The Gospel of Judas has just been discovered - in Egypt - I believe. This was one of those controversial gnostic gospels belonging to one of the early versions of Christianity that eventually lost out to the one we have now. It was long rumored that Judas had his own Gospel and you'll probably not be so surprised to find out that he doesn't come out as such a bad fellow in this one. It makes sense. If there were a Gospel of Steve I can guarantee that I wouldn't come across as such a bad fellow either.
In the Gospel of Judas, Judas actually does not betray Christ for the thirty pieces of silver, but rather he does so under explicit directions from Jesus himself. Since prophecy had said that Jesus must be crucified and so they wanted to make sure that it happened it was arranged that Judas would do it. The manuscript itself is in pretty rough shape and has a bunch of gaps, but I guess it's clear enough what happened.
There are many, many different versions of Gospels and ancient Christian writing which disagree thoroughly with canonical writing. In fact, because every word written back in those days had to be copied by a scribe there are no two versions of anything that actually agree with each other, because every single scribe messed something up at some point or other. The Canon of Christianity were not determined by exhaustive searches to see which ones were most historically accurate, but rather which ones agreed most with the winner's theology. And if they didn't - they were rewritten.
Some of these versions read like bad soap operas - you know, Jesus faked his own death, he actually had a secret family, or (my favorite) it was actually his twin brother that was crucified. The thing is: these all came from the second, third, or fourth centuries so they aren't recent inventions at all. And how do we know which really was right?
I like to believe that Jesus faked his own death, like in the DaVinci code. And, yes, there is evidence of that. Of course, Holy Blood, Holy Grail does a swell job of making the point, but I just think about the Gospel stories of Jesus sightings after his crucifixion - his body disappears and then he's seen up and about talking to different people showing off his nail-holes. If that happened in modern times people would think that he hadn't died at all. Just like Elvis never really died at all. Also, I happened to come across a citation in the Twelve Caesers (by Suetonius) where it's mentioned that the Jews were rioting in Rome under the instigation of Christ under the reign of Claudius, when we all know he was supposed to have been executed under Tiberius.
Okay. That's getting a bit too academic.
Now, I've got to say I was a little bit bugged that the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail had sued Dan Brown, the author of The DaVinci Code for stealing his ideas from them. Excuse me, boys, you're telling everybody that the stuff in your book - Holy Blood, Holy Grail is history, how on Earth can people steal what you're saying is the true account of what really happened?
Well, they can't. And I think the jury ruled correctly on this one.
But by all means buy and read Holy Blood, Holy Grail. It's very convincing if only because it puts the times into a commonsense perspective. Like, the point that Jesus probably did have a family because it would have been extremely weird for the times for him to have been thirty and never married - or even dating, for crying out loud. Back in those times, in that place, every marriage was an arranged one and they married young - fourteen for males.
As far as the Gospel of Judas ... I don't know. I think Judas probably couldn't have been such a bad guy. Because what was his motivation, really, to betray Jesus? Why would he do such a thing? It's not like he could have taken over the organization if he got the Lord out of the way. Nobody was saying that Judas was next in line to be messiah. No, it was definitely in his interest to keep Christ fit and healthy - unless as the Judas Gospel says he was told to go to the Romans.
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