This image provided by the National Geographic Society shows the missing half page of the Gospel of Judas that resurfaced in New York in Februrary and now is on display at the Society in Washington. The ancient manuscript is show at its approximate actual size. Click photo for larger image.

An Egyptian text from about 100 years after Jesus' crucifixion portrays Judas -- the chief villain of the New Testament -- as the most faithful of Jesus' disciples. It says Jesus told him to arrange his death in order to liberate his spirit from its prison of flesh.

Scholars at a news conference yesterday at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., agreed that the newly translated Gospel of Judas is a tremendous archaeological find that sheds light on the swirling currents of second-century Christianity. But they sharply differed over whether it has important implications for the Christian faith.

"Most scholars would say that this material doesn't actually go back to the historical Jesus, but is based on material that floated around in some churches" decades after his crucifixion, said Bart Ehrman, chairman of the religious studies department at the University of North Carolina, who served the project as an expert on ancient manuscripts.

The New Testament's gospels are believed to have been written between 60 and 90 A.D. The likely date of 130 to 180 A.D. for the Gospel of Judas "would make this one of the earliest non-canonical gospels that we have," Dr. Ehrman said.

"It is certainly one of the most interesting. It's not going to be used by scholars of the historical Jesus to reconstruct his life. It's a gnostic gospel that once informed gnostic Christian circles decades after the gospels of the New Testament."

News of serious theological rifts in early Christianity is not new -- the New Testament itself describes some. Other early writings, including a treatise on heresies written by Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons in 180 A.D., described other accounts of Jesus, including the Gospel of Judas. But their texts were lost for centuries.

Then, in 1945, dozens of them were unearthed in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, producing a new wealth of scholarship on the so-called "gnostic gospels." But the Gospel of Judas, a third- or fourth-century Coptic translation of a second-century Greek text, emerged from Egypt in the 1970s. It languished on the shady antiquities market, spending 16 years crumbling in a Long Island safe-deposit box.

Scholars who spent the past five years reconstructing and translating the short manuscript had to piece together nearly 1,000 fragments, said Terry Garcia, executive vice president of the National Geographic Society, which helped to fund the project. A program on the Gospel of Judas will air at 8 p.m. Sunday on the National Geographic Channel.

National Geographic sponsored many scientific tests on the manuscript, including carbon dating and ink analysis. It all pointed to an origin in Egypt between 220 and 340 A.D.

National Geographic is interested in its historical significance, not its theological implications, Mr. Garcia said. Gnostics have been hot intellectual property since the runaway success of Dan Brown's novel The DaVinci Code, which draws on some gnostic interpretations of Jesus. The gnostics were second-century mystics -- not necessarily Christ-centered -- who believed that everything material was bad. They sought union with the divine, and believed they could possess special, secret teachings on how to do this.

The Gospel of Judas, which is about the length of a long chapter in a New Testament gospel, portrays Jesus as a divine spirit trapped in a body. Judas is the only one who understands this.

"Jesus discloses to Judas a complete myth of creation concluding with the creation of humanity by inferior forces," said Gregor Wurst of the University of Augsburg, Germany, one of the translators.

The New Testament portrays Jesus as the passover lamb who is sacrificed to spare others from the consequences of their sins, and who promises bodily resurrection. But in the Gospel of Judas, salvation means freeing Jesus from his body. The gospel ends with Judas turning Jesus in to the authorities.

The news conference featured religion scholars with widespread viewpoints on the spiritual significance of the Gospel of Judas.

Its biggest fan was Elaine Pagels, professor of religion at Princeton University and author of an influential book on the gnostic gospels. She said these could be secret teachings that Jesus revealed to his most adept followers, and were preserved by oppressed mystics.

In response to a question from a Russian reporter, she said that gnostic texts were preserved by Eastern monastic communities, and implied that they were still secretly followed in Eastern Orthodox monasticism.

Countering her view was the Rev. Donald Senior, president of the Chicago Theological Union, a Catholic seminary. The Gospel of Judas will be of great interest to church historians, but public interest will fade when people read it for themselves, he said.

The Gospel of Judas has a negative view of material reality, from the environment to people's bodies, he said.

"Here is where there is a very fundamental difference between the general reverence for the body in the canonical text and texts like this, where the body is seen as something inferior, and a prison to be escaped," Father Senior said.

"I think there is a reason, more than arbitrary decision [by church authorities], why the canonical texts emerged with greater capacity to nourish the lives of people."

A scholar of Coptic gnosticism who is not part of the project was even more critical.

Charles Hedrick, distinguished professor emeritus of religious studies of the University of Missouri, Springfield, castigated the team for publishing a translation without photographs of the original so other scholars could check both the translation and the reassembly of the manuscript.

Because of the timing with the impending release of the DaVinci Code movie, "this looks like a blatant attempt to make money on the text," he said.

National Geographic has posted a complete Coptic transcript at www9.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/about.html. Mr. Garcia said that a scholarly book, including photographs of the manuscript, will be published in the fall. He denied that the timing of the translation had anything to do with The DaVinci Code or Christian Holy Week. This was simply the soonest it could be done, he said.