MOSCOW, April 7 (RIA Novosti) - The Gospel of Judas unveiled by the National Geographic Society is unlikely to sway people's religious beliefs, the Russian church said Friday.
"I do not think this text will decrease the number of believers or increase the number of skeptics," Vsevolod Chaplin, a spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church, said in comment on the publication of the controversial apocryphal Coptic book that dates back to the early centuries of Christianity.
National Geographic said on its Web site: "The Gospel of Judas gives a different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas, offering new insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus.
"Unlike the accounts in the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, in which Judas is portrayed as a reviled traitor, this newly discovered Gospel portrays Judas as acting at Jesus' request when he hands Jesus over to the authorities."
Bishop Irenaeus of Lyon criticized the Judas gospel in his treatise known as "Against Heresies" in the year 180. He linked the writing to a Gnostic sect.
The gospel was discovered in 1970 near Minya, Egypt. In 2001, a Swiss art foundation began work on a translating from Coptic of the book, which tests showed to have been copied down around 300. The manuscript will later be given to the Coptic Museum in Cairo.
