regular visitor to these pages (and sometime commenter), Jacques R. just entered the novitiate of a monastery in Lebanon. He shares these pictures in the hope that you’ll remember him in prayer.

Bruce and Kris at KVSS interviewed me about the feast of Saints Peter and Paul (which is today). The evidence is audible right here.

Today, please remember my beloved co-author, Fr. Kris Stubna. It’s the twenty-second anniversary of his priestly ordination. Fr. Kris and I have a new book coming out in 2008. This makes five we’ve written together, depending on how you count.

Last week I appeared on the Paul Clemens show on WLCR, out of Louisville, Kentucky. Paul and I spoke for an hour about the Fathers of the Church. You can download the audio by clicking here.

In the middle of the fourth century, St. Gregory of Nyssa gave in to a fit of complaint. Ordinary people, he said, were spending entirely too much time talking about theology. “Mere youths and tradesmen, off-hand dogmatists in theology, servants too, and slaves that have been flogged … are solemn with us and philosophical about things incomprehensible … If you ask for change someone philosophizes to you on the begotten and the unbegotten.”

And the problem followed poor Gregory all over the marketplace. If he asked the baker the price of his bread, he got Trinitarian doctrine instead. If he asked whether the bath was ready, he got still more speculation.

Gosh, times have changed. Not too long ago, a friend of mine ordered a Christmas cake to read “Happy birthday, Jesus,” and the baker asked her how that name was spelled.

Today we live with widespread doctrinal ignorance, and reading St. Gregory’s complaint can be irritating — like listening to a friend gripe about having too much money or a spouse who cooks too well.

We live in a time when theology is an esoteric academic discipline practiced by very few Christians and of little interest to the bakers and bankers.

Christians of the fourth century knew better. Their century had begun with the Roman Empire’s most ruthless and systematic persecution of Christians. It was important for ordinary people to know what they believed and why, because they might be called upon to die for that faith.

Yet, just twenty-five years later, the Church, now triumphant in the world, was torn apart over a matter of Trinitarian theology: the Arian controversy. The emperors and even the bishops were divided in their allegiances, calling councils and counter-councils, exiling patriarchs from their sees, and demanding creedal compliance from the people in the pews. But which creed was saving? Sometimes there was just a single letter’s difference between one formula and another, but that little letter made all the difference in the world.

Once again, ordinary Christians needed to understand what they believed and why, because their theology could affect not only their salvation, but also their employment, their place of residence, and even their survival.

And so it went through the century. There were no printing presses, iPods, or EWTN, no searchable CDs or World Wide Web. Yet common people considered themselves duty-bound to study not just basic doctrine, but rather advanced theology. They would not settle for just the sacraments of initiation. They wanted to keep studying till even a saint would find them annoying.

They wanted to be theologians, and so should we. For that, we’ll need to develop a passion for doctrine — not just apologetics, the art and science of defending the faith. Apologetics can ride the adrenaline rush we feel when a co-worker insults us. But theology drives us to discipline our intellects beyond their comfort level. And it demands a disciplined prayer life as well. A friend of St. Gregory, Evagrius Ponticus, put it starkly: “a theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian.”

Nowadays, the motivation will have to come from inside, because most modern states prefer to remain neutral on the fine points of Christian doctrine.

Yet it is no small matter to know that God is love, and so must be a coequal, coeternal Trinity. It is no small matter to know that everyone — you and I and all our friends and adversaries — has a guardian angel. It is no small matter to know that we have recourse to these pure and powerful spirits and all their knowledge and strength. It is no small matter for us, whether we’re bakers or bankers, to know the name of Jesus and its saving power.

Theology is not just for the elites. It’s a basic life skill. St. Gregory himself knew this, and that’s why he wrote one of the Church’s first catechisms.

Maybe you know it, too. But do your children and your parents, your neighbors and co-workers? Couldn’t we all work a little harder to make the modern marketplace catch up to the fourth century?

We shouldn’t often strive to do things that irritate the saints, but maybe just just this once…

(This column originally appeared in my regular spot at the back of LayWitness magazine — to which you should subscribe!)

My KVSS interview on St. Irenaeus is up on my audio page. Today’s his feast day.

How do you tell a Nazorean from an Ebionite?

Very carefully.

In a two-post analysis (here and here), Dr. Platypus digs his duckbill into the evidence of early Jewish-Christian movements and their pre-Christian precursors.

Zenit’s translation of Pope Benedict’s address on St. Cyril of Jerusalem…

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Our attention today will be focused on St. Cyril of Jerusalem. His life represents the coming together of two dimensions: on one side, pastoral care and, on the other, involvement in the controversies that weighed upon the Church of the East at that time.

Born in 315 in Jerusalem, or in the surrounding areas, Cyril received a fine literary formation that became the basis of his ecclesiastical knowledge through the study of the Bible.

He was ordained a priest by Bishop Maximus. When Maximus died and was buried, in 348, Cyril was ordained a bishop by Acacius, the influential metropolitan of Caesarea in Palestine, a follower of Arius who was convinced he had an ally in Cyril. Hence, Cyril was suspected to have received the episcopal nomination through concessions given to Arianism.

Cyril soon found himself at odds with Acacius for doctrinal as well as juridical reasons, because Cyril reinstated the autonomy of his own see, separating it from that of the metropolitan of Caesarea. During 20 years or so, Cyril suffered three exiles: the first in 357, by decree of a synod of Jerusalem; a second in 360 by Acacius; and a third in 367 — the longest, lasting 11 years — by Emperor Valens, a follower of Arianism. Not until 378, after the death of the emperor, was Cyril able to resume possession of his see, bringing back unity and peace to the faithful.

Despite certain writings from his day that call into question his orthodoxy, others of the same epoch defend it. Among the most authoritative is the synodal letter of 382, after the ecumenical council of Constantinople in 381, in which Cyril had a significant role. In that letter, sent to the Roman Pontiff, the Eastern bishops officially recognize the absolute authority of Cyril, the legitimacy of his episcopal ordination and the merits of his pastoral service, which death brought to an end in 387.

We have 24 of his celebrated catecheses, which he wrote as a bishop around the year 350. Introduced by a “Procatechesis” of welcome, the first 18 are addressed to catechumens or illuminandi (in Greek “photizomenoi”) and were kept in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher.

The first five deal with the dispositions required to receive baptism, conversion from pagan customs, the sacrament of baptism and the ten dogmatic truths contained in the creed or symbol of faith.

The following catecheses, Nos. 6-18, make up a “continual catechesis” of the Symbol of Jerusalem, which is anti-Arian. Of the last five, Nos. 19-23, the so-called mystagogical ones, the first two develop a commentary on the rites of baptism, the last three deal with confirmation, the Body and Blood of Christ and the Eucharistic liturgy. There is also an explanation of the Our Father (“Oratio Dominica”), which establishes a path of initiation to prayer that develops parallel to the initiation with the three sacraments of baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist.

The foundation of instruction in the Christian faith developed, although amid controversy against the pagans, Judeo-Christians and followers of Manichaeism. The development of the instruction was based on the fulfillment of the promises of the Old Testament, with a language rich with images. Catechesis was an important moment, inserted into the broad context of the entire life, and especially the liturgical life, of the Christian community. Within this maternal womb, the gestation of the future Christian took place, accompanied by the prayer and witness of the brethren.

Taken together, Cyril’s homilies make up a systematic catechesis on the rebirth of the Christian through baptism. To the catechumen, Cyril says: “You have fallen into the nets of the Church (cfr. Matthew 13:47). Let yourself be taken alive: Do not run away, because it is Jesus who takes you to his love, not to give you death but the resurrection after death. You must die and rise again (cfr. Romans 6:11-14). … Die to sin, and live for justice, starting today” (Pro-Catechesis, No. 5).

From a “doctrinal” point of view, Cyril comments on the symbol of Jerusalem with recourse to the use of typology in the Scriptures, in a “symphonic” relationship between the two Testaments, pointing to Christ, the center of the universe. Typology will later be wisely described by Augustine of Hippo with these words: “The New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is revealed in the New” (“De Catechizandis Rudibus,” 4:8).

His catechesis on morality is anchored in profound unity to the doctrinal one: Dogma slowly descends into souls, which are asked to change their pagan ways to adopt new life in Christ, the gift of baptism. The “mystagogical” catechesis, was the height of instruction that Cyril imparted, no longer to catechumens, but to the newly baptized and neophytes during Easter week. He led them to discover the mysteries still hidden in the baptismal rites of the Easter vigil. Enlightened by the light of a faith, deepened in the strength of baptism, the neophytes were finally able to better understand the mysteries, having just celebrated the rites.

In particular, with the neophytes of Greek origin, Cyril focused on visual aspects, most suited to them. It was the passage from rite to mystery, which availed of the psychological effect of surprise and the experience lived in the Easter vigil. Here is a text explaining the mystery of baptism: “You were immersed in water three times and from each of the three you re-emerged, to symbolize the three days that Christ was in the tomb, imitating, that is, with this rite, our savior, who spent three days and three nights in the womb of the earth (cfr. Matthew 12:40).

“With the first emersion from the water you celebrated the memory of the first day that Christ spent in the tomb, with the first immersion you witnessed to the first night spent in the tomb: As he who in the night is unable to see, and he who in the day enjoys the light, you too experience the same thing. While at first you were immersed in the night and unable to see anything, reemerging, you found the fullness of day. Mystery of death and of birth, this water of salvation was for you a tomb and mother. … For you … the time to die coincides with the time to be born: One is the moment that achieved both events” (“Second Mystagogical Catechesis,” No. 4).

The mystery to behold is God’s design; this is achieved through the salvific actions of Christ in the Church. The mystagogical dimension complements that of symbols, expressing the lived spiritual experience that they cause to “explode.” From St. Cyril’s catechesis, based on the three components described previously — doctrinal, moral and mystagogical — there results a global catechesis in the Spirit. The mystagogical dimension brings about the synthesis of the first two, directing them to the sacramental celebration, in which the salvation of the entire person is realized.

It is an integral catechesis, which — involving the body, soul and spirit — remains emblematic of the catechetical formation of today’s Christians.