For the beginning of the story, we need to step back in history nearly a thousand years before the writing of this so-called Gospel, to the very beginnings of Western culture as we know it.  The origins of our outlook on life are to be found in ancient Greece, where the first religious war known to Western history was fought.

On one side stood the famous gods of Homer and the Greek myths--Zeus, Athena, Apollo and the rest.  You'll remember them from your junior high literature classes.  Stronger than mortals but just as fallen and flawed, they resided on Mt. Olympus and ruled the elements of the known universe.  Thunder was attributed to Zeus, storms to Neptune, and so on.

The other side of the combat is far less famous today.  The "mystery cults" were just what their name implies--they were secretive societies, formed around the worship of gods which controlled the elements of daily life.  For instance, Dionysus was the barbaric god of the vine and Demeter was the goddess of the countryside.  Weird rituals were used to achieve unity between the worshippers and their gods.

Dividing soul and body
Within this strange world, perhaps the strangest sect was the followers of Orpheus, a legendary singer and philosopher.  Orpheus taught that our "souls" are immortal gods imprisoned in our bodies.  Your soul is released from its material prison through rituals and knowledge of magical formulas.  If you know the right words to say and think, you can free your soul to return to its pre-incarnate state.  Orpheus held the only key to the spiritual jailhouse.  Soon, everyone would want to borrow it.

To make a long story too short, the Orphic cult became enormously popular in southern Italy, where a philosopher named Pythagoras had settled.  Around 530 B.C., he established his Brotherhood.  He taught that the intellect makes the soul divine, and that mathematics are the best way to liberate the spirit.  His view of the world (called a cosmogony) influenced Plato, and Plato the world.

Plato is the most famous thinker of antiquity, and for good reason.  His views have influenced nearly everything we think and do.  As related to our subject, his perspective was clear and cogent.  He believed that a world of eternal realities exists, and called them the "Forms" or "Ideas."  They are separate from the world known to our senses.  The world you and I can see is only a "shadow" of this perfect world.

How did it come to be?  The world of Forms cannot have material substance, or it would be imperfect and flawed.  But it spawned a divine craftsman who formed the material universe.  These materials are the source of evil in the world, the rusty nails and warped two-by-fours of our lives.

Those who followed Plato's worldview refined his ideas over succeeding generations.  "Neo-Platonists" posited intermediary beings between the world of Form or Mind and the world we inhabit.  The Spirit of God breathes the divine spark into us, forming our souls.  The whole point of life is freeing them from our bodies, usually through ascetic rituals and knowledge of correct formulas and ideas.  Salvation comes through education, not spiritual repentance and forgiveness.

Such was the world which the Christian gospel encountered as it spread from its Jewish home.  To recap: the soul is good, the body bad.  This material world is to be avoided and escaped.  Through possession of right knowledge and use of right formulas, our souls can be purified and returned to their rightful home.  How would the message of the New Testament make sense in such a culture?

Merging the Greek and biblical worlds
Most missionaries and theologians tried to show the Greek world where it was wrong--that God is one, that he made all that is, and that trusting his Son is the means of salvation (cf. Acts 17, where Paul presents the orthodox message to the Greek culture in a very compelling way).  But some sought to merge the two worldviews, to modify the Christian message so as to make it consistent with the Greek mindset.  "Gnosticism" was the result.

"Gnostic" comes from the Greek word gnosis, "knowledge."  There were many kinds of Gnostics, just as there are many kinds of Christians or Muslims today.  But they shared a common belief that the soul is good, the body bad, and that use of right ideas and formulas could purify and liberate the soul.

To persuade others of their mindset, the Gnostics took to writing so-called "gospels" or lives of Jesus.  The Gnostics were not well known in their culture, and were understandably unpopular with orthodox Christians.  And so they attributed their gospels to biblical figures, hoping to use such connections to increase their readership.  By the mid-second century they had produced the Gnostic Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and so on.  Irenaeus and other orthodox Christians showed the world the errors and illogic of the Gnostic version of Christianity.  Over time the movement died out.

In his monumental Against Heresies (dated AD 180), Irenaeus mentioned among these Gnostic books the Gospel of Judas.  This is the only reference we had to the book until events of recent years and the announcements made last week.  After describing in detail the Gnostic heresy regarding God and his creation, Irenaeus states,

They declare that Judas the traitor was thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth as no others did, accomplished the mystery of betrayal; by him all things, both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion.  They produce a fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.31.1; in The Ante-Nicene Fathers).

Irenaeus and others gave us a full account of the Gnostic heresy.  But since its demise, the movement held little interest for Christians and theologians until December of 1945, when the Nag Hammadi Library was discovered in Egypt.  Some workers digging for fertilizer came upon the largest repository of Coptic (ancient Egyptian) manuscripts of the Gnostic movement.  This Library contained fifth-century copies of 13 leather-bound books, some 700 pages in total.

The discovery brought the Gnostics back to modern attention, and spurred much conjecture as regards the possibility that "lost books of the Bible" had been discovered.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The Gnostics were never part of traditional Christianity; their "gospels" were written as much as a century after the biblical lives of Christ and were never considered to be Scripture by the larger Christian movement.

The Gnostics and The DaVinci Code
Nonetheless, Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The DaVinci Code has confused millions on the subject:

Fortunately for historians...some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive.  The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert.  And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi.  In addition to telling the true Grail story, these documents speak of Christ's ministry in very human terms. . . . The scrolls highlight glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications, clearly confirming that the modern Bible was compiled and edited by men who possessed a political agenda--to promote the divinity of the man Jesus Christ and use His influence to solidify their own power base.

Mr. Brown later calls the Nag Hammadi and Dead Sea scrolls "the earliest Christian records."

For starters, let's understand that the Dead Sea Scrolls were in no sense "Christian records."  They contained only the Old Testament and other writings.  Mr. Brown completely fabricated that reference.  And let's note that the Nag Hammadi Library gave us no material related to the biblical text.  It contained nothing which would "highlight glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications" in the Bible we have.  Rather, it held only Gnostic literature composed a century after the biblical books were written.

Before the recent announcements, we already possessed a thorough knowledge of the Gnostic movement and its theological heresy.  We knew that a Gospel of Judas was written by the Gnostics to advance their agenda.  While we had no record of the actual book, its existence was irrelevant to our understanding of biblical Christianity and its earliest heretical enemy.