The Bible of the enlightened just grew longer--like the Constitution, it is a living document--with the addition of the "Gospel of Judas," a Coptic text from 300 A.D., telling a story that was perhaps 120 years older.

* The Bible of the enlightened just grew longer--like the Constitution, it is a living document--with the addition of the "Gospel of Judas," a Coptic text from 300 A.D., telling a story that was perhaps 120 years older. Discovered in Egypt in the 1970s, it has only now been published. Jesus and Judas, it seems, were really tight, and Judas betrayed him only to fulfill the divine plan, which could not be revealed to the other eleven disciples. Like other Gnostic gospels--heretical texts condemned by the early Church--it posits an elite wisdom, for spiritual insiders. It is also rather badly written. (Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker noted that its Jesus has "one of those sardonic, significant, how-little-you-know laughs, like the laugh of the ruler of a dubious planet on Star Trek.") Hucksters and kooks have been trying to horn in on the Greatest Story Ever Told since it was first told. The buzz over the Gospel of Judas proves again G. K. Chesterton's insight: Once men believe in nothing, they will believe in anything.