This week's column focuses on the recently disclosed Gospel of Judas. Because there are so many different aspects to the sensation created by the discovery of this ancient manuscript, this week's column breaks from its usual style and is in a question-and-answer format.

Q. What is the Gospel of Judas?
A. It is a 2nd-century document, originally written in Greek by someone apparently close to the movement known as Gnosticism and to a group within that movement which seems to have had a special relationship with the followers of the Apostle Judas Iscariot. The actual document that was uncovered in Egypt in the 1970s is apparently a copy of the original Greek text. The copy is written in Coptic and is thought to have been composed around the year 300.

Q. Why has there been so much interest in the Gospel of Judas? It has been widely discussed on television, radio and in all the major newspapers around the world.
A. This may be putting a cynical spin on the whole matter, but there are some who would like to see Christianity finally exposed as a fraud. Most people who have read and enjoyed Dan Brown's novel, "The Da Vinci Code," regard it as a "page-turner." For them, it's simply a good story. Others, however, have had a different reaction. They like the book because they want to believe that what is portrayed in it as fiction is real and accurate history. Indeed, the author himself sometimes gives the impression that he, too, regards his book as more non-fiction than fiction.

Q. Well, then, does this Gospel of Judas lend support to those who want to see Christianity undermined?

A. No, it does not. At most, this document would require a reconsideration of our traditional estimation of Judas. He may not have been the treacherous person that tradition has made him out to be. If the Gospel of Judas has the story right, Judas was simply doing what Jesus asked him to do so that his mission to suffer, die, and rise for our salvation could be successfully completed.

Q. You mean that nothing in the Gospel of Judas would undermine any of the Church's central teachings and beliefs about Jesus and salvation.
A. That is correct.

Q. Then let's double-back a bit. You mentioned Gnosticism earlier. What is it?
A. Gnosticism was an early Christian movement whose name is derived from the Greek word, gnosis, which means knowledge. I am over-simplifying here, but the Gnostics believed that salvation is given to us not because of the love and mercy of God in response to the purity of our hearts and the goodness of our deeds, but because of a secret knowledge, or revelation, given by God to a select few --- an elite, if you will, within the Christian community.

Q. But what does Gnosticism have to do with the Gospel of Judas?
A. The Gnostics produced a number of writings that have only recently been discovered. They include the Gospels of Thomas, Mary Magdalene and others. These Gospels purport to contain the secret teachings of Jesus (emphasis again on "secret"), given privately to various of his original disciples. The Gospel of Judas fits this category perfectly. It purports to contain the words of Jesus instructing Judas to hand him over to his enemies and predicting that he (Judas) would be unfairly reviled by generations to come, even though, it is suggested, Judas was actually Jesus' favorite Apostle.

Q. St. Irenaeus has been mentioned as if he had been unfair to the Gnostics in labeling them as heretics. Should we now revise our estimation of Irenaeus, too?
A. No. Irenaeus has never been popular with some present-day scholars who have a tendency to place the Gnostics on par with the wider Church --- the Church that eventually decided which books to include in the New Testament and which to exclude. What these scholars assert or imply is that the Church deliberately suppressed the Gnostic writings (known as apocrypha) because they contained material that would prove embarrassing to the pastoral leadership and troubling to the general Christian community.

Q. Well, was Irenaeus essentially right or wrong in his assessment of the Gnostics?
A. I think that he was right. In fact, all those who prize democracy and accountability should be sympathetic with Irenaeus' position. Against the Gnostics, he insisted that salvation is available to everyone, without exception. There is no elite with whom God exclusively communicated. Salvation is not a matter only of right belief; it is also --- and primarily --- a matter of right behavior. Everyone is judged on that latter basis --- Christian and non-Christian alike.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.