We may never know who wrote it. But this gospel is among the earliest literary attempts to grapple with the Christian theological mysteries surrounding Jesus' death.

If the crucifixion was necessary and preordained, was Judas guilty of betrayal? Can one square Judas's free will with his predestined role as a vital (and unredeemed) cog in the cosmological wheel of human redemption?

Novelists of more recent times also have attempted to reconcile the theology of Jesus' death to the known narrative.

In addition to Judas, the Roman procurator of Judea and the famous hand washer, Pontius Pilate, also provides a necessary villain in the novels' plots. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century, Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, retells the tale with a moody, capricious Pilate at its centre. In Bulgakov's telling, Judas is a strictly mercenary betrayer (and not even an apostle) of Jesus, who is later murdered on Pilate's direct order.

Another novel that grapples with these issues is Pontius Pilate, by French writer Roger Caillois. That book, which has been reprinted by the University of Virginia Press, also places Pilate at the centre of an extended meditation on Jesus' passion. As for Judas, Caillois's portrait of Jesus' betrayer bears an uncanny resemblance to the apostle depicted in the discovered gospel.

Caillois wrote Pontius Pilate in 1961. He was an intellectual compatriot of the influential and radical French thinker Georges Bataille, with whom he founded the College of Sociology discussion group in Paris in 1937. (He was also the founding editor of the international interdisciplinary journal Diogenes.)

Cathie Brettschneider, humanities editor at the University of Virginia Press, says the work was published in English translation by Macmillan in 1963 and never had another printing.

The new edition is a reprint of that 1963 translation by Charles Lam Markmann with a new introduction by Ivan Strenski, a professor of religious studies at the University of California at Riverside.

"It's been an exciting project to work on," Brettschneider says.

The novel follows Pilate as he takes the counsel of several characters, historical and invented, to decide the fate of Jesus. Briskly written and highly allusive, Caillois's novel envisions the procurator as a representative of order and civilisation - albeit a weak-willed one - who must navigate the vivid religious visions and deep fanaticisms that surround him.

Brettschneider says Strenski suggested the press reprint the book. After reading it, she quickly agreed. She observes that the recent confluence of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, a growing fascination with lost Christian texts such as the Gospel of Judas and the success of the theology-infused popular fiction of Dan Brown demonstrates that Pontius Pilate has the potential "to reach beyond an academic audience".

Strenski says his mother worked at Macmillan and the book sat on a family shelf. When he pulled it down, he discovered an unjustly obscure book and author.

He believes that because Bataille's radical theory entranced many literary scholars, "everything got focused on him. Caillois was one of the parts that got lost. ... Caillois was liberal, not radical. He was not transgressive enough." Strenski's introduction to Pontius Pilate not only refocuses attention on Caillois (who introduced Jorge Luis Borges to French audiences), but excavates layers of religious, literary, and political meaning that the author packed into the slender book. Among them, Strenski argues, is a deep political concern about the French occupation of Algeria that was disintegrating as he wrote the book.

"This novel is like a depth charge," he observes. "It explodes way down deep and brings things to the surface."

Perhaps Caillois knew from Irenaeus that a Gospel of Judas existed, but he could not have known its contents. Thus, his portrait of Judas as a visionary fanatic obsessed with enacting scriptural prophecy eerily echoes notions in the newly discovered gospel. For instance, Caillois's Judas tells Pilate that Jesus "knows that he could not have redeemed man without my feigned treachery and your false cowardice".

In Pontius Pilate, Caillois puzzles over ancient theological mysteries to reflect on the human condition. That the past has reached forward to the 21st century through a brittle papyrus with echoes of its message is an uncanny coincidence.