The apocryphal account of the last days of Jesus's life portrays Judas as a loyal disciple, who followed Jesus's orders in handing him over to the authorities and thus allowed him to fulfil the biblical prophecies of saving mankind.

The fragile 31-page document, which has had a chequered history since it was discovered near Beni Masar in Egypt in the 1970s, was put on show for the first time this afternoon at the National Geographic Society in Washington, along with an English translation.

It is believed to be a copy of a still earlier Gospel of Judas, which may have been written about 150 years after Jesus's death by Coptic scholars.

The first known reference to a Gospel of Judas was around 180AD, when the influential early Christian bishop Irenaeus denounced it as heretical.

By then there were many accounts of Jesus’ life and times, written by various early Christians in the 150 years after his death, in more than 30 gospels. Bishop Irenaeus helped to clarify the Christian message by arguing that there should be just four approved Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All others, including the Gospel of Judas, were collectively known as apocrypha and branded as off-limits by early Church fathers.

The story it tells is strongly at variance with the Church's official line on the death of Christ, making Judas Jesus's closest friend.

"The Gospel of Judas turns Judas’ act of betrayal into an act of obedience," said Craig Evans, the Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

"The sacrifice of Jesus’ body of flesh in fact becomes saving. And so for that reason, Judas emerges as the champion and he ends up being envied and even cursed and resented by the other disciples."

Elaine Pagels, the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion at Princeton University, commented: "Whether or not one agrees with it, or finds it interesting or reprehensible, it’s an enormously interesting perspective on it that some follower of Jesus in the early Christian movement obviously thought was significant."

A detailed account of what has happened to the document since it was found, and the scholarly efforts to track down its provenance, feature in a two hour documentary due to be screened on the National Geographic cable and satellite television channel on Sunday at 9pm.

It will argue that the original Gospel of Judas was probably written by the Gnostics - members of a 2nd Century AD breakaway Christian sect, who became rivals to the early Church. They thought that Judas was in fact the most enlightened of the apostles, acting in order that mankind might be redeemed by the death of Christ.

The manuscript is in poor condition, after being sold twice and stolen once. Scientists have been racing against time to conserve it from further deterioration, and to discover how, when and by whom it was written, using modern forensic techniques to analyse the ink, papyrus, handwriting and the choice of words. The process has been described in a book called The Lost Gospel which is published tomorrow.

Meanwhile, pages from the document will be exhibited at the National Geographic Museum at Explorers Hall in Washington. Once the conservation process is complete, the document will be delivered to its country of origin, Egypt, and housed in Cairo’s Coptic Museum.

Dr Simon Gathercole, a New Testament expert from The University of Aberdeen, said: "The so-called "Gospel of Judas" is certainly an ancient text, but not ancient enough to tell us anything new about the real Judas or Jesus.

"It contains a number of religious themes which are completely alien to the first-century world of Jesus and Judas, but which did become popular later, in the second century AD. An analogy would be finding a speech claiming to be written by Queen Victoria, in which she talked about The Lord of the Rings and her CD collection."

James Catford, Chief Executive of Bible Society, stated: "It really would be a miracle if Judas was the author of this document, because he died at least 100 years before it was written. It may yield some interesting insights, but there’s nothing here to undermine what Christians have believed throughout the centuries."

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