Resolutions Passed of the Bible Presbyterian Church
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Resolution 70:1

"The Gospel of Judas"

We, the ministers and elders of the Bible Presbyterian Church, meeting at Grand Island, New York, August 3-8, 2006, at the 70th General Synod, hereby declare to the public the following resolution concerning the Gospel of Judas, which was recently published by National Geographic:

WHEREAS, the Gospel of Judas was written over a century after Christ’s ministry, was not written by Judas (who hanged himself) or by any of the apostles; and

WHEREAS, the Gospel of Judas, which is no gospel, is written displaying unorthodox theology, and fanciful and Gnostic terminology foreign to the Biblical gospels, for example:

“The multitude of those immortals is called the cosmos—that is perdition—by the Father and the seventy-two luminaries who are with the Self-Generated and his seventy-two aeons [line 107].

“Let twelve angels come into being [to] rule over chaos.… And … there appeared an [angel] … whose appearance was defiled with blood. His name was Nebro, which means ‘rebel’; others call him Yaldabaoth. Another angel, Saklas, also came from the cloud. So Nebro created six angels—as well as Saklas—to be assistants, and these produced twelve angels in the heavens, with each one receiving a portion of the heavens” [lines 111-115].

WHEREAS, this document was rightly rejected and set aside by the early Christian Church as not having upon it either the stamp of divine inspiration, or the testimony of apostles or eye-witnesses, and therefore not to be included among the canonical books of the New Testament;

THEREFORE, we urge Bible-believing Christians everywhere,

FIRST, to rest in the faith once delivered to the saints and to hold fast to the canonical books, inspired of God, that the early Church was guided by God to receive as the New Testament; and

SECONDLY, we urge Christians everywhere to speak out against the claims made by some that this heretical document, the Gospel of Judas, should have been included in the New Testament.

Adopted by the 70th General Synod of the Bible Presbyterian Church,
meeting in Grand Island, NY, August 3-8, 2006.