The Gospel of Judas

The Gospel of Judas is an ancient document which has been lost for more than 1,700 years. In Egyptian coptic text, it portrays Judas not as a sinister betrayer but as Jesus' confidant, chosen to be told spiritual secrets that other apostels were not.

The gospel was found sometime in the 1970s when a farmer stumbled upon a limestone box in a remote burial cave in middle Egypt. Inside the box was a leather-bound codex - a volume of papyrus documents whose pages turned out to be the Gospel of Judas. The journey of this document spins like a Indiana Jones adventure. First comes the discovery in a cave, then thievery and smuggling.

Eventually, the document reappeared in the 1980s and it was turned over to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art headed by Mario Roberty. His foundation sold the rights to exhibit and publish the manuscript to the National Geographic Society for $1 million. A Swiss foundation understook restoration, and translators were set to work with funding from America's Waitt Institute and the National Geographic.

Responding to this discovery, Pope Benedict XVI used his Holy Thursday homily at the Vatican to recount the Biblical portrayal of Jesus by Judas, calling the apostle a double-crosser for whom "money was more important than communion with Jesus, more important than God and his love".

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lost gospel