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Gospel of Judas at Odds with Bible

By John Jessup
Washington Correspondent

CBN.com – (WASHINGTON) - The National Geographic Society has made public the English translation of a document it is calling the "Gospel of Judas."

The text centers on Judas Iscariot, the man the Bible tells us betrayed Jesus. But the account departs drastically from the commonly-held picture of the disgraced disciple.

It was the first public glimpse of the document, which is verified as being 1,700 years old. The manuscript dates back to the second century and is sure to set off debate.

Unlike the gospels of the Bible, this account offers a very different picture of the relationship between Judas and Jesus, even suggesting that Judas betrayed Jesus only after Jesus asked him to do it.

It is not known who wrote this text, but in it, Jesus privately tells Judas, “You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me.”

While it is being called a major archaeological find, early Christian leaders discounted the text centuries ago, and it is not likely to change Christian belief today, either.

Once the final work is complete, the documents will return to Egypt, the country in which they were originally found.

One scholar from Asbury Theological Seminary tells The New York Times that the documents tell us nothing about the historical Jesus or the historical Judas.

But they do tell us a lot about people who were labeled heretics, even in their own day.

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