'But it is not a journalistic account of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, nor could it have been written by the historical Judas'

Nor are any of the canon Christian Gospels. They were all written by anonymous authors who pseudonymously wrote under the alleged names of some of the apostles from either a brief oral tradition or possibly from the accounts of some of the apostles themselves.

'If you come to the gospel free of preconceptions, she argues'

This is problematic, since if you try to translate something without a feeling for the intentions of the author you will translate it more towards your own biases. By her own argument she may be in error in her own translation because of the common bias of Judas being a villain.

This entire article implies more about the problem with translation in general than to simply say that the original team got it wrong. The single word 'daimon,' causes so much of this fuss. It's just like the Isaiah 7:14 problem, where the word 'ha-almah' could mean virgin woman, or it could just mean young woman.

They've made it up as they went along anyway, since Constantine, changing , excluding , and hiding passages and verses to leverage control over ,first, the uneducated , and escalating intellectually over the centuries,until todays present scourge of Creationism, et al , threatens to stir up the usual ,and ancient ,battles,between non-believers and sects within Christianity itself.
Belief is a thoroughly dishonest cunt.