religious service, and they are strongly discouraging people from participating in it. >> the gospel of judas is a polemic. it's a political smear against the people running the early church. >> the apostolic church was emerging. the institutional church was emerging. what we know as christianity was emerging. the gospel of judas was kind of a narrative against this institutional christianity. >> written decades after the new testament gospels, the gospel of judas is less a story about jesus than a condemnation of the leadership of the early church. >> it gives us an alternate picture of the formation of christianity. it doesn't show christianity as a developing necessarily all harmoniously. there are dissenters. there were people who felt that things had gotten off on the