In the standard telling of the Easter story, Judas Iscariot is the ultimate betrayer. He accepts thirty pieces of silver to hand Jesus over to the authorities, leading directly to the crucifixion. His name became synonymous with treachery. Dante placed him in the lowest circle of Hell.
In 2006, a long-lost manuscript resurfaced and offered a completely different version of the story. In the Gospel of Judas, Judas isn't a villain. He's the disciple Jesus trusted most.
What the Gospel of Judas says
The text — a Gnostic gospel probably written in the second century, lost for over sixteen hundred years, and rediscovered in Egypt in the 1970s — presents Jesus taking Judas aside privately and telling him what no one else knows: the only way for Jesus to free his divine spirit is to shed his material body. He asks Judas to hand him over — not as betrayal, but as liberation. Judas is the one apostle enlightened enough to do what needs to be done.
How this reframes everything
From this angle, Judas wasn't a greedy traitor who buckled under pressure. He was a loyal friend who did an agonising thing because his teacher asked him to. The grief he reportedly felt afterward — he returned the money and died shortly after — takes on a different quality. It also reframes the crucifixion itself. In Gnostic theology, death of the material body isn't a tragedy. It's a release.
Should we take it seriously?
The Gospel of Judas isn't part of the New Testament canon, and most historians treat it as a second-century theological document rather than an eyewitness account. What it does tell us is that the Jesus story was far more contested and varied in the early centuries than the eventual official version suggests. The neat narrative of villain and saviour was a choice — one made by powerful institutions, from among a much messier set of competing stories.