The Gospel of Judas and the Tchacos Codex

Abstract

Bringing much publicity to Tchacos Codex (CT), was the Gospel of Judas, apparently long lost if it was the text of that name mentioned by Irenaeus of Lyons and other Fathers following him. The most studied of the Tchacos documents and translated most is the Peuangelion n-Ioudas, presumed to be from a second-century Greek Euangelion tou Ioudas. The function of Allogenes in the CT collection looks to be access to the highest revelation of divine power over the aeonic world, with Jesus as guide and overcomer. CT may well be the "scripture book" of a marginal third-century Egyptian Gnostic group, using favorite texts of different second-century provenances to take initiates from a basic reassurance to full confidence in divine control over a transforming cosmos and in the ultimate Stillness behind all. Judas is granted a special disclosure or gnosis in the heavens about what the true redemption of "the Kingdom" is which in the text involves a cosmic reordering.