Judas would make a good saint. His character represents everything that religion stands for: weakness, greed, and betrayal. Not to mention his Jewish hertiage. The fact that is coming from German's is so typical it's almost humourous.

A fine choice, indeed.

RaHoWa!

Whatever they tell you is good for you on TV is bad.

I took one riffle through the Gospel of Judas, and thought it looked like bunk... pretty much as this guy below describes. I think this site was called revneal.org:

"...The Gnostic approach to Jesus and to his betrayal by Judas requires a denial of the reality of Jesus' death (if Jesus never really lived as a human being, it was impossible for him to really die), a denial of the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement (if Jesus didn't really die, then there was no atonement made for the sins of the world), and a denial of the efficacy of the bodily resurrection (if Jesus could never actually die, there was no need for him to be raised). Clearly, the implications of each denial would serve to undercut the very foundations of canonical Christian orthodoxy. Far more than just a denial of some fine point of doctrine, this is a repudiation of the entire Gospel as articulated in scripture by the four Evangelists and interpreted and applied by Paul, Peter, and John in their canonical Epistles.

Entirely aside from the theological difficulties that I have with gnosticism in general, and the claims of the gospel of Judas in particular, I also have significant historical issues with both the claims of the manuscript and with the provenance of its source. Oh, I have no doubt that it is a valid ancient Gnostic gospel dating to about 300-340 AD. Having looked at images of the coptic text, and being somewhat familiar with the paleographical dating scheme for Coptic literature, I am convinced that this manuscript can be localized to the same time-period and, indeed, the same community as that which drafted most of the manuscripts found at Nag Hammaidi in 1945. Radio carbon dating of the manuscript also confirms this relative date. In additional to textual and paleographic issues, it contains many theological characteristics that place it square in the midst of the Nag Hammadi-type of coptic manuscripts, and as such it reflects similar historical roots. And, finally, based upon its actual literary contents, there is no reason to doubt that it is a later copy of the same Gnostic gospel of Judas with which Bishop Irenaeus was familiar. In other words, the gospel of Judas probably dates to the period in history immediately following the initial collection of the canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and their first circulation; this would be at least a full generation following the close of the apostolic age ... or, about 125 - 150 AD. It was written by the Gnostics of Northern Africa in order to combat the negative, vilified image of Judas as related in the canonical gospels, as well as to further undercut the doctrinal claims of the Church regarding the death of Jesus as a substitutionary atonement for the sins of the world. As a matter of historical veracity and literary analysis, it is a work of religious fiction told to advance a theological agenda.

Some might say that the same is true of the canonical gospels, but unlike the Gnostic gospels, the canonicals date much earlier ... between 65/68 AD (for Mark, the earliest) and 85/90 AD (for John, the latest) ... and were written by either the disciples or by those who knew the disciples, based upon information garnered from the disciples, and from even earlier works written by the disciples. While the canonical gospels were, indeed, written to advance the theological agenda of the apostolic-era church -- i.e., to present Jesus in a certain interpretive light -- each gospel does so from within the context of historical sources. The gospel of Judas shares none of this historicity while, on the other hand, being heavily influenced by a theological movement far removed from the perspective of the disciples, Paul, and the rest of first century Christianity.

The gospel of Judas merits attention as a source for understanding the teachings of gnosticism and as an illustration for how such heretical Christian groups were able to compose interesting pictures of Jesus to serve their own doctrinal ends. But as a source for reconstructing the historical Jesus, it is worthless. The picture of Jesus it conveys, the dialogs that it places on Jesus' lips, and the message all of this communicates is void of any degree of veracity as far as history or true Christian theology goes. Nevertheless, I suspect that the gospel of Judas is about to become the new darling-child of the "Jesus Seminar" scholars and, hence, of those who (for whatever reason) only see orthodoxy in a negative light. This "darling-child" position has been held by the gospel of Thomas for about 50 years, even though it is quite misogynistic in character (far MORE so than the canonicals); since the gospel of Judas contains an idea, and paints a picture of Jesus, both of which are particularly destructive to the fundamental tenets of traditional catholic/orthodox Christianity, I suspect that it will take over the lead as being the most popular textual resource for non-traditional, academic hit-pieces on Christian orthodoxy."