There's more to the story of Judas?

It sounds to me like we're making progress. At least now we have skeptics looking deeper into Christianity. Of course I'm talking about the latest archeological find that we just heard about: "The gospel of Judas". I'm encouraged that Jesus is still getting front page attention, although it does seem like a backward compliment sometimes, doesn't it?

The latest word (as of this morning's newspaper) is that scholars have decoded the ancient coptic manuscript of Judas Iscariot's story, and according to the book, Jesus personally asked Judas to betray him, so that the trial and crucifixion would take place--I guess that Jesus must have felt that if he didn't secure someone himself, then maybe the prophecy wouldn't have been fulfilled, or something like that.

Could this be true? I mean, is it possible that Jesus would have resorted to taking this event into his own hands to secure the Easter event taking place? I don't think so--and let me tell you why.

First of all, I'm not a scholar or a theologian. In order to assume those titles, one would have spent WAY more time hitting the books than I did. My specialty isn't ancient languages, or archeology either.

Here are some questions and my thoughts:

1. Is the docutment authentic? Yes--it sure seems to be. It has been verified as being written during the 1st century, somewhere around 300 A.D. It should be mentioned that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all penned as early as 55 A.D, and the last one being written no later than 90 A.D.
   
2. Who wrote this? No one knows. It was originally written in Greek, but was translated into Coptic by a group known as 'Gnostics'. Their theology is WAY different from the one that Jesus taught.
3. Should this matter to me and my belief? Not really. The fact that an ancient manuscript was found that contradicts what the Bible says isn't new. As a matter of fact, according to some 'scholars', there are as many as 21 'gospels' that have been identified over the years. (one of them is actually the centerpiece for the controversy over The DaVinci Code) The ones who didn't get canonized into the Bible were found to be wanting for accuracy, credibility, and harmony with the rest of the books of the Bible. This isn't unlike how we put things together to make sense of events today. If you were reading a book that had 67 chapters in it, and all but one made sense together, but one of the chapters totally contradicted the other 66...well, you tell me.
4. Why don't you think that this gospel of Judas could be the way it really happened? Judas didn't write it. It was originally written some 120 years AFTER Judas and Jesus were gone. On top of that, who told Judas' story? If you believe the Bible, shortly after Judas betrayed Christ, he killed himself--when would he have told his story? And to whom? Would he have been in a right state of mind to tell an accurate story like this while he was contemplating suicide? One more thing--it's not in the Bible. There's no coroborrating story to be found to this gospel.
   

We're making progress! Jesus is still on the front page of our newspapers--2000 years later.