Friend or Foe: New efforts to redefine the role of Judas parallel endless attempts to define who or what is evil

By Stacy Meichtry in Saturday's Religion section of the Winston-Salem Journal:

ROME — Every great story deserves a great villain. For centuries of Christians who consider the Easter story the greatest ever told, no one in history can quite match the despicable deeds and evil nature of Judas Iscariot.
But questions of whether Judas deserves his foul reputation have become increasingly loud in recent years. Judas has become a character in Hollywood films portraying him as a misunderstood revolutionary, and he has benefited from a raft of scholarly research that aims to absolve him through close readings of the Gospel accounts and other early Christian texts.
The National Geographic Society will unveil a 4th-century "Gospel of Judas" in a series airing on its cable channel. That gospel's says that Judas was fulfilling a divine plan by handing Christ over to his executioners.
As Christians observe Lent and prepare for Holy Week and Easter, Pope Benedict XVI seized upon a recent weekly audience to defend the traditional view of Judas, labeling him the "traitor apostle." For Christendom, much is at stake. A redefining of Judas alters the narrative of Christ.