Just in time for Holy Week contemplation, the National Geographic Society had a news conference to reveal the existence of an ancient document purporting to be the Gospel of Judas.

In my youth, I was an avid reader of National Geographic magazine and studied it religiously, except for those pictures of female residents of exotic locales who were too poor to afford clothing, which I studied a tad irreligiously.

Well, education is always a wonderful thing, but I worry that National Geographic's venerable reputation will lend a little too much credence to the ancient text now revealed. It is authentic only in the sense that it's apparently not a forgery, but it doesn't prove that Judas was just misunderstood or lacked proper self-esteem.

Actually, you would think that the reputation of Judas is beyond redemption, so to speak, considering his betrayal of the savior with a kiss in exchange for 30 pieces of silver.

But this text takes a stab at showing us a kinder and gentler Judas. This gospel suggests that, far from being the despised betrayer, Judas was a favored disciple and was asked by Jesus to betray him in order to complete the divine plan.

A likely story. As they say in biblical scholarship circles, pull my other sandal, it's got a bell attached to it.

This just goes to show that if you hang around long enough, either in life or in history, someone will try to rehabilitate you. It happened with Richard Nixon; it can happen with Judas.

In this case, we know that Judas didn't write his own defense -- even if he didn't hang himself, which Matthew says he did -- because the papyrus manuscript discovered in the Egyptian desert dates from at least a century after the crucifixion. This was the work of the gnostics, who were members of a mystical sect considered heretical by the early Christians. As you know, gnostic is a Greek word meaning troublemaker.

They obviously had a lot of spare time out there in the desert, what with their caves having no cable television. So they just sat around gnosticating, with a view to getting a lot of publicity in future generations. Verily, this has come to pass.

You can just imagine them sitting there in a corporate strategy meeting asking one another how to position Judas in a more flattering light. "How can we repackage his image, portray bad as good, pass off treachery as loyalty?" one acolyte would ask. "We need to reposition Judas in the market as one who merely had issues and was striving toward self-realization and fulfilment," another would say.

Thus the thing was done. And to celebrate the birth of ancient spin-doctoring, they all did lunch.

In the fullness of time, other false prophets arose, yea, even unto our own time, when certain powerful figures jump up and down on the Bible pretending to be righteous even as they dishonor what is written within, especially those parts about helping the poor. That is the only thing average believers should take from this new gospel.

As for me, I am against fiddling with the meaning of the basic texts in any age. Of course, as one much bedevilled by literal readings of my own writings, I don't believe that every word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally. But I do think that certain core beliefs have to be considered literal, which still allows for metaphor and poetic truths.

For example, I believed that the Almighty created everything but I am not sure he did it in seven literal human days. He was, after all, the only government in the universe back then and, as our God-given intellect has revealed to us, government projects always takes longer. Metaphoric or literal reading, it really doesn't matter to the essential truth.

But Judas has to be the villain of the New Testament because being betrayed by a friend adds a human poignancy to the story that eternally touches us all. I can't believe Jesus conspired in his own death. And I don't believe Jesus was married, as in "The Da Vinci Code," or that when he walked on water he was actually walking on ice, as an academic preposterously suggested in a recent Washington Post story.

Stop this nonsense now. If we take the Gospel of Judas seriously, we may find a Gospel of Bob (there's already a Gospel of Thomas lurking outside the canon) and there goes the neighborhood.

That's my long way of saying: Happy Easter!