It seems like every year right before Easter the mainstream media highlights a major "new discovery" which discredits the central Christian beliefs about the betrayal, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. One year it was an ostensible Christian theologian proclaiming "the death of God" In other years it has been academics "proving" that Christ was only a man and/or that the Resurrection never happened. Of course, this is the year of the "gnostic gospels". The best-selling novel, The DaVinci Code, is about to be made into a movie. The novel seeks to make the case that Christ didn’t die on the cross but instead married Mary Magdalene. All of this is supposed to be proved by the discovery of a "gnostic gospel".

Thus, it is appropriate that a new "gnostic gospel" is headlined this Easter season which seeks to rehabilitate the apostle Judas who betrayed Jesus by turning Him over to the high priests for thirty pieces of silver. Leave it to the Dallas Morning News to hype this "new" revelation of the "Gospel of Judas" in a front page story in Friday’s paper.

While the News has totally ignored the story of the UT professor who has called for the extermination of 90% of the human race, it prominently features on the top left hand side of its front page a one-sided story by Randolph Schmidt of the AP highlighting this "new discovery" of the "Gospel of Judas". The article, in effect, suggests that this new gospel should be taken at face value, and its writings accepted as credible.

First of all, this is old news which has previously been reported on by Richard Ostling of the AP in a much more objective fashion. In an article entitled "Expert Doubts ‘Gospel of Judas’ Revelation", Ostling quotes America’s leading expert on "ancient religious texts from Egypt," James Robinson, as describing the new manuscript a "dud" as far as discovering anything new about Judas.

This so-called "Gospel of Judas" was apparently written long after the other four gospels which are accepted by Christians as the word of God. These "gnostic gospels" were part of the writings of a heretical sect known as the Cainites, and the "gospel of Judas" was believed to have been written somewhere between 120 and 170 a.d. by someone (obviously) other than Judas. This phony Gospel was attacked as a fraud by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons around A.D. 180. Again the previous AP story by Richard Ostling is illuminating:

Surely, the editors of the News could have discovered all of this themselves since they did make reference in a sidebar on page 2 to Bishop Irenaeus’ denunciation of the "Gospel of Judas". But, that didn’t stop the News from giving front page coverage to a highly questionable claim that the Gospel of Judas should be included alongside the Gospels of Matthews, Mark, Luke and John.

The Houston Chronicle had a much more balanced story on the controversy. It quoted two biblical scholars who were not impressed with the discovery:

It makes on wonder who is making editorial and news decisions down at the Dallas Morning News these days.

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