GOSPEL OF JUDAS | Is it real?

The Gospel of Judas, considered by some to be the most important archaeological find of the past 60 years, purports to record conversations between Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot in the last week of their lives -- conversations in which Jesus shared religious secrets not known by the other disciples.
Claim: The text was ruled heretical by early church leaders because of its disagreement with the conventionally accepted Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It is now being hailed by biblical scholars because of the insight it will provide into the turbulent period, when competing ideologies sought to stake their own claims to the Jesus story, battling in oral stories and written texts until a single faction eventually won out.
Background: The manuscript is a copy of the original text translated into the Coptic language by a professional scribe in a group known as The Gnostics. The Gnostics were a sect that was interested in the spiritual knowledge of God and "the essential oneness of the inner self with God." They considered the world a creation of lesser, inferior gods who imprisoned the inner self in a material body, a prison from which they hoped to escape. The Gospel of Judas clearly reflects this belief, which is in contrast to the version of Judas presented in the Bible.
When: The document, originally written in Greek about 140 years after Jesus and Judas died, was hidden in the Egyptian desert for nearly 1,700 years before it was discovered by looters in the 1970s. Extensive analysis of the paper, ink, writing style and text all indicate the copy was made about A.D. 300.
Why: The new text comes at a time when scholars have been re-evaluating the role of Jesus' supposed betrayer. Some scholars argue the Greek word paradidomi in the original texts of the Gospels, normally translated as "betray," actually means "to hand over," indicating that Judas was simply doing God's will.
Source: Los Angeles Times