Revealed: The Gospel of Judas

By Linda Morris
April 7, 2006 - 8:08AM

A 1700-year-old papyrus manuscript suggests history has misjudged the greatest villain of Christianity: Judas was under orders when he betrayed Jesus.

The only known surviving copy of the lost gospel of Judas portrays the treacherous disciple as a loyal deputy acting at the behest of his leader.

In fact, Judas sold Jesus out as an act of obedience not treachery, thereby fulfilling his theological destiny. Key passages from the third or fourth century Coptic manuscript were released by its publisher, the National Geographic Society, last night, a week before Easter, the holiest time of the Christian calendar.

The society, which is rumoured to have purchased publishing rights for more than $1 million, plans magazine articles, television specials and book deals amid concerns about the ethics of ancient acquisitions.

The society's panel of scholars has submitted the document to radiocarbon dating, ink analysis and spectral imaging and has declared it authentic.

The gospel of Judas is believed to be the work of gnostic Christians, a stream of Christian thinking declared heretical by early church fathers. It is a companion text to ancient scriptures unearthed in 1945, which have formed the basis of some assertions in Dan Brown's controversial bestseller The Da Vinci Code.

Australian biblical scholars said the document would be likely to provide a window on early Christianity, but did not threaten Christian teachings because while it was old, it did not date to the time of the Bible's Gospels.

"The text bears witness that to some people Judas was a misunderstood character," said Dr Malcolm Choat, a specialist in early Christianity at Macquarie University. "It fills in the picture but it doesn't make the picture."

But the Coptic Orthodox Church dismissed the document as "non-Christian babbling resulting from a group of people trying to create a false 'amalgam' between the Greek mythology and Far East religions with Christianity They were written by a group of people who were aliens to the main Christian stream of the early Christianity," the church's theological leader, Metropolitan Bishoy, said.

"These texts are neither reliable nor accurate Christian texts, as they are historically and logically alien to the main Christian thinking and philosophy of the early and present Christians."

The Judas gospel is a third or fourth century Coptic manuscript discovered in the desert near El Minya, Egypt, in the 1970s. It was sold to a dealer in illicit antiquities and languished in a safe deposit box in the US before falling into the hands of a Swiss foundation.

The Bible says Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans for a purse of 30 pieces of silver in the Garden of Gethsemane. He later hung himself.

According to limited extracts of the gospel of Judas offered to the Herald, Jesus explains Judas his role in the crucifixion: "You will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."

In other key passages released to the public, Jesus confides: "Step away from the others and I shall tell you the mysteries of the kingdom. It is possible for you to reach it, but you will grieve a great deal."

For his role Judas would be despised by the other disciples: "You will be cursed by the other generations and you will come to rule them." The gospel ends: "They [the arresting party] approached Judas and said to him. 'What are you doing? You are Jesus's disciple'. Judas answered them as they wished. And he received some money and handed over to him.

As well as the gospel of Judas, the newly discovered 66-page document also contained a text titled James, a letter of Peter to Philip, and a fragment of a fourth text scholars are provisionally calling Book of Allogenes.