The Gospel of Judas

This is too cool for school:

Judas Iscariot, vilified as Christ's betrayer, acted at Jesus' request in turning him over to the authorities who crucified him, according to a 1,700-year-old copy of the "Gospel of Judas" unveiled on Thursday.

The Judas gospel shows the reviled disciple as the only one in Jesus' inner circle who understood his desire to shed his earthly body. "He's the good guy in this portrayal," said Bart Ehrman, a religion professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "He's the only apostle who understands Jesus....

"The idea in this gospel is that Jesus, like all of us, is a trapped spirit, who is trapped in a material body," Ehrman said. "And salvation comes when we escape the materiality of our existence, and Judas is the one who makes it possible for him to escape by allowing for his body to be killed."

The ideas are not new to us, a bit of Gnosticism mixed with The Last Temptation of Christ, but it's great to see something like this come to light for the first time in 1,700 years.