Gospel according to Judas | Salon Books

Just in time for Easter!

As almost every child knows, Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus, selling his life for 30 pieces of silver. If there's an arch villain in the story of Jesus, it's Judas Iscariot. Or is it? The newly discovered Gospel of Judas suggests that Judas was, in fact, the favorite disciple, the only one Jesus trusted to carry out his final command to hand him over to the Romans.

Rumors about the gospel have circulated for centuries. Early church fathers called it a "very dangerous, blasphemous, horrendous gospel."

The article includes an interview with Elaine Pagels, an historian the National Geographic Society hired to study the book.

Salon: So it's clearly not written by Judas himself, or even dictated by Judas.

Pagels: That's right. And most New Testament scholars would say the gospels in the New Testament -- all of them attributed to disciples or followers of disciples -- were probably not written by the people whose names are on them. If you say, "the Gospel according to Matthew," you might not be pretending to be Matthew if you wrote it. You might be saying, this is the gospel the way Matthew taught it, and he was my teacher. So these are certain followers of Jesus who collected and transmitted his teaching.

To the best of my knowledge, there is still no mention of chocolate or bunnies, nor Goldfish with Lincoln Logs.