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The Apocryphal Judas Revisited, John W. Welch

BYU Studies Quarterly

This article discusses the Gospel of Judas, an Early Christian text found in Egypt about 1978 and published in 2006 with much media attention. What drove the writers of the Gospel of Judas to paint the betraying Apostle in a positive light will most likely remain a mystery. One motive may have been the Gnostic obsession with finding new truths and solving mysteries. Another could have been the Gnostics' rejection of mainstream Christianity and its foundation on Apostles like Peter and Paul. Whatever their motives, the writers of the most recently discovered gospel were not the first to fabricate stories …