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Judas' Trickery. The text also gives two versions of Christ's Passion, which differ from those in the canonical Gos pels. One of these accounts suggests that Judas tricked the Jews by delivering to them another man in the place of Jesus. This unknown victim denied explicitly before Herod and Pilate that he was the Messiah, as his accusers charged. In this version, Herod, not Pilate, took a basin of water and washed his hands of the accused man's blood to indicate that he found no guilt in him. Herod then imprisoned the supposed Jesus for the night; but the next morning he was seized by angry Jews who tortured and finally crucified him. The other Passion story follows the account found in the Gospel according to John, but more strongly places on the Jews the responsibility for Jesus' Crucifixion.
Pines and Flusser believe that the Nazarene text gives added weight to the theory of some scholars that a majority of Jesus' early followers in Palestine, rather than just a dissident few, did not accept his divinity. Christian Biblicists in Jerusalem, none of whom have yet had a chance to examine the document, readily concede its significance, but they understandably question Flusser's sweeping conclusion that "we will have to revise our thinking about the origins of Christianity." They believe that the primary value of the document will probably prove to be the new insight it provides into the beliefs of a minor sect of heretics that has long since been lost to history.