So Judas is a bad guy, after all

Sometime ago, National Geographic came out with a sensationalistic story arguing that the Gospel of Judas, a Gnostic text dating from the 3rd century A.D., reveals that Judas wasn't actually a dirty, rotten betrayer of Jesus. As the "Lost Gospel of Judas" website says, "this newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus' request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities."

Like most sensationalistic, media-driven stories about new Jesus "discoveries", this one is turning out to be way over-blown. In an interesting NY Times op/ed piece, Rice University biblical scholar April D. DeConick explains several serious translation errors on the part of the National Geographic team that led to significant misinterpretations of the text - some of them the exact opposite of what the gospel actually means. (Read Prof. DeConick's article here.) For instance, the gospel, while Gnostic in flavor and not friendly to an orthodox Catholic cosmology, nevertheless calls Judas a demon who is separated from the holy generation of Jesus' followers and who is informed of the mysteries of the kingdom only so he can endure suffering appropriate to his crime. All of this, properly revealed by Prof. DeConick's translation, runs counter to the version National Geographic put forward.

I haven't read the National Geographic issue on the Gospel of Judas, nor have I read the gospel itself. I've just got too many other things on my list. But I do appreciate it when a responsible scholar speaks up to correct the hasty mistakes of a media source desperate to make a buck off of sensationalistic reporting.