Mystery of Betrayal: The Gospel of Judas and the Death of Jesus
A lecture by Professor Edmondo Lupieri, Loyola University and Professor Madeleine Scopello, Correspondant de l’Institut de France and Corresponding Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Co-presented by the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago, ItalCultura, the Department of Theology
and John Cardinal Cody Chair in Theology at Loyola University, Chicago.
In the second Century there was a group of Christian Gnostics who exalted the figure of Judas. According to them, he was the one who had accomplished the “mystery of betrayal”, which was essential in the history of salvation. Without him, indeed, how could have the human Jesus be sacrificed? Even now, after almost two millennia, many questions remain unanswered. Theologically speaking, if God the Father had decided to offer His Son on the cross to save the whole humankind, why using Judas? Was Judas an instrument of the divine Providence, or a criminal, guilty of the most heinous of all crimes? And historically, who was he? A victim of the circumstances? An insurrectionist, maybe, who was hoping Jesus would lead the war against the Romans? Did he really want Jesus to die on the cross? Did he commit suicide, afterwards, and why? Could the newly discovered “Gospel of Judas”, first published in 2006, bring new light to ancient questions?
Edmondo Lupieri is an alumnus of the University of Pisa, where he earned the Laurea in Classical Studies with the distinction of summa cum laude, and of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, where he earned the Licenza in Lettere. He taught at the universities of Rome, Turin, and Udine, and was named the 3rd recipient of the John Cardinal Cody Endowed Chair in Theology at Loyola University, Chicago, in 2006. He has published a number of books and articles on New Testament, Early Christianity, Christian and non-Christian Gnosticism, various phenomena of religious Syncretism involving Christian elements.
Madeleine Scopello is a historian of the religions of Late Antiquity, Madeleine Scopello is a specialist in Gnosticism and Manichaeism. Her research also focuses on intertestamental and mystical Jewish literature, patristic texts, Christian apocrypha and religious polemic literature. In 2006, she organized the first international colloquium on the Coptic Gospel of Judas. She also co-organized “The Forces of Good and Evil in the First Centuries of the Church” with B. Pouderon and Y.M. Blanchard. In 2014, she organized the international colloquium “Women in Western and Eastern Manicheism.” She is Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. She also teaches at the lnstitut Catholique de Paris.
On Monday, February 26th at 10:25 am in Mundelein 304 at Loyola University, Professor Lupieri and Professor Scopello will give a lecture entitled, “The Gospel of Judas: Contemporary Trends in Research and Interpretation.” For more information on this John Cardinal Cody Chair Graduate Seminar, presented by the John Cardinal Cody Chair of Theology, please email Professor Lupieri at elupier@luc.edu.
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