Secrets of Judas

by James M. Robinson

  As to page numbers, Roberty reports:

  Yes it does, but just on the upper part. The whole is cut into parts, so the lower parts cannot be attributed in their page numbering to the upper parts. This has to be done following the fiber structure and also the content.

  With regard to fragments, Roberty reports:

  There were some souvenir hunters laying their hands on it. Partially reclaimed.

  The reference to some fragments being “partially reclaimed” is intriguing, especially since others had spoken of some fragments being secondarily reunited with the whole, in which connection Van Rijn had claimed some credit. But there seems also to have been a quite recent acquisition of fragments. For Roberty, in his most recent interview, has justified a delay in the publication of the critical edition as follows:

  …because we had a few more fragments popping up very recently. So there will be—for a full publication of the codex—there will be a delay.

  Roberty provides a final encouraging report of what has been brought together: “85 percent of the main text.” That is, after all, considerably better than his earlier report. Things may have turned out better than he had feared.

  THE NUMBER OF PAGES IN THE TRACTATE

  When one seeks to provide an estimate of the original length of the text of The Gospel of Judas, then the question of the number of pages in the codex that contained The Gospel of Judas is posed in a different way: whatever documentation one has for a leaf from that tractate suffices to indicate that the two pages of that leaf are to be included in the calculation of the original length of The Gospel of Judas.

  Emmel identified three tractates in the codex. Since he did not thumb through all thirty leaves, looking for tractate titles and the like, there is no way of knowing whether other tractates may have been in the codex, even though not noticed by Emmel. We speak of there having been three tractates, so long as we do not know of others. Two have parallels in the Nag Hammadi Library, and so their length is known. The (First) Apocalypse of James (Codex V, Tractate 3, 24,10–44,10) is twenty-one pages long. The Letter of Peter to Philip (Codex VIII, Tractate 2, 132,10–140,27) is just over nine pages long. This makes a total of about thirty pages.

  Of course the amount of text found on a given page varies, depending on the dimensions of the leaves, the amount of empty papyrus taken up in margins, the size of the scribe’s lettering, the space between the lines, etc. But since the manuscript is comparable in size (Steve Emmel: “approximately 30 cm tall and 15 cm broad)”47 to Nag Hammadi codices, the rough comparison will be useful. If the two known tractates occupied half of “up to 60” pages, that would leave sufficient room for The Gospel of Judas to have occupied up to thirty pages.

  One may also recall Epiphanius’s comment, “a short work.” In his time, a book would be more the size of a canonical Gospel, so perhaps one can infer that The Gospel of Judas was more the size of the Gospel of Mark than the size of the larger Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John. Of course there were much longer works, such as the Nag Hammadi tractates Tripartite Tractate (Codex I, Tractate 5), of 88 pages, and Zostrianos Codex VIII, Tractate 1), of 132 pages. But in the Nag Hammadi Library they are more the exception than the rule. But if “at least pp. 1–50 are represented by substantial fragments,” there may be fewer than 30 pages from The Gospel of Judas that are extant in “substantial fragments,” especially in view of the damage and loss that may well have occurred since Emmel saw them.

  Thiede of course gives us more “information” (or speculation):48

  The Judas document occupies fully the half of the 62 inscribed book pages, the remainder consists of two other writings.

  We can surely hope that he is right, but there is no reason to assume he has such precise information.

  With The Gospel of Judas lost for almost 1,800 years, the discovery and selling of it is a colorful story, replete with smugglers, black-market antiquities dealers, religious scholars, backstabbing partners, and greedy entrepreneurs, meeting secretly over the course of two decades across the borders of two or three continents. It is a story worthy of the myths about this most notorious disciple. But what will this lost and then found Gospel of Judas reveal to us? Once restored and published, will it exonerate Judas? Will it turn Christianity on its head? Let us now turn to those questions in the next chapter as I try to explain what is involved in the conserving and editing of such ancient manuscripts, and speculate with others on the meaning and significance of this remarkable discovery.

  SIX

  The Publication and Significance of The Gospel of Judas

  THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE BODMER

  Mario J. Roberty had mentioned in his memorandum of December 15, 2000, to Eric R. Kaufman:1

  The whole conservation process preferably is to be conducted in a highly reputable private institution disposing of the necessary secure facilities (e.g. the Bodmer Foundation in Celigny) by outside professionals. This should guarantee the best possible control. The exploration and evaluation of such institution will be the first task to be carried out by the Foundation.

  The Bibliothèque Bodmer, in Celigny, a suburb just outside Geneva, is of course an appropriate place, the most appropriate place in Switzerland, for such a manuscript to be stored, conserved, and edited. In fact, it is where priceless third-century papyrus copies of the Gospels of Luke and John in Greek are housed (66 and 75). It was created to be a repository for the many acquisitions of its founder, the distinguished Swiss man of letters (and vice president of the International Red Cross), Martin Bodmer. A number of the manuscripts he acquired are in Coptic.2 Years ago, a young pastor, Rodolphe Kasser, was employed to edit them. It would hence be very convenient, once he was chosen to edit The Gospel of Judas, for him to work on it there again, as he had in his youth. He lives within convenient commuting distance.

  I can tell you about Kasser’s famous Paris speech of July 1, 2004, for I was there, as I am honorary president of the International Association for Coptic Studies whose Congress was taking place. In the brief time for discussion following Kasser’s presentation, I was one of the few to comment. I limited my brief remarks to the fact that the manuscript had been seen in 1983 by Steven Emmel (who had organized the Congress, and to whom I had just turned over my few hardly legible photographs of some of the pages), and that the discovery had already been announced to the scholarly world in publications as early as 1984.

  Rodolphe Kasser’s name provided an opportunity to Michel Van Rijn, who cannot resist an opportunity to make a humorous pun, no matter how inappropriate it may be:3

  Rodolphe is not to be confused with the red-nosed reindeer. This one’s as brown-nosed as they come.

  As if this pun is not bad enough, Van Rijn thought of the German word for cash register: “Kasse.” He could not resist using it as a play on words with “Kasser”:

  They await its publication (with, of course, full transcription) from Frieda’s payrolled Rodolphe ‘Cash’ Kasse (oops, I mean Kasser)…. Cash-&-Kasser is hoping to publish the manuscript…

  It’s only fortunate that Kasser’s last name isn’t “Golden”! But to think of Kasser as having a “money-bag” mentality is very inappropriate, as I know firsthand. Kasser and I worked together year after year, a couple of weeks each time, at the Coptic Museum in Cairo, reassembling the fragments of the Nag Hammadi Codices into publishable leaves. We worked seven days a week, from the time the museum opened in the morning until it closed at 2 PM. We stayed at the same hotel, the Garden City House, a cheap “pensione” run by an amicable Italian lady named Scarzella. Her establishment was frequented by archeologists and scholars to such an extent that every day she posted the list of those staying there, so that we could know who was there and visit with one another. Kasser and I thus had our very modest meals together. I never saw him making costly expenditures or showing any interest in money. He was much more the shy, scholarly recluse.

  THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

  Michel Van Rijn commented in his Web s
ite in December 2004:4

  NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC THOUGHT THEIR BIGGEST COMPETITORS WERE THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL… BUT IT’S US!

  …this weekend National Geographic will film and photograph the Gospel’s fragmentary pages in a vault in Switzerland. But of what value is their “world exclusive” if they are unaware of the diggers, smugglers, art-dealers, governments and bankers alike [who] are backstabbing one other for ownership of the Gospel.

  This would seem to be the first disclosure of the involvement of the National Geographic Society in the saga of The Gospel of Judas, though what they had in mind with their photographs was not made clear, and Van Rijn’s passing comment went largely unnoticed at the time. The cloak of secrecy surrounding the discovery and publication of The Gospel of Judas seems to have prevailed, until it was more formally broken by me, in a presentation at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Philadelphia on November 20, 2005.

  UTMOST SECRECY

  In the memorandum sent by Mario J. Roberty to Eric R. Kaufman on December 15, 2000, item 18 specified:5

  It is clearly understood by all persons involved that nobody, not even Bruce and Frieda but only the Foundation, will have the right to promulgate and commercialize any knowledge regarding, concerning or deriving from the manuscripts. Moreover, for the time being and until all legal aspects are clarified, it is in the best interest of the Project to maintain utmost secrecy about its existence.

  This policy of utmost secrecy has been criticized repeatedly as inappropriate in the scholarly community, but largely to no avail.

  Marvin Meyer reported to us a year ago that he knows much more about what is going on regarding The Gospel of Judas, but has been obliged to sign a document promising not to divulge what he knows. Indeed, on October 30, 2005, in preparing my report on what I could learn about The Gospel of Judas to be presented on November 20, 2005, at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Philadelphia,6 I asked him by e-mail if he could provide me with even minimal information about the source of his information. To quote in full his e-mailed reply: “I’m sorry—but I must say, no comment.”

  But then I had a stroke of good fortune. I received a phone call from Paris, from the scientific journalist Patrick Jean-Baptiste, who was writing an essay for the French monthly Sciences et Avenir.7 He interviewed me by phone on November 9, 2005, after having just talked by phone the same day with Mario Roberty of the Maecenas Foundation. At my request, he e-mailed me what he had learned from Roberty, which he had kindly agreed to do. Thus he provided very up-to-date information for my presentation:

  The Maecenas Foundation (Mario Roberty and Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos) had signed a very good agreement with National Geographic for the intellectual exploitation of The Gospel of Judas. (Actually, I do not [know] how much N[ational] G[eographic] paid, but I heard nearly a million $ !!!)

  The negotiations with Bruce Ferrini failed because the lawyers of this merchant from Akron, Ohio, advised him not to sign the partnership Roberty and Tchacos offered him (the first offer was of 2 millions $, the second less).

  So, next year around Easter, Roberty told me, will be broadcast a documentary film about The Gospel of Judas and [they will] publish an article in N[ational] G[eographic] magazine.

  Also, three books will be published by N[ational] G[eographic]. The first one: a big book with pictures of the gospel and 3 language translations (English, French, German) and commentaries by Rodolphe Kasser, Gregor Wurtz, Marvin Meyer and François Godard. The second book, more journalistic, will be written by an American producer/journalist named Harp Krosney—it will be about the story of the documents. The third book, a popularized version of the Gospel, will be written by Kasser and also a certain Bart Ehrman.

  This report at the SBL convention, in a panel that had not only me but also Marvin Meyer on the platform as a panelist, created something of a sensation, as one might well imagine. It was the first clarification of what necessitates Meyer’s silence.

  Jean-Baptiste was thus the first to publish the specifics of the project of the National Geographic Society as follows:8

  Today, no longer does anyone have access to this text. An ad hoc foundation, the Maecenas Foundation based in Basel, Switzerland, owns it and has just negotiated a wonderful contract of exclusivity with the National Geographic Society. In theory, nothing is to leak out before Easter 2006, date of the diffusion of a grand documentary film and of the publication of three books. As to the announcement of the Maecenas Foundation, according to which the codex will then be restored to the Egyptians, this is not able to make one forget that at the beginning it was quite simply stolen, then exported illegally…

  He also published the names of those involved, as follows:9

  “This codex will be published completely translated in English, German, and French, with all the photographic material, in the form of a handsome book destined for specialists,” rejoices Mario Roberty, the director of the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art, Basel, who retains the Gospel. “This work will be co-signed by the Professor Rodolphe Kasser, to whom we have confided the manuscript in 2002, as well as the Professors Gregor Wurst, François Godard and Marvin Meyer.”

  The volume soon to appear with the translation apparently will not include the Coptic. This is a decisive difference! Omitting the Coptic would, in effect, maintain the monopoly until Roberty saw fit to publish the Coptic, since only then could others translate it and publish it on their own. And of course a preliminary translation could be published the week after Easter, which seems to be required by the contract with the National Geographic Society, without actually having finished the placement of fragments and the other dimensions necessary for a definitive editio princeps.

  STEVE EMMEL TO THE RESCUE

  I inquired of Steve Emmel whether what I was planning to say in this book about his interest in Gnosticism, and his resultant interest in the Nag Hammadi Codices and the Coptic language, was all correct. To my surprise, in his reply (from Cairo, Egypt, where he has been studying Shenoute manuscripts) he casually, almost sheepishly, added:

  By the way, I want to tell you that I—with some reluctance—just yesterday agreed to join the National Geographic Society’s “Codex Project Advisory Panel,” which means that I have signed an agreement not to reveal information that N[ational] G[eographic] S[ociety] has given me confidentially. Believe it or not, up until now this information has not (repeat: has not) included knowledge of the contents of The Gospel of Judas. Frankly, I would rather not have any privileged access to that, and I am going to try to avoid having any knowledge of it until my agreement with N[ational] G[eographic] S[ociety] absolutely requires it (for instance, if they want my opinion on it at some point prior to its publication). Furthermore, nothing of what I have learned only through my association with N[ational] G[eographic] S[ociety] (which goes back to fall 2004 or a little earlier) is of any great interest, in my humble opinion, but I am not a member of the innermost circle….

  What I want to tell you is this: I have joined the N[ational] G[eographic] S[ociety] advisory panel and signed their confidentiality agreement as a way—I sincerely hope!—of getting into a position to ensure that the Coptic text of The Gospel of Judas will be made publicly accessible as soon as possible, in any case no later than the publication of the first “authorized” translation of it. I have been working on this angle for some time now and think that I have now secured adequate assurances from N[ational] G[eographic] S[ociety]. In return, and to have the best hope of holding them to their word, I had to agree to join the gang. D-Day is still set for around Easter this year, so stay tuned. If things go wrong, I will make at least some kind of a stink….

  I have cautioned N[ational] G[eographic] S[ociety] against sensationalism, and I do think that the principals there want to avoid the stupid kind of sensationalism that the press loves so much. But there are some people involved in the project who do not seem to understand much of anything except stupid sensationalism, and so I ca
n certainly not guarantee that the publication of the text and translation will not be accompanied by some phoney hoopla. In any case, surely the media will try to sensationalize it just because of the title “The Gospel of Judas.” For my own part, I will continue to try to emphasize the genuine scientific interest of this codex (and every other ancient manuscript), which in a perfect world would be (intellectually speaking) sensational enough.

  I’m simply delighted that Steve has become a member of the National Geographic Society’s “Codex Project Advisory Panel,” and thus is an insider as to what is going on. It gives me hope that things will be done right. Obviously he will not succeed in delaying the publication of the translation until the Coptic transcription can also be published, since the translation is due out about now, and Roberty reports that fragments are still being placed and thus the conservation has not been completed, much less the editio princeps with the Coptic transcription. But as Emmel brought the publication of the Nag Hammadi Codices almost single-handedly to a successful completion, after the Technical Subcommittee of UNESCO’s International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices had ceased to function, I know firsthand that no one would be a better addition to the team at this eleventh hour.