1. The Gospel of Judas

2. Some Dates
1978 – The codex is found by fortune hunters in Minya province
of Egypt. It was later sold to Hanna Asabil in Cairo who
tried to sell it for 3 million dollars.
1983 – It was smuggled into the US and stored in a safe deposit
box in Long Island for 16 years.
2000 – It was purchased by Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos for an
undisclosed (large) sum of money.
2006 – National Geographic publishes a complete translation
in which Judas appears as a tragic hero.

4. “They say that Judas the traitor was thoroughly
acquainted with these things, and that he alone,
knowing the truth as no other did, accomplished the
mystery of the betrayal. By him all things both earthly
and heavenly, were thus dissolved. They produce a
fictitious history of this kind, which they call the
Gospel of Judas.”
Irenaeus, circ. 180

5. Some Thoughts about Martyrdom
For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
Hebrews 9:13-14

6. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life and I will raise them up in the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.
John 6:53-55

7. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
Philippians 3:10-11

8. Let there come upon me fire, and cross, and agony with wild beasts, racking of bones, mangling of limbs, crushing of my whole body – only let me attain to Christ Jesus.
Ignatius; Letter to the Romans