Is the Gospel of Judas Worth the Hype?

Touting a newly discovered, newly published Gospel is a good way to sell magazines and attract viewers; it's also a good way to make an ancient document—in this case the Gospel of Judas—sound much more exciting than it really is. (Read a translation of Judas (PDF) here.) While the Gospel of Judas is an exciting archeological discovery, it is only one of several noncanonical Gospels. With the exception of the Gospel of Thomas, scholars widely agree that none of these texts contain historically reliable information about the life of Jesus (though they tell us a great deal about the communities that produced them) and that all were likely written in the second century or later. (Thomas isn't terribly popular among scholars, but a handful feel that it includes unique sayings that can be traced back to the historical Jesus. Reputable scholar John Dominic Crossan also believes that parts of the Gospel of Peter were taken from a document produced in the middle of the first century.) Many of these Gospels are written under a pseudonym and attributed to Jesus' closest followers (Peter, James, Philip, Mary Magdalene, and so on).

(My favorite noncanonical Gospel is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, in which a bratty pre-pubescent Jesus curses and kills anyone who rubs him the wrong way before ultimately curing them or bringing them back to life.)

I am by no means an authority on the Gospel of Judas, but I guess that, like other extrabiblical Gospels, Judas tells us little or nothing about the life of Jesus. A cursory reading gives me the impression that the document is based on a tradition that did not originate among the first generations of Christians.

On the other hand, the Gospel of Judas was condemned as heresy by Irenaeus (a bishop and "church father") in the late second century. Documents are not deemed heretical (especially in antiquity) unless a large group of people consider them authoritative. Thus the idea that Judas was a good guy who did not realize that his actions would lead to Jesus' death must have been embraced by a relatively large group of people early in Christian history. In other words this document cannot teach us about Jesus, but it may provide valuable information about the early church.