Judas Iscariot has long held one of the most despised places in history as the betrayer of Jesus Christ.

However, that view has been sent for a spin with the recent release of the Gospel of Judas, a Coptic script recently translated and released by the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. The text is believed to be a translation of a Greek manuscript written by a Gnostic sect around A.D. 180.

What does this recent revelation mean and how does it affect modern Christianity are two questions that wanted to find answers to, so we turned to local religious leaders for their response:

The Rt. Rev. Bishop Ewen Ratteray, Bishop of Bermuda (Anglican Church) responded:

?Not having read the above mentioned ?Gospel,? it is difficult to make an adequate and appropriate response. However I will say this, that in recent times it has become the custom for someone, somewhere to raise what can best be described as fanciful ideas about some aspect of the Christian faith, especially near Holy Week. This year is no exception with the release of the so-called ?Judas Gospel?.

?This document, apparently written some 100 years after the Gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, poses the interesting idea that Jesus ?put Judas up to the notion of betraying him.?

?A likely story! on at least two grounds; first, it was written a long time after the others and thus lacks their immediacy and authenticity. As someone has said, it is 100 years too late! And secondly, it seems hardly credible that Jesus would do such a thing, given his integrity, evident throughout his ministry. He was not given to the use of subterfuge in his dealings with others. The Church has withstood over the centuries many challenges and has survived and thrived. This particular challenge is hardly deserving of overmuch time being expended on it and should not disturb the faithful believer.?

Likewise, the Most Rev. Robert J. Kurtz, CR, Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Bermuda, said: ?The article in the National Geographic Magazine regarding the Coptic manuscript of the Gospel of Judas gives us a fascinating insight into the world of early Christian literature. The 4th century manuscript appears to be an authentic Gnostic Gospel, one of the many writings of a sect known in the early Church and briefly described by Ireneus, the Bishop of Lyon (180AD) in his work entitled ?Against All Heresies.?

?The Gnostics proposed a form of salvation by mystical knowledge. They glorified the spirit over the flesh. They did not accept the Christian teaching on the mystery of the Incarnation. They loved to speculate about cosmology and the role of angels in the spiritual world, all of which is reflected in the Gospel of Judas.

?I believe that the Gospel of Judas is probably an authentic Coptic manuscript of a Gnostic Gospel. I do not see it as any kind of threat to contemporary Christian belief. The Gospel does remind us of the Church?s struggle over the centuries to clearly define the Canon or official list of Books of the Bible, the ?Sacred Scriptures.? In the Catholic Church this list or Canon was only definitively establish by the Council of Trent in 1546, even though the list was substantially established much earlier.?