As the findings have trickled down to churches and universities, they have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out.

The interesting part about that is that it implies that previous "generations" did not believe the book was a compilation of edited, re-written, and censored materials.  There's been plenty of evidence of it even before this Gospel was publicized.

Because Jesus Christ did not have the necessary time before he was crucified to explain and instruct his apostles in certain cosmic truths, he had to resort to a magical ceremony so that he might complete his mission while still in a cosmic individual state. It was at that moment, according to Gurdjieff, that Judas put forward an ingenious plan—the conscious betrayal of Christ—that would gain them the necessary time. Gurdjieff refers to Judas as a saint who, of all the disciples, was the most devoted and had the highest degree of reason.

always and everywhere, remember yourself...,

"Well, it is with this kind of mentation that your contemporary favorites try to decipher and understand a text written in the 'imagonisirian' manner for the mentation of beings who were contemporaries of the divine Jesus Christ. "In this connection, my boy, I must explain a certain fact, absurd to the highest degree and in the objective sense blasphemous, so that you may see more clearly the real nothingness of their Holy Writ, which has become particularly widely spread among your favorites since their last process of reciprocal destruction, and in which, as you may already surmise, there is everything you please except reality and truth.

"I will tell you in particular about what is said in this Holy Writ, which has supposedly reached them in an unchanged form, about the most important, most reasonable, and most devoted of all the beings directly initiated by this Sacred Individual or, as they would say, about one of his 'apostles.'

"This devoted and beloved apostle, initiated by Jesus Christ, was named Judas. "Anyone wishing to draw knowledge of the truth from the present version of this Holy Writ will arrive at the conviction, which will become fixed in his essence, that this Judas was the basest of all conceivable beings, and a conscienceless, double-faced traitor.

"But in fact, not only was this Judas the most faithful and devoted of all the close followers of Jesus Christ, but it was solely thanks to his Reason and presence of mind that all the acts of this Sacred Individual could produce that result which, if it did not lead to the total destruction of the consequences of the properties of the organ kundabuffer in these unfortunate three-brained beings, was nevertheless, during twenty centuries, the source of nourishment and inspiration for the majority of them, and made their desolate existence at least a little endurable.

In order that you may represent more clearly to yourself the genuine individuality of this Judas and the significance of his manifestation, you should also know that when the Sacred Individual, Jesus Christ, intentionally actualized in a planetary body of a terrestrial being, was completely formed for responsible existence, he decided to carry out the mission imposed on him from Above to enlighten the Reason of these three-brained terrestrial beings by means of twelve beings chosen from different types, initiated and prepared by him personally.

"But at the very peak of his divine activities, before having fulfilled his intention, that is, before having had time to explain certain cosmic truths and give the required instructions for the future, he was compelled by circumstances independent of him to allow the premature cessation of his planetary existence to take place. "He therefore decided, together with the twelve terrestrial beings he had intentionally initiated, to have recourse to the sacred sacrament of almtznoshinoo—the actualization of which was already well known to them, as they had already acquired in their presences all the data for its fulfillment— so that he should have the possibility, while he was still in that cosmic individual state, to finish the work of preparation, according to the plan he had designed for accomplishing the mission assigned to him from Above. "But, my boy, when they had decided on this and were ready to begin the preliminary preparations required for this sacred sacrament, they saw that it was utterly impossible because it was too late, they were already surrounded by beings called 'guards,' and their arrest, with everything that would follow, was expected at any moment. "And it was just here that Judas intervened.

"This future saint, the inseparable and devoted helper of Jesus Christ, who is 'hated' and 'cursed' owing to the naive stupidity of the peculiar three-brained beings of your planet, then rendered his great objective service for which terrestrial three-brained beings of all subsequent generations should be grateful. "The wise and onerous initiative that he took upon himself with disinterested devotion was that at the moment of despair, on ascertaining that it was impossible to fulfill the required preparation for carrying out the sacred almtznoshinoo, this Judas, now a saint, leaped to his feet and hurriedly said: 'I will go and do everything necessary so that you have the possibility to fulfill this sacred preparation without hindrance Meanwhile, set to work at once. '

"Having said this, he approached Jesus Christ and, after speaking with him aside for a few moments, he received his blessing and hurriedly left. "Thus the others were able to complete without hindrance everything necessary for the accomplishment of the sacred process of almtznoshinoo. "After what I have just said, you will doubtless understand how the terrestrial three-brained beings of the two types I described distort every truth, for their various egoistic aims, and have done so to such an extent that in the case of Judas, now a saint, thanks to whom alone they have benefited for twenty centuries from a blessed hearth of tranquility in the midst of their desolate existence, there has been crystallized in the presence of beings of all later generations this unprecedentedly unjust representation.

"I think myself that if Judas was portrayed in their Holy Writ in this way, it may have been because it was necessary for someone or other belonging to the mentioned types to belittle for a certain purpose the significance of Jesus Christ himself. "That is to say, it would make him appear so naive, so unable to feel and see beforehand, in a word, so unperfected that, in spite of knowing this Judas and existing with him for so long, he failed to sense and be aware that this nearest disciple of his was a perfidious traitor, who would sell him for thirty worthless pieces of silver.

Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson pages 677-680

Who is your audience? You've obviously written this for a narrow segment.  If that was your purpose, then you succeeded.  But you still come off as condescending or patronizing to people who can actually understand what you’ve written.  Did you have a point by the way?

The point was that Gurdjieff was writing very explicitly about this gospel text 70 years ago and the teaching that followed thereon has always been quite clear about the role of Judas in the Passion.., I posted the excerpt simply to note that what is being hailed as extraordinary by scholars, heretical by pseudo-Christians, and puzzling to many - is routine within the context of authentic Christian doctrine.

Gurdjieff was certainly writing for an extremely narrow audience.  What exactly did you find troubling about his presentation?

"...it is quite clear that Gurdjieff, in his quest for the origin of esoteric knowledge, rediscovered what he called a Christianity before Christ. "The Christian church," said Gurdjieff, "the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. . . .This prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity."

Gurdjieff apparently also wrote quite perceptively about the African roots of Christianity.

Gurdjieff considered Ethiopia to be the spatio-temporal heart of the matter, the font of true Christian praxis and his personal understanding..., think ancient monastaries