"The Lost Gospel" reads like a suspense thriller at times, tracing the odd and admittedly remarkable story of how the codex was preserved and eventually published. Those familiar with the story of the Dead Sea scrolls and the documents of the Nag Hammadi library will recognize significant parallels in the saga of how the texts and manuscripts were found and eventually made available for scholarly review and publication.

The Gnostic character of the text is immediately evident. In his supposed conversations with Judas, Jesus speaks in Gnostic categories such as "aeons" and an "eternal realm." Judas is identified as the "thirteenth spirit" who was appointed by God to be the agent of releasing Jesus from the physical body in which He was trapped in the incarnation.

When Judas speaks of a vision and asks for its interpretation, Jesus answers: "Judas, your star has led you astray." Jesus continues: "No person of mortal birth is worthy to enter the house you have seen, for that place is reserved for the holy. Neither the sun nor the moon will rule there, nor the day, but the holy will abide there always, in the eternal realm with the holy angels. Look, I have explained to you the mysteries of the kingdom and I have taught you about the error of the stars; and ... sent it ... on the twelve aeons."

The concept of secret and mysterious knowledge was central to Gnostic sects. The Gospel of Judas purports to reveal conversations between Jesus and Judas that had been kept secret from the rest of humanity. The Gnostics prized their secret knowledge, and taught a profound dualism between the material and spiritual worlds. They understood the material world, including the entire cosmos, to be a trap for the spiritual world. In essence, the Gnostics sought to escape the material world and to enter the world of spirit.

Accordingly, the most revealing statement in the entire text of The Gospel of Judas records Jesus saying to Judas, "But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man that clothes me." In other words, Judas would perform a service to Jesus by betraying Him to those who would then crucify Him, liberating Jesus from the physical body and freeing Him as spirit. As the editors of The Gospel of Judas indicate in a footnote, "The death of Jesus, with the assistance of Judas, is taken to be the liberation of the spiritual person within."

Needless to say, this is in direct conflict with the Christian Gospel and the New Testament. The consistent witness of the New Testament is that Jesus came in order to die for sinners -- willingly accepting the cross and dying as the substitutionary sacrifice for sin.

This redemptive action is completely missing from The Gospel of Judas. For that reason, the text was rejected by early Christian leaders. Writing about the year 180, Irenaeus, a major Christian figure among the early church fathers, identified the text now known as The Gospel of Judas as heretical. In his foreword to "The Lost Gospel," Bart Ehrman, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explains, "This gospel was about the relationship between Jesus and Judas, and indicated that Judas didn't actually betray Jesus, but did what Jesus wanted him to do, because Judas was the one who really knew the truth, as Jesus wanted it communicated."