"Oh, Andrei--you've lost another submarine?"

That marvellous line from The Hunt For Red October, delivered with shark-like relish by the late, great Richard Jordan, pretty much encapsulates my reaction to the "Earth-shaking"™ discovery of the Gospel [sic] of Judas.

Oh, Elaine--they've found another Gnostic "Gospel"?

Yeesh. Spend a moment with the gnostic gospels--without the scholarly apparatus filters eager to read an "alternate" or "suppressed" pseudo-Christianity into them. The thing that is striking, especially when read against the canonical Gospels is their artificiality--the people of the authentic Gospels (Jesus, Judas, Mary Magdalen, etc.) are reduced to talking heads reciting gnosticism's philosophical bullet points. There's nothing that hints at any kind of narrative--it's a mere collection of often-opaque, even nonsensical, ponderings in search of a famous spokesman. Hence the lifting of figures from Christianity. Say what you will about the practice, it's great salesmanship.

The Gospel of Some Gnostic Guy wouldn't have attracted nearly as much attention.

Then or now.