The owner asked $3,000,000 for the entire collection. He refused to consider lowering his price to within a reasonable range, claiming that he had already come down from $10,000,000 in negotiations with one previous prospective buyer. He also refused to discuss the prices of the four individual items separately. He would like to sell all four manuscripts together, but probably will sell them individually if necessary.
I strongly urge you to acquire this Gnostic codex. It is of the utmost scholarly value, comparable in every way to any one of the Nag Hammadi Codices. Like them as well, it is one of the oldest specimens of a book in codex form; the fact that part of the cover is also preserved is a remarkable stroke of luck. There is great danger of further deterioration of the manuscript as long as it is in the hands of the present owner. This unique item must be put as quickly as possible into the hands of a library or museum where it can be restored, published, and conserved.
Stephen Emmel
June 1, 1983
FIVE
The Peddling of The Gospel of Judas
THE SWISS PURCHASE, 1999–2000
In the previous chapter, Dutch-born, London-based Michel Van Rijn’s version of the story on his “artnews” Web site ended with Geneva-based art dealer Nikolas Koutoulakis showing the papyrus manuscript of The Gospel of Judas to fellow antiquities dealer Frieda Tchacos in 1982. If Tchacos actually saw the codices in 1982, it certainly took a long time for her to act, for the Swiss seem to have acquired the material only in 1999. German journalist Roger Thiede reports on the acquisition, also making the point that Mia (Koutoulakis’s devious girlfriend) was involved:1
First when the smart attorney Mario Jean Roberty, spokesman of the worldwide-active Basel “Maecenas Stiftung für antike Kunst” [Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art], as well as his client, the business-woman Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos of the Zürich gallery Nefer, take over leading rolls, does the thing get rolling. In 1999 the purchase succeeds, with parts coming from Mia’s direction.
Of course this association of Mia with Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos is at least intriguing. The girlfriend of the Greek agent Nikolas Koutoulakis is only referred to as “Mia,” which is the feminine of the Greek numeral one, and can mean a female someone. Just what her real name was and why it is not divulged remain unclear. Perhaps no one ever knew, or cared.
In typically Swiss bilingualism, Ralph Pöhner in his 2005 article in FACTS had given the first name of the Zürich businesswoman, in French, as Frédérique,2 of which Frieda is a Swiss-German abbreviation or nickname. She has a hyphenated last name, which in Switzerland is the proper way for a married couple to give their names: first the last name of the husband, and then, after a hyphen, the maiden name of the wife. Thus, prior to her marriage, her name would seem to have been Frédérique (Frieda) Tchacos. Tchacos is a Greek name. (My Swiss friend and colleague at Harvard Divinity School, François Bovon, assures me that it is neither German nor Swiss dialect.) It is sometimes spelled with k (Tchakos), instead of c (Tchacos), with the k being of course the Greek kappa, though often transliterated, as here, with c.
Tchacos seems to have been just the right person for the job:3
Behind the Maecenas Foundation façade, the manuscript’s real owner is one of the biggest antiquities dealers, Frieda Tchacos (aka Frieda Nussberger). She declined, via Roberty [the Swiss attorney for the Maecenas Foundation], to be interviewed for this article, but is described by London dealers as “very shrewd, very low profile, very smart.” Said to be of Greek parentage but brought up in Alexandria, she later moved to Switzerland and has run galleries in Paris and Geneva. “She speaks all the languages, and does business on the highest level; millions and millions of pounds,” says one London dealer.
Roberty says the reason Tchacos declines to discuss the manuscript is that, since publicity about the gospel in recent weeks in German and Swiss magazines, Christian fundamentalists have picketed her home in Switzerland, and daubed slogans on its surrounding walls.
Frieda may well have negotiated with Mia in Greek! Of course, whether Frieda ever met Mia is not known. In fact, by this time Mia may have been completely out of the picture (if she ever was in it). After all, she had been involved in a rather wrenching experience (even for the papyrus).
Of course Tchacos could have dealt solely with Nikolas Koutoulakis (no doubt also in Greek…), as Michel van Rijn had reported:
Koutoulakis showed his papyri to fellow Greek antiquities dealer Frieda Tchakos.
The Swiss journalist of Zürich, Ralph Pöhner, reports with obvious pride:4
Finally in 1999 the Swiss interests take over the batch of documents from the Egyptian [presumably the owner from Cairo named Hannah in the German and Dutch reports, and the unnamed Coptic owner in Steve Emmel’s report]. “We have it from him,” confirmed Roberty; who the man in Cairo was, the lawyer is not willing to reveal: “We want first to make sure that the Egyptian authorities do not take legal proceedings against him for exporting cultural materials.”
Quite recently, Roberty has clarified the awkward situation in which the Egyptian from whom it was purchased finds himself:5
You see, the problem we have with Egypt (to whom the codex will be donated) is that their system of law is quite different from ours. There is not a real reliability. So we prefer, and in the publication many names of Egyptian nationals will be—not omitted—and we will use different names.
Asked whether the seller would be prosecuted under Egyptian law, he replied: “No. The statutes of limitation have already passed.” But he explained that the problem lies elsewhere:
People in the country may think these people have become extremely wealthy and there are many risks that we wouldn’t want the people running into.
All the real names will be deposited, so that on the scholarly level there will be full transparency.
Legally speaking there are no risks. It is absolutely clean and transparent if it will be accepted as such, but in that country, with which I’ve had other experiences, you never exactly know how things are handled.
If they stick to certain rules, it will mostly be harassment. Through the lapse of time most people have become very elderly, and I don’t think they deserve being harassed much.
Van Rijn reports that Tchacos had succeeded in reuniting what Mia had stolen and what Hannah had retained or recuperated:6
In the summer of 1999, Frieda had come across some stolen papyrus that she thought to be Mia’s. She then traveled to Cairo in November, where she discussed the purchase of the full manuscript with Hannah. Hannah had put the Gospel in a rusty safe-deposit box in a Citibank in Hicksville, New York. She flew out to see it and purchased it soon after for an unknown sum.
Pöhner had said Tchacos acquired the material in 1999 from the unnamed Copt, Hannah. But Thiede mentions Hannah’s parts only in 2000, when the “parts coming from Mia’s direction” are united with the rest:7
In the year 2000 Frieda Nussberger[-Tchacos] achieved the reuniting of the treasure with those parts that Hannah had meanwhile deposited in the basement of the Citibank of Hicksville, New York.
Tchacos no doubt speaks German and its Swiss dialect in Zürich, French in Paris and Geneva, Greek in Athens, Arabic in Cairo, and English in New York. It is indeed useful that “she speaks all the languages.”
YALE UNIVERSITY
Tchacos turned to Yale University as a potential purchaser:8
At first it seemed unclear how one should precede with the find. In the year 2000 the Zürich art dealer Frédérique Nussberger—client of Roberty—arrived with the documents at the Beinecke Library of Yale University. Again it comes to no settlement. “We renounced the purchase,” says the curator of the library, Robert Babcock. “The reasons we do not discuss publicly.” Only this much: “The genuineness was not the issue—we considered it to be authentic.”
Harry Attridge was involved in the assessment at Yale, and submitted to me the following report:
At Yale, the curator of ancient manuscripts
in the Beinecke Library, Dr. Robert Babcock, invited Bentley Layton and me to have a look at the Coptic Codex and to give him our judgment about its probable significance. I believe that he was interested in acquiring the whole find. Since his area is Greek papyrology, he would have been in a position to make a judgment about the value and significance of the Greek material that was also part of the offering. I don’t recall him discussing the price being asked for the materials—such discretion would be pretty standard—, nor did he identify the seller or his agent. We had no contact with either seller or agent. We had brief access to the Coptic codex itself in offices of the Beinecke Library and were able to verify that it did indeed appear to be what we had heard about from Steve Emmel, a codex, probably of the 4th–5th century in a decent literary hand not unlike that of the Nag Hammadi codices. We did not have time to read or transcribe the texts in the codex, nor, to my recollection, did we discuss the possible identification of the text as a Gospel of Judas. I was not involved in the decision not to acquire the materials, which was made by the staff of the Beinecke, but I’m not sure at what level.
TCHACOS AND FERRINI: CONTRACT OF SEPTEMBER 9, 2000
The manuscripts are next attested on September 9, 2000, where one finds on the Internet9 a contract signed on that date. It is between “Frieda Nussberger Tchacos, whose address is Augustinergasse 14, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland (hereinafter referred to as ‘Seller’)” and “Nemo, LLC, whose address is 1080 Top of the Hill Road, Akron, Ohio (hereinafter referred to as ‘Buyer’).” The buyer can be identified as Bruce Ferrini. The purchase price, to be paid in installments without interest, is $1,500,000, half “on or before January 15, 2001, and the other half “on or before February 15, 2001.” The contract states:
The Manuscript was, in all regards, legally exported from the country of its origin and has been legally exported from and imported into all countries through which it has passed, including the United States.
No person or entity is in possession of any copy, photograph, facsimile or reproduction by any means or in any medium of the Manuscript or the text thereof.
…because Seller acquired and took delivery of the Manuscript in the United States, it does not possess and shall not be required to deliver hereafter any export or import licenses.
The contract is signed by Bruce Ferrini, Pres., Nemo, LLC, as Buyer, and Frieda Nussberger Tchacos, as Seller.
MARTIN SCHØYEN: SEPTEMBER 11, 2000
Ferrini promptly went to work to see if he could sell the manuscripts for more than he would have to pay for them. He offered them to one of his clients, Martin Schøyen, perhaps knowing that it is he who had earlier shown an interest in acquiring them. On September 11, 2000, he received the following response from Schøyen, who makes his own appraisals on the basis of the sale price of comparable materials at auctions:10
The following prices were stipulated, and consented to by Hannah more or less, for the meeting in N. Y. 12th–13 Dec. 1990 (cancelled due to “Desert Storm”):
1. Exodus, 4th c. More than 50 ff. Greek
$365,000
2. 3 Gnostic texts, Coptic 25 ff.+10? in fragments, 4th (incl. 1 cover)
281,000
3. Letters of Paul (3 epistles), Coptic, ca. 400, 30ff. (incl. 1 cover & spine)
252,000
4. Mathematical, 5th c. 12 ff.?
88,000
________
$986,000
For no. 2 an addition was made of 10%, since 1 of the covers was preserved, and for no. 3 +15% for 1 cover & the spine of the binding (are these present?)…
You should check whether everything is still present: (2 binding covers/spine about 12 ff. Mathematical (distinctive cursive script) and Letters of Paul (part of Colossians, 1st Thessalonians and Hebrews).
Schøyen had at the time made such calculations, based on his familiarity with the antiquities market, and had sent them to me. But there was no response from the owner, so that his comment to Ferrini that the prices were “more or less consented to by Hannah” would have to be emphasized on the side of “less.”11 In effect, Schöyen was informing Ferrini what he was willing to pay as a fair price. It did not come to enough for Ferrini to be able to pay Frieda her asking price, much less to make a profit. So the sale to Schøyen did not take place, I am sorry to say.
CHARLES W. HEDRICK
Charlie Hedrick had been consulted by Ferrini from time to time about ancient manuscripts that Ferrini had access to in his business, asking Hedrick to identify them for him from photographs he would send. On February 6, 2001, Roberty e-mailed the following to van Rijn, having heard from him about the involvement of Hedrick in the present case:
Charlie’s contribution really surprises me. I had no idea of his theological background being as solid on such a particular subject. This kind as well as any other kind of contributions or revelations of facts I can’t possibly be aware of, would make your update extremely more helpful—for the benefit of the cause…!
I of course welcome Hedrick’s education being called “solid,” since, after all, I was his doctoral father! He is today Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University.
Hedrick received from Bruce Ferrini 164 “very dismal digital photographs,” where he could at least identify James from the title of The (First) Apocalypse of James and the title of The Letter of Peter to Philip,12 which Steve Emmel had already identified in Geneva, and which have been mentioned in the current publicity about The Gospel of Judas as included in what has returned to Switzerland.13 He also received ten professionally made photographs and twenty-four made with a regular camera. Hedrick transcribed and translated what he could from six pages that were more nearly legible. The difficulty was twofold: the papyrus itself was quite damaged, more so than when Steve Emmel had seen the leaves in 1983, especially in that the top third of many leaves were now missing. Emmel had seen the pagination in the top margin, which was no longer available to Hedrick to help put the photographs in their correct sequence. And also when the bottom of one page and the top of the next are extant, one can establish the sequence of leaves by following the train of thought, which unfortunately was no longer possible.
Hedrick circulated his transcriptions and translations to the circle of colleagues who had worked together over the years on the Nag Hammadi Codices, Birger A. Pearson, John D. Turner, Douglas M. Parrott, Wolf-Peter Funk, Hans-Gebhard Bethge, and me, and received from most a series of suggestions for improving both the transcription and the translation. The outcome of this collaboration has been, most recently, a much improved transcription and German translation by the group in Berlin led by Bethge, and a corresponding English translation by Steven Patterson. The last page of the text reads as follows:
They made sure that they seized him during the prayer. For they were afraid of the people, because he was in all their hands as a prophet. And they approached Judas. They said to him: What are you doing in this place? Aren’t you a disciple of Jesus? But he answered them according to their wishes. But Judas took some money. He delivered him over to them.
The Gospel of Judas
It is to be much regretted that this familiar kind of collegial sharing and cooperation, characteristic of the study of Nag Hammadi by those not part of the Nag Hammadi monopolies, has not been shared, in the case of The Gospel of Judas, by those who have—a monopoly on it!
Hedrick published reports of his photographs of The Gospel of Judas in 2002 and 2003 in the scholarly journals Bible Review and Journal of Early Christian Studies:14
In sum, in addition to the four canonical gospels, we have four complete noncanonicals, seven fragmentary, four known from quotations and two hypothetically recovered for a total of 21 gospels from the first two centuries, and we know that others existed in the early period. I am confident more of them will be found. For example, I have seen photos of several pages from a Coptic text entitled The Gospel of Judas that recently surfaced on the antiquities market.
One of those go
spels generally thought to have disappeared, the gospel of Judas (known to Irenaeus toward the end of the second century), actually did survive in Coptic translation, and has been available on the antiquities market for several years.
This too was picked up by the Swiss reporter Pöhner:15
In June 2002 the Bible Review reported about the photographs circulating on the manuscript market, as did in November 2003 the Journal of Early Christian Studies. It has to do with securing an important document for humanity. Already previously Michel van Rijn picked up the theme: The former art smuggler, who presents himself as a warrant officer, and illumines the cloudy side of the art market, reports on his web site that a Gospel of Judas is on the market. “Don’t touch,” he warns.
Secrets of Judas Page 12
