The Gospel of Judah

In the early 1970s in a village in the al-Monya province approximately 300 kilometers south of Cairo, some Egyptian farmers discovered the manuscript of the Gospel of Judah, written in the Coptic language on papyrus paper as a codex. Then the manuscript was exchanged between different hands of merchants of artifacts until it reached the hands of scientists, who worked at compiling it until they came to know what is now called the Gospel of Judah. The document was translated from Coptic to English at the end of 2005, and this translation was released on the 6th of April, 2006 as the Washington Times newspaper announced in its April 7th, 2006 issue that the National Geographic Association unveiled one of the archaeological manuscripts or gospels which dates back to the beginning of the 3rd century A.D. And for the purpose of documenting, maintaining and translating the manuscript, the National Geographic Society cooperated with the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art and Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, and contracted with the Swiss scientist Rodolphe Kasser, who is one of the greatest scientists in Coptic studies, to restore, write, copy and translate the text in the manuscript. And indeed, the scientific committees and the experts documented the manuscript and confirmed its age by using the most modern methods and tools of inspection such as:

Carbon test to determine the age of the Papyrus paper: Samples of the papyrus paper were taken and put through tests of radiocarbon (Carbon-14) at the University of Arizona in Tucson,

and the results confirmed that the manuscript dates between 220 and 340 A.D. This was also stated by Tim Jull, the manager of the Arizona Radiocarbon Dating lab, and also by the expert of scientific research, Greg Hodings.

Ink Analysis: The McCrone Associates Incorporated, which specializes in ink analysis, performed a test of ink permeability on samples of the ink used for writing the Gospel of Judah. This was done by using Transmission Electron Microscopy TEM, and in its report, the corporation announced that the ink’s elements and components were identical to the elements used to manufacture ink used in the 3rd and 4rd centuries A.D. Moreover, other analyses using Raman Spectroscopy revealed that the ink which was used contained a yellow mineral substance similar to the substance used in the ink of the 3rd century A.D.

Spectral Imaging: Samples of the document were put through multispectral imaging at the Brigham Young University of Switzerland multispectral imaging laboratory. And the analyses conducted on the papyrus plant, upon which the Gospel of Judah was written, revealed that the papyrus had the same result from these tests as ancient papyrus. Moreover, samples of the ink were submitted to multispectral imaging, and the results were identical to those of the ink with the yellow mineral substance and the carbonic inks used in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. And as clarified from the results of the other tests, whether physical or of text, the results of the multispectral imaging revealed that this document is a genuine Egyptian document, which dates back to the 3rd or 4th century.

Analysis of the textual content and semantics of the Gospel of Judah: Three of the major scientists (historian Rodolphe Kasser, former professor at the University of Geneva and the Head of the Translation Committee of the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945; Marvin Mayer, the scientist specialized in Gospel studies at Chapman University in Orange California; and Stephen Emmel, professor of Coptology at Munster University in Germany) analyzed the

textual context and semantics of the Gospel of Judah, and these scientists agreed that the divine concepts and lingual structures in the Gospel of Judah are similar to what the manuscripts of Nag Hammadi contain, thus these large collections of manuscripts and texts which have been discovered at Nag Hammadi go back to the same time period in which the Gospel of Judah was written. And Stephen Emmel made a statement regarding the possibility of innovating such a document by saying, “I do not have the smallest doubt that this manuscript is an authentic Egyptian work and an ancient artifact which contains original and ancient facts that date back to the era of the ancient original apocryphal writings.”

Paleography and Analysis of the Handwriting of the Manuscript: Stephen Emmel, professor of Coptic studies at Germany’s University of Munster, analyzed the Gospel of Judah and submitted the following assessment: “The kind of writing reminds me very much of the Nag Hammadi codices,” he wrote, referring to a famed collection of ancient manuscripts. “It is not identical script with any of them, but it is a similar type of script, and since we date the Nag Hammadi codices to roughly the second half of the fourth century or the first part of the fifth century, my immediate inclination would be to say that the Gospel of Judah was written by a scribe in that same period, let’s say around the year 400.” Emmel says a modern forger would not be able to duplicate such a document. “One would not only have to have genuine material - papyrus - and not simply any papyrus, but ancient papyrus,” he said, “one would also have to know how to imitate Coptic script from a very early period. The number of specialists in Coptic that know that in the world is very small.” “You would also have to compose a passage in Coptic that is grammatically correct and convincing. The number of people who could do that is even smaller than the number who could read Coptic,” Emmel added.^[1] And these are some of the statements of Christian clerics about the

Gospel of Judah,^[2] Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of the National Geographic Society, said that religious historians consider the gospel to be the most significant ancient, non-biblical manuscript to be found in the past 60 years. It has been given a battery of tests to prove its authenticity, including radiocarbon dating, analysis of the ink used, multispectral imaging, and analysis of the script and linguistic style. Garcia said, “The codex has been authenticated as a genuine work of ancient Christian apocryphal literature.” Elaine Pagels, a professor at Princeton University and well-known author of a number of books on Gnostic Christianity, wrote in a statement, “These discoveries are exploding the myth of a monolithic religion, and demonstrating how diverse - and fascinating - the early Christian movement really was.” The Waitt Institute for Historical Discovery, gave a grant of over one million dollars to the National Geographic Society to restore, preserve, and make the manuscript available to the public. Ted Waitt said, “I didn’t know a whole lot, until I got into this, about the early days of Christianity. It was just extremely fascinating to me … You can potentially question the translation and the interpretation, he said, but you can’t fake something like this. It would be impossible.” Karen L. King, a professor at Harvard Divinity School and author of other books on Gnostic Christianity said, “You can see how early Christians could say if Jesus’s death was all part of God’s plan, then Judas’s betrayal was part of God’s plan. So what does that make Judas? Is he the betrayer, or the facilitator of salvation, the guy who makes the crucifixion possible?” And the clerics of the Church should have done as Karen L. King has done and not less, and maintain at least the possibility that the Judah crucified in the Gospel of Judah is another person and not Judas Iscariot, so that this possibility would invite them to research the issue scientifically instead of making their delusions a justification for rejecting the Gospel of Judah. And it is clear that this is a method far from credibility and scientific integrity.