The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says

April D. DeConick's The Thirteenth Apostle, What the Gospel of Judas Really Says, published by Continuum in 2007, is a scholarly reassessment of the National Geographic Society's widely publicized 2006 translation of the Gospel of Judas, arguing that a mistranslation of a key term reversed the text's meaning, so that the original casts Judas not as Jesus's favored confidant but as a demon. DeConick is a specialist in early Christian and Gnostic texts, and her retranslation triggered substantive debate among Coptic specialists over the disputed term and its grammar. Its strength is that it is argued from the Coptic text itself by a scholar with the philological standing to make the case. Its limit is that the translation dispute remains actively discussed rather than unanimously settled, so a claim about what the Gospel of Judas really says should be presented as DeConick's reading, attributed to her, alongside the National Geographic team's original one.