Newly-Released Document Offers New Take on Judas' Betrayal of Jesus

Judas Iscariot is in the news these days. 

A recently released ancient text, "The Gospel of Judas," suggests that Judas was not the greedy turncoat 2,000 years of Christianity has protrayed him to be. Rather, this new text suggests, Judas was actually a secret confident of Jesus and betrayed Jesus to the authorities at Jesus own request. The book suggests that Jesus so instructed Judas so that the prophesies of the Messiah's execution could be fulfilled. The new gospel also says that Judas was privy to Jesus' secret teachings, suggesting that Judas knew the full story, something the rest of Christianity has not yet received. 

A group of Biblical scholars have been working for 35 years to decipher and translate the pieces of the Gospel of Judas, found in the Middle East in 1970. Various testing methods show the document to have been written around the 3rd or 4th century A.D., but it appears to be a copy of an earlier document. In 180 A.D. Ireanus, bishop of Lyons, France, and among the most important of the church's early theologians, mentioned the Gospel of Judas, dismissing it as false teaching. 

The official position of all major branches of Christianity since the time of Ireanus has rejected the notion of "secret teaching" by Jesus. 

While in the Gospel of John, the author tells us that the Bible does not contain all of the teachings and words of Christ, most Christian churches hold the Bible to be infallible in that the teachings in the Bible will point to the true Christ. Clearly the Gospel of Judas makes claims that are at odds with the Judas account in the Bible's four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

According to the Bible, at some point Satan enters Judas and he makes a deal with the local authorities - he will deliver Jesus unto them in exchange for 30 pieces of silver. 

Here's a basic primer on who Judas was and what he did:

The Judas Fact File

NAME: Judas Iscariot

FATHER'S NAME: Simon

BIRTHPLACE: In Hebrew, Iscariot means " "a man of Kerioth" (or "Carioth). Kerioth is a city in Judah. Note that all 11 of the other disciples were from Galilee, where Jesus grew up.