Sealed With a Kiss

A long-lost early Christian text says Jesus asked Judas to betray him.



.........Jesus recognized that there was something paradoxical about his betrayal by Judas Iscariot—in three of the four canonical Gospels, with a kiss. "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined," he says in Luke 22, "but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" In other words, Judas is damned for helping bring about the salvation of......


.......................And Jesus knows all along who will sell him out. In John's account of the Last Supper, he tells Judas: "That thou doest, do quickly"—and Judas "went immediately out." In shame and terror, we assume. But it sounds almost as if he were obeying an order that both of them understood.....................


...............The crumbling papyrus—13 sheets, in more than 1,000 fragments, written on both sides—was found in a cave in the Egyptian desert in the 1970s, passed from one antiquities dealer to another, and ended up in a safe-deposit box in Hicksville, N.Y..................



................Judas' betrayal of Jesus has sparked considerable anti-Semitism over the centuries, and the new Gospel may help Christians see beyond ancient—and historically unfounded—stereotypes. Or it may simply add to our sense of how inchoate and multifarious early Christianity was, before such church fathers as Irenaeus codified it...................





.................But right now, people are loving the idea that Jesus and Judas were dear friends who were in it together—it's such a downer to think the guy sinned and felt bad—and the hoopla machine is grinding away.....................
(PS: Click on any of the pictures to read complete story.)


(Excerpts drawn from: msnbc.msn.com)