In what many theological scholar are calling the most important non-biblical Christian discovery of the last 20 years, the lost Gospel of Judas has been recovered and its translation has nearly been completed. Certified as genuine by several different antiquarian organizations, the gospel casts a very different light on the reviled apostle. Rather than being a traitor led by greed or jealousy, the gospel suggests that Judas acted on Jesus’ behalf and in accordance with his wishes. There had been some

reference to this possibility in the other gospels, but this is the first time an actual ancient document directly defended it.

The gospel is part of a 66-page codex, found sometime in the 1970s in a cave in Egypt. The document was bought and sold many times until it ended up in a safe deposit box in Hicksville, N.Y., where after 16 years it was again sold to a Zurich antiquities dealer named Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, in the year 2000.

When attempts to resell the codex failed, Nussberger-Tchacos turned it over to the Maecenas Foundation, a world-famous historical preservation and restoration group. There, in an effort organized by National Geographic, the manuscript is being translated, restored, and put up for public display and reproduction.

One of the many philosophically

interesting lines in the new gospel comes when Jesus is convincing Judas to turn him in. Referring to the other disciples, he tells Judas, “You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

According to Gnostic scholars, this means that Judas’ betrayal is directly responsible for the liberation of the spiritual being within Jesus, and for that reason he should be honored highest of all the apostles rather than reviled as “The Betrayer.”

This has some interesting religious implications, because for much of the medieval period systematic discrimination against Jews was justified under the concept of “deicide,” under which Jews were blamed for betraying and murdering Jesus. The new Gospel implies that, in fact, Judas was acting on Jesus’ orders and thus that his actions were “divinely sanctioned.”

This new Gospel, however, is unlikely to affect the modern Church in any visible way. Max Carter, Director of the Friends Center and Campus Ministry Coordinator, warned ascribing too much importance to the new Gospel and any theological message it may contain. “The Gospel of Judas, like the Gospel of Thomas, is another one of the Gnostic gospels that was cast aside and recently rediscovered,” Carter said. “See, the original Christians weren’t the one, united Christian church until the 300s-400s. There’s a great deal of diversity in the early church, which was slowly codified over 100-120 years by the various councils in the Biblical canon which reflects their idea of the real meaning of Jesus.”

The text was originally one of at least 21 known gospels. In 325 C.E., the early Roman Catholic Church limited the gospels to four – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – and many of the other gospels were destroyed. However, some were merely lost, and they continue to be discovered to this day. They shed new and interesting information, like both on the formation of the early church and on the mystery that surrounds the figure of Jesus.

The Gospel of Judas holds potential for controversy among theologians, but it is unlikely to affect the established religion in any major way. The Gospel of Judas has been known to exist, and deemed a heretical text, for a great many centuries. Biblical scholars will continue to work to determine the veracity of the document’s statements, and the gospel itself will likely be heavily analyzed, but it will not carry much theological weight.

“Just because you can date a document to early Christian times doesn’t mean it’s theologically true,” said Rod Loy, pastor of the First Assembly of God in North Little Rock, Ark., to USA Today. “Fiction’s been around for as long as Man.