Judas

So the story that never was, still isn't.

That is to say, the big to-do earlier this year about Judas Iscariot being a misunderstood zealot, based on the gnostic Gospel of Judas, wasn't all that accurate. The experts who got together and translated the text are now starting to question the accuracy of their translation.

Whoda thunkit?

Well, the Catholic Church, for one.

Turns out, the text was written by a sect called the Cainites sometime in the 2nd century. Says Monsignor Walter Brandmüller of the Vatican's Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences:

The Gnostic sect of the Cainites attributed a positive value to all the negative figures of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, such as the tempter serpent, Cain - hence their name - Esau and Judas.

So way back then the Church had enemies too, and they were organized enough to publish anti-Christian documents. There is a reason the Church rejected such works when the Canon of Sacred Scripture was sealed.