system
A chat on 4chan
human
Is this true? what the heck did I just read? are gnostics right?
gpt
One thing to be aware of, from pre-Roman times it was fashionable and permissible to write a philosophical or religious treatise 'in the voice of' some famous character, to give the argument extra 'heft.' We see this in Biblical attributions of the Pentateuch to Moses or, later, extra letters added to those written by Paul; through the 'dialogues' written by Cicero as debates between well-known historical figures. The tradition continued at least into the 18th century, with American authors of loyalist and revolutionary screeds penned under the names 'Cato,' 'Caesar,' etc. The point in these pseudonyms was to place a pre-existing set of assumptions (and a bit of the gloss of a famous name) onto a text. It was NOT intended to fool anybody into thinking Cato was still alive in 1774 and writing about his distaste for King George of England. It was not an attempt to forge a work by a more famous author -- at most it was not an attempt to say 'Paul wrote this,' but rather to say 'This writing is worthy of Paul -- if you admire Paul (ore Moses, or Cato) maybe give this some consideration.'
So a 'Gnostic 'Gospel of Judas' should not be mistaken for a manuscript written by the actual, dead, Judas. Instead, look at it as a document written by somebody at odds with the orthodoxy of Christianity, bringing the authority of the only heterodox apostle available to their work. Then judge the content of the work on its own merits, if any (I have not read it so have no opinion on that.)
human
Interesting so what books of the new testament would fall under this?