This account, much of which comes from the New Testament, conforms in certain respects with the traditional Christian story of the Last Supper. In important ways, however, it does not. According to tradition, the Last Supper was a Passover meal, so it would have taken place on Thursday evening, the day before Good Friday. And, significantly, according to tradition, Jesus would have initiated the ceremony that came to be known as the Eucharist, asking his disciples to eat the bread as his body and to drink the wine as his blood in remembrance of his sacrifice. To leave out this crucial innovation, or to have Jesus offer a standard Jewish blessing, is to tell a vastly different story. It is to put aside the "Christ of faith" and to join the centuries-old search for the "Jesus of history."

The investigator in this case is James Tabor, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. And his provocative new book, The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity, takes the search for the historical Jesus to a bold--some would even say fanciful--new level.

There is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here" (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, "Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him" (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

Despite the careful work by scholars that has gone into a document of obvious interest, I have to express disappointment when I see National Geographic stoop so low into hyperbole as to distort the significance of this discovery.

In its release, National Geographic repeatedly states that it has "authenticated" the document. Several press outlets have simply repeated those claims. But "authentic" turns out to be a slippery term as used by the National Geographic Society. No scholar associated with the find argues this is a first century document, or that it derives from Judas. The release says the document was "copied down in Coptic probably around A.D. 300," although later that is changed to "let's say around the year 400." This amounts to saying that "The Gospel of Judas" is an authentic fabrication produced by a group of Gnostics in Egypt. Gnostics believed that their direct knowledge of heaven permitted them to understand what no one else knew, or could know by historical knowledge. For ancient Gnostics to believe in their own powers of divination is charming; for their flights of imagination to be passed off as historical knowledge in our time is dishonest or self-deceived....

That is a waste of a unique finding; "The Gospel of Judas" offers rich insights into ancient Gnosticism, particularly into the way in which Gnostics saw Jewish institutions transformed by Jesus. (The discourse on the Temple is especially significant, and involves the unusual view among Gnostics that Jesus's death was a necessary sacrifice.) But that is likely to be obscured by silly claims that the "real" Judas is at issue in this document.