judas was not the evil figure, this nasty traitor that we ve often depicted him as in the history of christianity. judas, the quintessential traitor, is actually the hero. this is hugely shocking and stunning. the gospel of judas totally changes the relationship between jesus and judas. now judas is not a traitor but a trusted ally chosen by jesus to help him fulfill god s divine plan. then in 2007, another biblical scholar starts to doubt this interpretation.
now new evidence rewrites the story of jesus and judas: a lost book of secret knowledge condemned as heresy 1,800 years ago. it s just horrific, a terrifying scene. can fresh clues help reveal the true meaning of the gospel of judas? judas has been one of the greatest villains in human history. judas has become the symbol
the gospel uses the familiar scene of the last supper to paint a very different picture of judas and jesus from that in the bible. in the gospels of the new testament, jesus is a mentor. he s gentle to his disciples, shall we say. the jesus that we meet in the gospel of judas is a little different from the jesus that we know from the pages of the new testament. he s a much more mysterious character who speaks in riddles that are so difficult to understand that a lot of the time, we re left scratching our heads when we read it. let the strong one among you bring forth the perfect human. but the character of judas is also completely different. the other disciples fail to understand jesus and and only
harmoniously. there are dissenters. there were people who felt that things had gotten off on the wrong track. the gospel of judas suggests that church leadership is is mistaken, is more diabolic than divine. so controversial is the gospel of judas that in 1890 a.d., the bishop of leone declares it heresy. i can easily imagine the people throwing this text out as being heretical. if you were a member of the orthodoxy in the 2nd century, and you read this text, i can imagine you would be pretty upset. it s a pretty scathing indictment of your beliefs and what you re all about. suppressed by the church, the gospel of judas lies buried for nearly 2 millennia, but history does not forgive judas or forget his fate.
i began to do my own work translating the gospel of judas, and what i began noticing is that there were certain selections of words in translation that didn t reflect the actual coptic language. and so this caused me to really sit down and take a second look at this text and start to ask questions. what do we really have here? april deconick has come to geneva to the bodmer foundation, now keepers of the gospel of judas, to see the actual papyrus for the very first time. oh, my gosh. look at that. just as judas is finally being rehabilitated, april deconick takes a look at this papyrus and finds, wait a minute. it s not saying what we think it is saying. so there are mistakes in the