When universities convene to discuss religious texts and New Testament scholarship, the angle always seems to be how this or that academic organization is going to undermine the New Testament canon and reinvent the Biblical narrative.  An upcoming conference, though, seems to have a more balanced approach:

Next week Rice University will host 30 world-renowned international religious studies experts as they examine the newly found Tchacos Codex that contains the Gospel of Judas, the Apocalypse of James, the Letter of Peter to Philip and a fragment of Allogenes and Satan. The Codex Judas Congress, March 13-16, is the first opportunity the scholars will have to investigate photographs of the entire original text, discuss it with their peers and present their findings. 

The conference was organized by Rice Biblical studies professor April DeConick, who recently garnered national attention for her new book, “The Thirteenth Apostle,” which debunked a stunning claim by National Geographic’s translation of the Gospel of Judas. According to that translation, Judas was a hero, not a villain, who acted on Jesus’ request to betray him. DeConick’s translation confirms that Judas betrayed Jesus.

In other words, we have a scholar at a major university arguing for the veracity of the Gospel.  That’s news to me!  The National Geographic story about DeConick’s findings can be found here.  You can read more about the conference here, you can read the Times op-ed supporting the Biblical narrative of Judas here, and you can read the opposing response here.