Judas-centered religion

The Manadaeans revere John the Baptist and don't care much at all for Jesus. How likely is it that an offshoot of Christianity that reveres Judas rather than Jesus would develop? Were there any sects that were actually like that? And are there any TLs that involve something like this?
 
Well, there was the Judas Gospel that got all that press a few years back. I don't think its possible to get a religion based soley around Judas, because, unlike a figure such as John the Baptist, Judas was not a figure in his own right. His story revolves completely around that of Jesus. It would be just as unlikely as if, say, Peter developed his own religion.

What you could have, however, is a Christian sect which views Judas as Christ's greatest disciple. This group would view Judas' betrayal of Jesus as being against his will, and stemming from Jesus' own demand that Judas do so (after all, without Judas, Jesus can not sacrifice himself). Such a group would, likely find itself grouped in with other gnostic sects. As to what docrinal differences this might lead to, I can not even begin to guess.
 
Well, there was the Judas Gospel that got all that press a few years back. I don't think its possible to get a religion based soley around Judas, because, unlike a figure such as John the Baptist, Judas was not a figure in his own right. His story revolves completely around that of Jesus. It would be just as unlikely as if, say, Peter developed his own religion.
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A better analogy would be philip or matthew or andrew, rather than peter.

As for st jean baptiste, he HAD a pre-existing cult before jesus came along, in fact jesus took it over, in good part. Andrew, iirc, was originally a folloer of sjb, and switched to jc. Bringing first his brother simon peter, then their business partners james and john to form the core of the apostles.

To get an existing movement to survive is easy, relatively speaking. To form a movement based on the villain of the story, and then have it thrive? Much, much harder.
 
Interesting, but unlikely for the following main reason

The disciple Judas may have been a creation of later Gospel writers, inserted in the accounts of Jesus's ministry to further lay blame on the Jewish elites or to give a single identity to what could have been a group of followers who became disillusioned with Jesus's direction and some of his teachings. It also makes a great story

Along with DanMcCollum I do agree that a sect of Christianity could have arisen around Judas as the greatest disciple...the one who against his will, acgted as the betrayer and suffered the most to fulfill Jesus's plan of salvation. The problem though, is that this emphasizes events that would make Jesus himself a less than sympathetic character.
 
Exoteric vs Esoteric

I think the best bet for this is some highly esoteric cult where the initiates are told the "Truth" about Judas among other things when they reach a certain level. Under those circumstances the Hidden Truth is disappointing if it is devoid of provocative bordering on shocking elements,
 
Along with DanMcCollum I do agree that a sect of Christianity could have arisen around Judas as the greatest disciple...the one who against his will, acgted as the betrayer and suffered the most to fulfill Jesus's plan of salvation. The problem though, is that this emphasizes events that would make Jesus himself a less than sympathetic character.

The central notion of this sect could be one of sacrifice, doing whats best even if it mean hurting one's reputation or having to gives up one's life. In a way, it actualy reinforced Jesus' ordeal: both he and judas played roles pre-ordained by God for the greater good.

In term of practices, unlike the other christian sects, they might have the notion of a "noble self inflicted death" whereby suicide is not in itself a sin if one consider it to be part of God's plan, either in the sense that it achieve something by it (such as inspiration) or removing oneself as a show that whatever "bad" action was commited was done with the knowledge that there are consequence and wasn't random.
 
I have no doubt that there's some modern anti-establishment religion that worships Judas.

I can't see it coming before relatively modern times though.
 
I think the best bet for this is some highly esoteric cult where the initiates are told the "Truth" about Judas among other things when they reach a certain level. Under those circumstances the Hidden Truth is disappointing if it is devoid of provocative bordering on shocking elements,

I sort of believe that something along approximately those lines actually kind of existed in some way IOTL. I have no reference, unfortunately.

Islam has, in a sense, a sort of a parallel, the Yazidi sect, that more or less accepts as a main positive figure a character that in mainstream Islamic narrative is widely depicted as a villain.
 
Pretty easy to have a bunch of Gnostics go this way you have the Gospel to Judas and then other Gnostic works about the "favorite disciple" that could get labelled as Judas.
 
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