To follow up to my earlier posting on Gospel of Judas -- where I mentioned that gnostics were fond of putting their beliefs into the mouths of famous people -- I quote Ben Witherington (underlines mine):

[The Gospel of Judas] is just another example of the phenomenon known as pseudonymity -- documents with falsely attributed authors -- other such examples are the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, The Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Philip and so on.

Pseudonymity was a practice of those who did not have enough authority themselves to create sacred texts and so borrowed the name of an earlier illustrious or in this case notorious figure to create the air of an authentic eyewitness document. It needs to be said that this practice was very clearly denounced not only by church fathers like Tertullian and Ireneaus and Hippolytus who tell us about monks and priests being defrocked for dreaming up such documents, but in the wider Greco-Roman world there were plenty of persons who deplored this practice and saw it as a form of deception and fraud. For example, Cicero and Quintilian both complain about people creating documents in their name which they had nothing to do with. There was indeed a moral issue with such documents, then as now. It was not an 'acceptable literary practice of that era' as some might lead you to believe.

I had no idea that pseudonymity wasn't an accepted practice back then, but was viewed as a kind of academic dishonesty.

And, speaking of dishonesty, it looks like the LA Times is scolding National Geographic for dirty dealings in this matter. Christianity Today weblog:

Both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times question National Geographic's dealings with Swiss art dealer [and Gospel of Judas promoter] Frieda Nussberger Tchacos, who received a suspended sentence in 2001 for possession of looted antiquities and reported antiquities trafficking. "In the past, she was at the center of the looting in Italy," Italian state prosecutor Paolo Ferri complained to the Los Angeles Times.

Tchacos:

"I think I was chosen by Judas to rehabilitate him," says Tchacos, who bought the 1,700-year-old papyrus. "Judas was asking me to do something for him."

Acccording to the LA Times, she paid $300,000 for the document, despite the possibility it had been looted (and she was regularly the kind of person who dealt with such stolen antiquities). Rather than allow the document to be evaluated in the usual scholarly manner, her lawyer turned around and contacted National Geographic, who promoted it with "a public splash that rang more of commercial zing than scholarly thoughtfulness."

National Geographic [did not] inform viewers that it paid $1 million for the right to publicize the papyrus, and that a portion of the proceeds from the show and two related books would go to the lawyer and, through him, to Tchacos, whose past includes a suspended sentence for possession of looted antiquities....

There are laws against trafficking in antiquities whose legal ownership cannot be documented. So Tchacos' lawyer, Mario Jean Roberty, could not sell the actual papyrus. Instead, he came up with the thoroughly modern concept of selling the content instead, and he found a taker in National Geographic.

The LA Times remarks:

But the gospel's provenance shows that some things don't change in a couple of millenniums — except for inflation. Thirty pieces of silver then, or $1.5 million now: It's still about money.

So I guess there's quite a bit of irony here: the intellectually dishonest people of today are naturally drawn to the works of the intellectually dishonest folk of ancient history. And I include the media sources which basicly lied to their audiences about the Gospel of Judas's significance in the latter group.

Somedays I think that even if I had no idea if JudeoChristian belief was true or false, it would be enough to observe the character and tactics of its strongest enemies -- and convince me to run away from them, towards whatever it was they hated so.