In the 1970's an ancient book, lost for about 1,700 years was rediscovered. In 2006, it was translated into English and made available through
National Geographic. It is called "the Gospel of Judas". It caused a firestorm of controversy because it does not present Judas or even Jesus the way they are depicted in the 4 canonical gospels:
Matthew,
Mark,
Luke, and
John. Judas isn't presented as a betrayer but Jesus' partner. Jesus gives Judas special knowledge that he does not share with the other 11 disciples. This information of what is said about their relationship, not to mention Jesus' very personality is really at odds with what we know from scripture. This in the very least should tell us not to take The Gospel of Judas as scripture.
However, our culture today is searching for "alternative understanding" apart from historic Christianity. There is this push to put Jesus on par with every other religious founder/leader like
Buddha or Muhammad. That is why the Gospel of Judas caught a lot of attention. It does not hold up Jesus as God, incarnate, who died to
propiate the sins of humanity and rose again physically three days later like He said He would - thereby restoring the relationship between believers and God. Jesus died in my place, paying for the sins of my life. This is the gospel according to historic Christianity and is stumbling block at bet best and an offense at worst to the unregenerate human mind. Unregenerate means someone who does not yet believe the gospel as spelled out for us in Scripture.
If you read the Gospel of Judas below you will see none of that is there. It is a gnostic text. Gnosticism was a cult that came to prominence in the 2
nd and 3rd Centuries. It was repudiated by those who held to the scripture we believe today. It bears no resemblance to Christianity despite the claim that Jesus is at its center. The text itself has no proof to ties to the historical Judas nor anyone who personally knew him or Christ. We can't date it any earlier than 150 AD unlike
Matthew,
Mark,
Luke, and
John. It was written in the Coptic language. Coptic is modified Greek so that it can be easily used to translate ancient Egyptian writing. It is good to note that many copies of gnostic texts we do have are Coptic while oldest canonical scriptures we have are in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic which are most closer to the languages spoken by the people who are depicted in scripture.
When it comes to the Bible, we do a lot of "revisionist history" in our culture. Some have suggested that Judas wasn't all that bad. That maybe he did not really understand that they were going to execute Jesus...and he thought that the he was just trying to point him out. You can't get any of that out of the canonical gospels. The Gospel of Judas takes the added step of suggesting Judas was the closest disciple to Jesus, and Judas was under orders to do what he did. It suggests
collusion not betrayal. It is so different...but a lie...that is why it caught a lot of attention and then dropped out of media consciousness. The
Gnostics were not a monolith of opinion. They widely varied. The Gospel of Thomas (which is another farce some what to shoe-horn into the canon) suggests that Mary Magdalene was the closet disciple to Jesus. Notice that there is no real
disagreements in
Matthew,
Mark,
Luke, and
John and I invite anyone to research and they will find none.
You may be asking, "How do I know that the I am not missing anything I need to know about God by not have The Gospel of Judas in my Bible?" Answer is simple: check it out. You can't make it gel with the other 66 books in general or the 4 Gospels in particular. That alone is enough to ignore it as scripture. Read it for yourself it you don't believe me.
