Secrets of Judas

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Secrets of Judas Page 10

by James M. Robinson


  Almost! Steve had been less involved in the negotiations themselves, and had been able to focus instead on the Coptic codex. He was permitted to examine the Coptic leaves in enough detail to be able to decide, primarily on the basis of their dimensions, that they were really all that was left of two Coptic codices. This was kept secret from the sellers, since it looked as if they had set the asking price at the round figure of a million dollars per codex. Obviously the potential purchasers did not want the price to jump to $4,000,000!

  After the negotiations had failed, they nonetheless all went out for lunch together, which was when Steve excused himself to go to the bathroom and transcribe what his acute eye had seen and memory had retained of the Coptic material. He afterward wrote his notes in a confidential memorandum, which he sent to me. We did not want it made public at the time, lest it get back to the sellers and escalate still further the asking price. But its details can now be made public, since the purchase has been consummated (at an unknown price, but surely much less than was asked for in Geneva). As a result, nothing is to be gained by further confidentiality. His report is hence published for the first time at the conclusion of this chapter.

  Steve identified three Coptic tractates, two of which are familiar from duplicates in the Nag Hammadi Codices: one was a copy of The First Apocalypse of James known from Nag Hammadi Codex V, Tractate 4,13 and one a copy of The Letter of Peter to Philip known from Nag Hammadi Codex VIII, Tractate 2. There was no way to know whether there were more than three tractates. Of course Steve could not sort through the whole stack of fragile papyrus leaves with his “philatelist’s tweezers,” but had to “peep in only here and there.” This comment is an important detail, since it indicates that journalists’ statements referring to the number of leaves in the lot purchased by the Maecenas Foundation are no more than speculation. Only when the leaves are assembled from fragments and conserved between panes of glass can one speak about how many leaves, in whole or part, have been rescued.

  Steve could only identify the third tractate, a previously unknown text, as a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples (a standard Gnostic literary genre), though he happened to observe the name Judas. This is what is now known as The Gospel of Judas. But he did not identify the Judas in question as Judas Iscariot. As he explained in the interview quoted above, the normal assumption would be that “Judas” referred to Didymos Judas Thomas, since he is listed as the author of two Nag Hammadi tractates (II, 2 and 7). Codex II, Tractate 2, is The Gospel of Thomas. It begins:

  These are the hidden words that the living Jesus spoke. And Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down.

  This introduction seems to have been echoed at the beginning of Nag Hammadi Codex II, Tractate 7, The Book of Thomas.

  The hidden words that the savior spoke to Judas Thomas which I, even I, Mathaias, wrote down, while I was walking, listening to them speak with one another. The savior said, “Brother Thomas, while you have time in the world, listen to me, and I will reveal to you the things you have pondered in your mind. Now since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine yourself and learn who you are, in which way you exist, and how you will come to be.”

  All this is clearly a play on the name Didymos Judas Thomas with which The Gospel of Thomas begins. Didymos is the Greek word for “twin,” and Thomas is the Semitic word for “twin.” So both of these Nag Hammadi tractates are ascribed to a person named Judas and nicknamed “Twin.”

  In the Gospel of John (11:16; 20:24; 21:2), this Judas is simply named Thomas, with the added translation, “called the Twin,” here using the Greek word Didymos. He is considered one of the inner circle, but is not identified as Jesus’s brother. Nor is the nickname Twin explained. He is most familiar to us as the “doubting Thomas,” due to his insistence that he touch Jesus’s wounds before he will believe that it is the same person who was crucified (John 20:25, 27–28). So it would be logical for Steve to assume this tractate was ascribed to the disciple Judas known as “Doubting Thomas,” rather than to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus.

  The very fact that two of the three tractates that are in the codex containing The Gospel of Judas are duplicates of Nag Hammadi tractates has misled some into thinking that this new codex, discovered no doubt shortly before being shown in Geneva in 1983, is part of the Nag Hammadi discovery of 1945. But this is not the case, for a number of reasons.

  It would be a misunderstanding of the collection of codices that were discovered near Nag Hammadi. When one examines distinguishing characteristics, such as the technique in manufacturing the leather covers, the different scribal hands involved in copying the codices, and the differences in Coptic dialect among the translations of tractates, one notes that they tend to fall into four clusters. But there are no duplicates within a single cluster, only in different clusters. Hence if the codex with The Gospel of Judas had been part of the Nag Hammadi discovery, one would have to rule that this one codex was a fifth separate cluster of tractates, only secondarily brought together with the Nag Hammadi Codices.

  There is already an instance of duplicates with Nag Hammadi tractates in a codex that we know was not part of the Nag Hammadi discovery: a century ago a codex was discovered and deposited in Berlin, named Papyrus Berolinensis 8502, which has duplicates of two Nag Hammadi tractates, as well as two tractates not found in Nag Hammadi, the most famous of which is The Gospel of Mary.14 So the existence of duplicate tractates does not mean that both copies came from the same discovery.

  What the public does not realize is that Coptic manuscript discoveries are taking place in Egypt on an almost regular basis since the Nag Hammadi discovery, and no one has suggested that these come from Nag Hammadi.15 The fact that the discovery that included The Gospel of Judas also involved a Greek mathematical text and a Greek copy of the Psalms, as well as a Coptic copy of Pauline Epistles, does not suggest that these materials were part of the Nag Hammadi discovery.

  Yet the idea that The Gospel of Judas was part of the Nag Hammadi discovery seems not to want to go away, so let me try to put it to rest once and for all:

  Stephen C. Carlson reports:16

  Roger Pearse of the Tertullian Project had put together a history of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library (“The Nag Hammadi discovery of manuscripts,” July 30, 2003). Of possible relevance to The Gospel of Judas is this bit of information (emphasis added):

  The books were divided among the 7 camel-drivers present. According to ‘Ali there were 13 (our ‘codex XIII’ was not included in the number, as it was inside codex VI). Thus a codex was lost more or less at the site. Seven lots were drawn up. Covers were removed and each consisted of a complete codex plus part of another. The other drivers, ignorant of the value and afraid of sorcery and Muhammad ‘Ali, disclaimed any share, whereon he piled them all back together.

  This presentation, which is used by Carlson to suggest (boldface) that there is a missing Nag Hammadi codex, is an oversimplified summary of a report I made in 1979, which actually pointed in the opposite direction. So I need to quote my own presentation to straighten things out:17

  Muhammad ‘Ali decided to divide the codices on the spot among the seven camel drivers present. Evidence of only 12 codices survives today. What is called Codex XIII consists of only eight leaves, which were removed from the center of the codex in late antiquity in order to separate out a tractate inscribed on them and then laid inside the front cover of Codex VI. These leaves probably would not even have been noticed by the discoverers, much less considered a separate codex. Yet when pressed, Muhammad ‘Ali maintained that the number of codices in the jar was not 12 but 13. Thus it is possible, though unconfirmed, that a quite fragmentary codex was completely lost at the cliff. Since the number of codices was fewer than enough for each camel driver to receive 2, Muhammad ‘Ali prepared seven lots each consisting of a complete codex and parts of the others torn up for this purpose. Muhammad ‘Ali has maintained that covers were abandoned at the cliff, which would a
ccount for the missing cover of Codex XII as well as for that of any unattested cover. The other camel drivers, ignorant of the value inherent in the codices and fearing both sorcery and Muhammad ‘Ali, renounced their claims to a share. He then stacked the lots back together in a pile, unwound his white headdress, knotted them in it, and slung the whole bundle over his shoulder. Unhobbling his camel, he rode back to his home in al-Qasr, in the courtyard of which the animals were kept and bread baked in the large clay oven. Here he dumped the codices, loose leaves and fragments, on the ground among the straw that was lying by the oven to be burned. ‘Umm Ahmad [his mother] has conceded that she burned much of the ripped-out papyrus and broken covers, perhaps parts of the covers of XI and XII, in the oven along with the straw.

  The removal of leaves from their cover at the cliff and the subsequent burning of some in the oven may be correlated to some extent with the condition in which the material was first examined and recorded in detail. If another codex existed, no trace of it has been brought to light, since the surviving unplaced fragments either seem to have the same scribal hands as do the codices that survive, and hence, presumably, to have come from them, or are too small or preserve too little ink to provide a basis for conjecturing the existence of further codices.

  Muhammad ‘Ali had heard me and others talk of thirteen codices, and so he would quite naturally speak of thirteen, not recalling what he had counted at the time (if he had counted at all—he was illiterate). In all probability he was just playing back what he had learned was the “correct” number. In any case, his report of what happened at the time of the discovery would not indicate that a previously unknown codex containing The Gospel of Judas survived to appear a generation later. Rather his report would indicate that anything that has not reached its final destination in the Coptic Museum in Cairo was shredded at the cliff or burned in his mother’s oven. There is no way that his report can be twisted into the suggestion that The Gospel of Judas was in a codex from the Nag Hammadi discovery. Yet it goes on.

  Henk Schutten interviewed the most famous Dutch Nag Hammadi expert, and reported:18

  [Gilles] Quispel does not exclude that the Gospel of Judas has the same origin as the Nag Hammadi documents.

  Quispel was the Dutch representative on the International Committee for the Nag Hammadi Codices of which I was permanent secretary, and it is he who went to Belgium to take possession of Nag Hammadi Codex I on behalf of the Jung Institute of Zürich. But I have been through his archives, which he entrusted to me for preservation in the Nag Hammadi Archives I have collected, and Quispel has no information on this topic. There is nothing in them that would indicate any connection of The Gospel of Judas with the Nag Hammadi Codices.

  Yet Schutten reports Quispel as saying:

  “[J]udging by its content, it is clearly a Gnostic document. There is a reference to Allogenes, also called Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. In Jewish gnosis Seth is viewed as the Saviour.” In many old documents from the first years of Christianity references to The Gospel of Judas can be found, says Quispel. But after being banned by the Church, the manuscript seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Not surprising, according to Quispel: “Gnosis is the most persecuted religion in the world. Followers were put to death by the Catholic Church. He who possessed the manuscript risked his life.” Religious historians assume that the Gospel of Judas has been written in the same period as the canonical gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. Because the Judas-manuscript is written in Coptic—the last stage of Old-Egyptian—it is assumed that this is a copy translated from Greek from the original text presumably from the first or second century. Is the Gospel written by Judas? That is a difficult question to answer for Quispel. “I doubt it very much, but you can never entirely exclude this option.” An obvious conclusion is that this text is from an Early-Christian Sect, called the Kainite….

  Till middle of last century what was known about old Gnostics was mainly based on documents of the Catholic Church that fought the doctrine with fire and brimstone. This changed when in 1945 farmers found an urn in Nag Hammadi in Upper-Egypt containing 12 books— or codices, written on papyrus and held together with a leather strap. The Nag Hammadi Codices consist of 52 documents, most of them with Gnostic intent. The most famous document out [of] this collection, The Gospel of Thomas, was purchased by Professor Quist [Van Rijn’s play on the name Quispel] in 1952.

  Just like the Gospel of Judas, the Nag Hammadi– documents ended up in the hands of money hungry art dealers, among them a Belgian dealer…. Quispel wrote to several sponsors when he heard of the discovery. With a cheque for 35,000 Swiss Francs in his pocket he finally got on the train to Brussels on May 10th, 1952. “A mere trifle, even in those days, but I did return to the Netherlands with the manuscript. Nowadays, these documents would be worth four to five million dollars.” Quispel does not exclude that the Gospel of Judas has the same origin as the Nag Hammadi–documents. He remembers how in 1955 he visited Tano, a Cypriot dealer in Cairo with a large number of documents, upon request of Queen Juliana who showed a lot of interest in the Gnostics. “The Egyptian authorities seized Tano’s collection, but he wrote to me later on that he left for Geneva to offer some documents for sale that he was able to smuggle out of Egypt to Martin Bodmer, a rich Swiss. It would not surprise Quispel that the Gospel of Judas fell into the hands of Bodmer through the same Phokion Tano.

  “Bodmer placed the documents in a Swiss foundation named after him. He hired a Swiss minister who taught himself Coptic to translate it. This minister, Rodolphe Kasser, is the man who is finalizing the translation of the Gospel of Judas.”

  For Quispel to suggest that Tano sold it to Bodmer is utterly ridiculous. It may have found its way recently into the Bibliothèque Bodmer near Geneva to be conserved and studied, after having been offered for sale in Geneva a generation earlier (1983), and after having wandered to New York, Yale University, and elsewhere. But all of those travels would not have taken place if Tano had sold it to Bodmer! He would have promptly deposited it in the Bibliothèque Bodmer, just as he did his other acquisitions.

  Quispel’s pupil and successor, as the much more distinguished Dutch authority on Gnosticism, is Hans van Oort. His more sober news release is also translated by Michel Van Rijn, with the title: “Gospel of Judas not by Judas”:19

  The owner of the text, who only wants to make money from it, has carefully timed the publicity surrounding what is called The Gospel of Judas. That is the opinion of Prof. Hans van Oort, who specializes in Gnosticism, Manichaeism, Nag Hammadi and Augustine. He called a press conference on his own initiative, to counter “all the nonsense” being written at the moment about The Gospel of Judas; for example that the Vatican has an interest in the document’s not being published….

  Van Oort does not rule out that it involves the missing codex from the Nag Hammadi codices. What he does rule out is that Judas himself wrote it: “There is no reason whatsoever to assume that he did this. Nothing points to that.”…

  Van Oort is one of the few people who knows the contents of The Gospel of Judas, but does not want any trouble with its owner, the Swiss Maecenas Foundation. “If I did, I would be killed.”

  Yet I had first mentioned the discovery of the codex containing The Gospel of Judas in print precisely in order to make clear that it was not part of the Nag Hammadi discovery:20

  There have emerged no cogent reasons to postulate that there were more [than thirteen Nag Hammadi codices]. For though a sizable part of a Fourth Century Gnostic codex was seen by Ludwig Koenen and Stephen Emmel in Europe in 1983, containing a different version of The (First) Apocalypse of James and a copy of The Letter of Peter to Philip (with this as its subscript title), as well as a previously unknown dialogue between Jesus and his disciples, it is associated provisionally with a different provenience than Nag Hammadi and should not, without some positive evidence to that effect, e.g. from physical traits or from the cartonnage, be identified as a Nag Hammadi codex.
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  By “physical traits” I had in mind the handwriting, the technique in manufacturing the quire(s) and the leather cover. And by “the cartonnage” I had in mind references to places and names often found in the trash papyrus used to thicken and line the cover. No such supporting evidence has emerged. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the manuscript containing The Gospel of Judas was part of the Nag Hammadi discovery. The place where it is reported to have been discovered is much farther down the Nile, nearer where the Oxyrhynchus manuscripts (an enormous horde of ancient texts including many New Testament papyri) were discovered a century ago. And yet the association with Nag Hammadi is too good to let go of easily. Michel van Rijn comments, without any information to go on:21

  The manuscript was dug up at near Nag Hammadi, then illegally exported from Egypt and illegally imported in the US, where Frieda acquired it.

 

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