April 10, 2006 — History's great betrayer Judas Iscariot was actually a loyal disciple who simply followed Jesus's orders, according to a manuscript which has resurfaced after nearly 1,700 years.
Made in 300 A.D. in Coptic script on 13 sheets of papyrus, both front and back, the document is believed to be a translation of the original Gospel of Judas, written in Greek the century before.
Presented on Thursday by the National Geographic Society at a news conference in Washington, D.C., the Gospel of Judas was discovered in the Egyptian desert near Beni Masar in the 1970s.
After appearing on the Egyptian antiquities market, it circulated in Europe and in the United States. It then moldered in a safe-deposit box at a bank in Hicksville, N.Y., for 16 years before being bought in 2000 by a Zurich dealer.
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The fragile document was restored, authenticated, and translated. It will ultimately be returned to Egypt and housed in the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
"This is a dramatic discovery, the most significant biblical find in 60 years, " said Terry Garcia, National Geographic Society Executive Vice President for Mission Programs. "It enhances our knowledge of the history and theological viewpoints of the early Christian period."
The original Gospel of Judas was probably written by a group known as the Gnostics, members of a 2nd Century A.D. breakaway Christian sect, who gave a positive value to all the negative figures in Christian scriptures.
Indeed, they believed that Judas was the most enlightened of the Twelve Apostles.
The first known reference to a Gospel of Judas was in around 180 A.D., when bishop Irenaeus of Lyon condemned it as heretical in a treatise.
Irenaeus established that there should be just four approved Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
According to the four official gospels, Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for "30 pieces of silver," identifying him with a kiss in front of Roman soldiers.
A Different Tale
But the Gnostic account tells a completely different story: Judas betrayed Jesus at Jesus' request.
By enabling the crucifixion, Judas made it possible for Jesus to save mankind from its sins, said the manuscript.
"These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse — and fascinating — the early Christian movement really was," Elaine Pagels, a professor of religion at Princeton University, said.
The text begins by saying that it is the "secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot during a week, three days before he celebrated Passover."
It goes on to describe Judas as Jesus' closest friend. The key passage comes when Jesus tells Judas, "you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me."
According to Rodolphe Kasser, one of the world's preeminent Coptic scholars, who translated the document, the passage means that Jesus needed someone to free him from his human body.
He preferred that "this liberation be done by a friend rather than by an enemy," Kasser said.
Authenticated on five fronts — radiocarbon dating, ink analysis, infrared photography, contextual evidence and paleographic evidence — the text has been confirmed to be a genuine Coptic manuscript.
But according to Robert Eisenman, Professor of Middle East religions and archaeology at California State University Long Beach and author of the best-selling "James the Brother of Jesus," the main issue is not to establish that the document is a genuine Coptic text.
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"The main point is whether there was ever a 'Judas' as the Gospels portray him or, for that matter, a real 'Jesus,'" he said.
"This manuscript, as well as the Gospels, has nothing to do with real history per se. They are rather pieces of Hellenizing creative writing. Few of the characters mentioned in the Gospels are verifiable as real persons rather than 'Mystery Religion' prop-pieces," Eisenman told Discovery News.
According to the scholar, the whole character of 'Judas Iscariot' is generated largely out of whole cloth.
He is a symbolic character, meant to be both hateful and hated and, as such, "he has been eminently successful both religiously and historically."
"It is yet another deleterious case of literature being mistaken for history. People should come to terms with the almost completely literary and ahistorical character of a large number of figures of the kind of this 'Judas', including 'Joseph of Arimathaea,' 'Mary Magdalene,' and many others," Eisenman said.
"In the process, they should admit the historical error of malevolent-intentioned caricature and move forward into the amelioration of rehabilitation. If this Gospel does anything, at any rate, it at least moves this process forward," Eisenman said.
