With the recent publication of the Gospel of Judas (it had supposedly been discovered decades ago) and the ongoing semi-controversy of Dan Brown’s secret code, it could be observed that it is obscure textual evidence and historical documents, not secular modernity, that poses the greatest threat to traditional Christianity.

Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker sums of the newest gospel succinctly:

[T]his “Gospel of Judas” is, in one way, simply another of the Gnostic Gospels, like those found at Nag Hammadi, in Egypt, sixty years ago: unorthodox Christian documents, written by, or at least circulated within, communities of eccentric faith that flourished in the first and second centuries. These Gospels play with a series of variations on Christian belief: the irredeemable corruption of the world we live in, the hidden truth that the Old Testament God who created it was an ignorant or malevolent demiurge, and Jesus’ essence as a being of pure spirit, an emissary from another and higher realm. What makes this second-century Gnostic Gospel different is, perhaps, the extreme aggression of its heresy; it represents “Christianity turned on its head,” in the words of one commentator, the religious historian Bart D. Ehrman, by making the villain in the story the hero.

Christopher Hitchens, of Slate, harrumphs over the new gospel in his characteristically anti-religious way:

Nonetheless, the idea of a sacred Judas always seemed rational to me, at least in Christian terms. The New Testament tells us firmly that Jesus went to Jerusalem at Passover to die and to fulfill certain ancient prophecies by doing so. How could any agent of this process, witting or unwitting, be acting other than according to the divine will? It did seem odd to me that the Jewish elders and the Romans required someone to identify Jesus for them, since according to the story he was already a rather well-known figure, but that was a secondary objection

Not only does the text paint Judas in an entirely new light—the closest confidant of Christ and a benevolent facilitator of the Crucifixion, and thus the salvation of mankind—it also introduces some, conventionally speaking, rather obscure theology (See here and here for the details about the realm of Barbelo and other juicy tidbits). Strange stuff to conventional Christians, but pretty well established Gnostic philosophy.

What should be underlined here, as far as how present-day Christians should react, is the difference between theology and ethics. Whether Christ was divine or human or a little bit of both really doesn’t inform whether or not people follow his message of charity, humility, and kindness. Does the fact that He came from Barbelo or walked among us as a mere mortal really determine the ethical validity of the Sermon on the Mount or His other inducement to the moral life?

It doesn’t and—for me, an atheist—who cares? The theological mumbo jumbo in the gospels can’t detract from their moral wisdom that two thousand years later still fits with our ethical intuitions (See the Jefferson Bible for a similar idea). The parables and lessons of Christ still are relevant, no matter if he came from Barbelo or was just some uppity Jewish carpenter in first century Palestine who pissed off the Romans and Temple authorities.