Apocryphicity

The first assignment due in my current Gnosticism course is a translation comparison. The goal of the assignment is for students to see how much work is involved in putting together an edition of a text and how the editor’s decisions can greatly affect how one reads or understand the text. This is particularly so with fragmentary texts. In previous years I have used the translations of the Apocalypse of Adam in Layton’s Gnostic Scriptures and Robinson’s Nag Hammadi Library.

This year I opted for the Gospel of Judas by Marvin Meyer (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures) and April DeConick (The Thirteenth Apostle). I chose this text for three reasons: it is well-known to (though not well-read by) the wider public, the assignment would force the students to read the gospel very carefully and thus lead (hopefully) to a rewarding discussion of the text, and the interpretation of the text is highly contentious.

Meyer and DeConick have been in conflict over their particular interpretations of the text; their positions are available for all to read in an article on Meyer’s site (see HERE) and a series of responses on DeConick’s blog (see HERE). But I hoped the students would not see this exchange before writing the paper; it is preferred that they find the major contentious passages themselves and thereby avoid trying to understand why each scholar arrived at his/her position but focus purely on the general issue of the choices involved in the editorial/translation process (the temptation is to label DeConick “conservative” for seeing the traditional Judas in the gospel, and Meyer as “liberal” when, in reality, they are both “liberal”).

I suggested to the students to focus on three areas when presenting their findings: presentation (e.g., use of headings, footnotes, line numbering, punctuation, etc.), approach to damage in the manuscript (i.e., are gaps filled in with emendations? Or left indicated with ellipses?), and major readings that dramatically affect the interpretation of the text (e.g., Judas as a “demon” or “spirit”).

The majority of the class seemed to favour DeConick’s translation. They appreciated her clear presentation of the manuscript evidence—she presents the text line-by-line, with damaged sections clearly marked; she hesitates to fill in the missing material, and tends toward a literal translation. But Meyer was praised for being more readable and less leading in his subheadings and translation choices (though his choices are contentious, at least his notes present other options).

In the course of our discussion several readings came up that left the class wondering about the actual content of the manuscript. If anyone out there who reads Coptic would like to provide solutions to these questions (are you there, April?), we would certainly be appreciative.

1. At 39, 24 DeConick has “And the animals that were brought for sacrifice” while Meyer has “And the cattle brought in are the offerings you have seen.” Is the Coptic “animals” or “cattle”?

2. At 52, 4-6 DeConick has “The first [is Ath]eth, the one who is called the ‘Good One,’” while Meyer has “The first is [Se]th, who is called Christ.” Again, what is the Coptic?

3. At 33, 19-21 DeConick has “Often he did not appear to his disciples, but when necessary, you would find him in their midst,” while Meyer has “Many a time he does not appear as himself to his disciples, but you find him as a child among them.” Both editors note the difficulties in translating this passage. One student thought the key to the solution might be in the words translated “as himself”—if this is present in the manuscript, he asked, then “as a child” might be the superior reading. So, what is in the manuscript?

4. In 40, 5-6 DeConick has “and generations of the impious will remain faithful to him,” while Meyer has “and generations of pious people will cling to him.” So, what is it: pious or impious?

UPDATE: April DeConick graciously answered these concerns in a post on her blog (read it HERE). Thanks April.

April DeConick at The Forbidden Gospels mentions a forthcoming book by Marvin Meyer on the full range of Judas traditions from early Christian writers. The book is due in November and is titled Judas: The Definitive Collection of Gospels and Legends About the Infamous Apostle of Jesus. This is a welcome resource as these traditions, though not all contained in gospels, are nevertheless apocryphal traditions and deserve greater exposure and discussion.

April DeConick of the Forbidden Gospels blog has posted several articles lately on her work on the Gospel of Judas including this one about the forthcoming critical edition.

April DeConick’s The Forbidden Gospels blog features a preview of her new book The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says.

Bart Ehrman and Darrell L. Bock (author of The Missing Gospels) are interviewed on The Things That Matter Most (based in Dallas) about the Gospel of Judas. For a recent on-line review of Bock’s book see Mike Aquilina’s The Way of the Fathers Blog.

Jim Davila at Palaeojudaica has a few posts (HERE and HERE) on the new thriller The Book of Names by Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori (read a review HERE). The book features a battle between a group of chosen ones, the lamed vovniks, mentioned in the Talmud and a rival group called the Gnoseos. Comparisons to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code are inevitable but there have been plenty of decent biblical or medieval thrillers that are worthy of mention. Ian Caldwell and Diustin Thomason’s The Rule of Four and Lev Grossman’s Codex are both highly readable literary thrillers dealing with efforts to thwart evil efforts to hide important medieval manuscripts. There are numerous Jesus novels that feature apocryphal traditions—far too many to mention.

Another early biblical thriller is the now-infamous The Mystery of Mar Saba written by in James H. Hunter 1940 which some claim inspired Morton Smith to “forge” Secret Mark. For a discussion of the book in connection with the gospel see HERE. Novelist Jeffrey Archer will add to the CA-related fiction next month with his The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot. You can read about it HERE, but here’s a quick publisher’s summary:

The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot sheds new light on the the mystery of Judas—including his motives for the betrayal and what happened to him after the crucifixion—by retelling the story of Jesus through the eyes of Judas, using the canonical texts as its basic point of reference. Ostensibly written by Judas’s son, Benjamin, and following the narrative style of the Gospels, this re-creation is provocative, compelling, and controversial.

The Gospel According to Judas, by Benjamin Iscariot is the result of an intense collaboration between a storyteller and a scholar: Jeffrey Archer and Francis J. Moloney. Their brilliant work—bold and simple—is a compelling story for twenty-first-century readers, while maintaining an authenticity that would be credible to a first-century Christian or Jew.

Another thriller named The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer appeared in 2002, before the rediscovery of the ancient text.

Prof. April DeConick of Rice University in Houston (and author of Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas) recently launched her blog The Forbidden Gospels. Already she has discussed her views on the Gospel of Judas (adding to the growing number of voices that declare that Judas has been mischaracterized by previous scholars of this text) and the origins of the Gospel of Thomas.

The Green Bay Press Gazette has an article reviewing recent books on the Gospel of Judas.

Novelist Jeffrey Archer is writing a book inspired by the Gospel of Judas. Read an article on it from the Times On-line. Read an AP article here.

Jim Davila at Paleojudaica excerpts a Los Angeles Times article on the gospel (you must register at the LA Times to read the entire text).

Vision reports on a lecture on The Gospel of Judas delivered by Marvin Meyer.

Special guest Pierluigi Piovanelli of the University of Ottawa offers the following discussion on the publishing of the Gospel of Judas:

TCHACOS LIBRE!

These days I am completing a collective review of the first publications on the Gospel of Judas, i.e., (1) Herbert Krosney’s The Lost Gospel, (2) The Gospel of Judas from Codex Tchacos translated and explained by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer and Gregor Wurst, and (3) James Robinson’s The Secret of Judas.  This is probably the case of many other colleagues around the world with one small but significant difference.  In my case, working in a bilingual institution (the University of Ottawa) and writing the review for a bilingual journal (Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses), I was lucky enough to have at my disposal both the original American editions (published on April 6 and 7, 2006) and their translations in French (released two months later, in June).  What was my surprise when I realized that there are some substantial differences between the two editions!

This is especially true for the French versions of Kasser’s chapter on “The Story of Codex Tchacos and the Gospel of Judas” and the final chapter of Robinsons’s book.  The polemic between the Swiss scholar and his American colleague, already present in the English texts, reaches peaks of unsuspected intensity in the French publications.  Apparently, old misunderstandings that go back to the controversy about the edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices, in the seventies, were not totally forgiven and/or forgotten.  Thus, in a long endnote totally lacking from the English text Kasser feels compelled to dismiss Robinson’s accusations of having unduly delayed the publication of Nag Hammadi Codex I (the Jung Codex) until 1975.  While in the main body of his chapter he gives a better idea of what he means by “the question of scientific morals, or deontology” and more details about the reasons he has to blame American specialists.

After the sentence, “Instead, scholars had to fly from the United States to Switzerland to buy a treasure that neither Swiss nor other European Coptologists had any idea existed” (on p. 55 of the American edition), the French text goes on as follows:  “It is easy to imagine: after their bold but unfortunate attempt in 1983, it seems that some scholars on the other side of the Ocean [i.e., in North America] judged that it was more appropriate to adopt a strategy of (semi-)confidentiality.  In doing so, they preserved what was of primary importance to them, that is, their chances of successfully achieving a little (or even more) later what they had not accomplished in 1983:  to be the successful ones instead of others.  In doing so, they took the risk of waiting for a longer time, with all the dangers that any significant postponement of the delays could occasion to a manuscript still in a precarious situation and out of any scientific control.  Among these dangers, there are inappropriate storing conditions under the responsibility of antiquities dealers or other owners not prepared to resolve the concrete problems that such an exceptional property requires.  They are neither prepared to manipulate without detectable damages these kind of objects that are extremely fragile and delicate (deciding if potential purchasers are allowed to touch them), nor to move and store them (in safe-deposit boxes? … in simple drawers? … without any control of the temperature and hygrometry conditions? … etc.)” (pp. 72-73 of the French edition, my translation).

The next four pages of the English text (pp. 55-59, devoted to the first contact, in 1982, between the Swiss antiquities dealer Frieda Tchacos Nussberger and Mr. Hanna, the Egyptian “owner” of the codex, and more significantly, to Stephen Emmel’s quick examination of it in Geneva, in 1983) are simply and purely omitted in the French edition.  One should note that in the English text these pages stress the fact that (1) the codex was already badly damaged “between its discovery and 1982” and that (2) Emmel’s report “reveals the respect with which he handled the papyrus text” and “shows his obvious concern to protect to the utmost extent possible the physical structure of the codex.”  On the other hand, in his French text Kasser sandwiches the sentence about the long and detrimental years that the manuscript spent in a safe of the Citibank in Hicksville, New York (p. 60 of the American edition), with the following bonus comments:  “Moreover we were not so surprised to learn that James M. Robinson did not renounce taking hold of the codex and that an appointment arranged with the antiquities dealer had been canceled only because the First Gulf War, in 1990-1991, had rid Hanna of any desire to go away from his family.  […]  ‘Cooptative deontology,’ for sure, but at what price?  Of dangerously protracting the sufferings of the codex” (p. 74 of the French edition, my translation).

If Kasser has a certain propensity, when he writes in French, to attribute the prolongation of “the sufferings of the codex” to Robinson’s obsession for “cooptative deontology,” the latter, not to be outdone, decided to add another chapter, previously unpublished, to the French version of his book on The Secret of Judas.  The title of this highly polemical new conclusion is “The spate of revelations of Easter 2006” (pp. 247-260 of the French edition).  Robinson begins by openly criticizing the National Geographic Society for giving a deliberately wrong image of the Gospel of Judas in order to take full advantage of its investment.  Then he reiterates his charges against Kasser for the old monopoly on the Nag Hammadi Codices and the new cartel (that includes Marvin Meyer) on the Gospel of Judas.  Finally, he frontally attacks Mrs. Tchacos Nussberger for her role in the (aborted) sale of the codex to Bruce Ferrini, the antiquities dealer of Akron, Ohio, whose incompetence and lack of precaution contributed so largely to the deterioration of the manuscript.  In this connection, Robinson’s final section – “Who has the shadiest past, Judas or Frieda Tchacos?” – is especially eloquent.  In his opinion, “There is no doubt that Frieda Tchacos’s hope was to attain glory thanks to the Gospel of Judas, but more infamous than famous, she very badly represents the Gnostic Judas, in spite of her claims that he would have been in touch with her in order to have her acting as his spokeswoman on earth with the mission of proving his innocence.  On the contrary, she calls to mind the biblical Judas, who betrayed his closest friends…” (p. 260 of the French edition, my translation).

Robinson is certainly right about the tendentious and scandalistic way the Gospel of Judas was presented to a popular audience.  At our last workshop on “Christian Apocryphal Texts for the New Millennium: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges” (University of Ottawa, September 30 – October 1^st 2006), Louis Painchaud (Université Laval) was the first to call to our attention a series of Coptic passages that clearly demonstrate that in the Gospel of Judas the character of the protagonist is not so positively depicted.  Actually, things are more complex than the members of the National Geographic editorial team would have us believe.  Nonetheless, the (re)discovery, restoration, and publication of not only the Gospel of Judas, but also the other three Gnostic texts copied in the same codex is going to be a major achievement for every person more or less interested in the history of Second Temple Judaism, the Jesus movement, and early Christianity.  We should be grateful to all the specialists that made it possible, and especially to Gregor Wurst and Florence Darbre, who modestly and patiently restored the dispersed fragments of the papyrus codex.

Last but not least, talking about deontology, I think that we should avoid any further association of this poor, martyred codex with the name of one of those responsible for its recent via crucis.  In the future, it would be preferable that scholars simply refer to this ancient manuscript as the Al Minya Codex, that is, the manuscript found in the Al Minya region.