The book is one of five that came to be grouped together, the others being Acts of Andrew, John, Paul and Peter. All came to be denounced as spurious. There is a strong suggestion that he was not really corporeal. The Acts of Judas Thomas emerged, it seems, from the East Syrian civilization of the upper Euphrates Valley early in the third century. Like other religious writings, the text varied somewhat from version to version, depending on what points the editors or re-writers wished to make.
Several things are likely to strike the modern reader.
Another is the lack of interest in the Old Testament. The book was written long before the credal arguments of the fourth and fifth centuries about the nature of Christ and the Trinity. Robert Murray, a principal modern explorer of the origins of the Syriac-speaking church, finds at least 130 titles of Christ. Partly for that reason, it was slow to be accepted into the canon. Scholars widely agree that the writer of that gospel was well acquainted with Gnosticism and had perhaps been a Gnostic himself at some time.