I'm sure reviews of the National Geographic program on the Gospel of Judas will be showing up over the course of the day (Mark Goodacre at NT Gateway did a 'live' one ... I wish he had kept track of how interminably long the ad breaks seemed to be; maybe that was just me) and in general, I thought it was well done, but here's the list of questions I wish it had addressed (especially in this era of 'Museum Cases'):
How did the manuscript end up back in the hands of the dealer after it had been stolen from him?
How did the Maecenas Foundation get involved and what, exactly, does the Maecenas Foundation do?
How did the National Geographic Society get involved in all this?
Did the program clearly explain what "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me" means? (I had to step out for a couple of minutes and might have missed it)
I'd also like to know why a Roman governor in Lugdunum overseeing the martyrdom of Blandina would address the crowd in what sounded like Greek.
Outside of that, I couldn't help but get the impression that the purpose of the show was (simplistically) to suggest 'If only we had this Gospel of Judas as part of the Bible ... there wouldn't be so much anti-semitism in the world'. But perhaps my mind focussed too much on a couple of segments. Like I said, though, generally it was well done, although it might have been nice to see them show the process of 'matching up' a piece (i.e. showing how an actual word matches).
I should probably point out that the GoJ program also appears to have spawned a press release on something called the Talmud of Immanuel, which is being claimed as a source for the Gospel of Matthew, among other things. Hopefully the Bibliobloggers can nip that one in the bud ...
How did the manuscript end up back in the hands of the dealer after it had been stolen from him?
How did the Maecenas Foundation get involved and what, exactly, does the Maecenas Foundation do?
How did the National Geographic Society get involved in all this?
Did the program clearly explain what "You will sacrifice the man that clothes me" means? (I had to step out for a couple of minutes and might have missed it)
I'd also like to know why a Roman governor in Lugdunum overseeing the martyrdom of Blandina would address the crowd in what sounded like Greek.
Outside of that, I couldn't help but get the impression that the purpose of the show was (simplistically) to suggest 'If only we had this Gospel of Judas as part of the Bible ... there wouldn't be so much anti-semitism in the world'. But perhaps my mind focussed too much on a couple of segments. Like I said, though, generally it was well done, although it might have been nice to see them show the process of 'matching up' a piece (i.e. showing how an actual word matches).
I should probably point out that the GoJ program also appears to have spawned a press release on something called the Talmud of Immanuel, which is being claimed as a source for the Gospel of Matthew, among other things. Hopefully the Bibliobloggers can nip that one in the bud ...