When Was the Gospel of Judas written?
As far we can tell, probably at the end of the first or early second century. So it’s clearly not written by Judas himself, or even dictated by Judas. That’s right. And most New Testament scholars would say the gospels in the New Testament — all of them attributed to disciples or followers of disciples — were probably not written by the people whose names are on them. If you say, “the Gospel according to Matthew,” you might not be pretending to be Matthew if you wrote it. You might be saying, this is the gospel the way Matthew taught it, and he was my teacher. So these are certain followers of Jesus who collected and transmitted his teaching. Does this Gospel of Judas reveal something new about early Christianity? Yes, the Gospel of Judas really has been a surprise in many ways. For one thing, there’s no other text that suggests that Judas Iscariot was an intimate, trusted disciple, one to whom Jesus revealed the secrets of the kingdom, and that conversely, the other disciples were m
