Watch Lord Archer's interview on Ruth Gledhill's weblog

Jesus never turned water into wine, He did not walk on the water and He never calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee, according to a new 'Gospel' published today with Vatican approval and co-authored by Jeffrey Archer, the convicted perjurer.

The Gospel According to Judas is being launched at the prestigious Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. Written by Lord Archer with one of the Pope's top theological advisers, Professor Francis Moloney, the 'fifth Gospel' is being regarded by senior Catholics as a way of bringing the Christian gospel to Lord Archer's 125 million readers.

Many churchgoers will be surprised at the Church's overt backing for a book that debunks some of Jesus's best-known miracles in the run-up to Easter. The Gospel According to Judas is also being backed by the Roman Catholic Church in England, with a launch planned for tomorrow at Westminster Cathedral.

But in interviews with The Times, both Father Moloney and Lord Archer said they did not include Jesus's three most famous 'nature miracles', beloved of Sunday School children worldwide, in The Gospel because they "never happened".

Nor did they include the most famous Judas story of all, where he is reported in the Bible to have betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. The betrayal took place, they say, but no cash changed hands.

Although the idea that Jesus's miracles did not happen and were pure invention have been common in academic circles for decades, for many of the faithful it will still come as a shock.

Father Moloney, believed by many to be the world's greatest living Biblical scholar, drew on years of scholarship to make The Gospel According to Judas as close as possible to those passages thought to be genuine in the three synoptic gospels and the Gospel of St John. But he insisted they leave out verses agreed by scholars to have been made up by the original authors of the Bible.

The partnership with Lord Archer, which began in a Rome restaurant called The Two Thieves, almost collapsed when the best-selling author attempted to inject unbelievable elements of fiction into the story of Jesus's life, death and resurrection. Father Moloney agreed that the story-teller could invent a plausible ending to Judas' life but drew the line at the author's dream of giving Judas a death-bed conversion to Christianity.

Father Moloney told The Times that he did consider Jesus to have been a 'miracle worker'. But he had studied the Bible all his life, and had become convinced that some of Jesus's miracles were invented by the early Church.

Turning water into wine at a wedding feast came "out of a profound desire to show that Jesus, like the God of Israel, is the messianic giver of all good things". Walking on water and calming the seas stemmed from a desire to prove that Jesus had the same mastery over nature as the God of the Hebrew Bible.

Father Moloney said that he had no doubts over the resurrection, however. That was not a miracle by Jesus, that was what God did for His son: "What is official Church teaching is that in the person of Jesus, the divine has entered history."