Codex Tchacos is an

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ian Coptic

codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

from approximately 300 AD, which contains early

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

gnostic Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek: , romanized: ''gnōstikós'', Koine Greek: �nostiˈkos 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among early Christian sects. These diverse g ...

texts: the Letter of Peter to Philip, the

First Apocalypse of James The First Apocalypse of James is a Gnostic Apocalypse, apocalyptic writing. Its initial rediscovery was a Coptic language, Coptic translation as the third Masekhet, tractate of Codex V in the Nag Hammadi library. Additional copies were later foun ...

, the

Gospel of Judas The Gospel of Judas is a non-canonical religious text. Its content consists of conversations between Jesus and his disciples, especially Judas Iscariot. The only copy of it known to exist is a Coptic language text that is part of the Codex ...

, and a fragment of The Temptation of Allogenes (a different text from the previously known

Nag Hammadi Library The Nag Hammadi library (also known as the Chenoboskion Manuscripts and the Gnostic Gospels) is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. Thirteen leather-bound papyrus c ...

text Allogenes). Codex Tchacos is important because it contains the first known surviving copy of the Gospel of Judas, a text that was rejected as heresy by the early Christian church and lost for 1700 years. The Gospel of Judas was mentioned and summarized by the Church Father

Irenaeus of Lyons Irenaeus ( or ; ; ) was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the development of Christian theology by opposing Gnostic interpret ...

in his work ''

Against Heresies ''Against Heresies'' (Koine Greek: Ἔλεγχος καὶ ἀνατροπὴ τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως, ''Elenchos kai anatropē tēs pseudōnymou gnōseōs'', "Refutation and Overthrowal of Knowledge falsely so-called"), som ...

''.c. 180, Adv. Haer. 1.31.1. This would date the Gospel of Judas to some time prior to Irenaeus' writing, and therefore older than the codex itself.

The Codex

The codex was rediscovered near El Minya,

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, during the 1970s (possibly 1978), and stored in a variety of unorthodox ways by various dealers who had little experience with antiquities. One stored it in a

safe deposit box A safe deposit box, sometimes referred to as a safety deposit box, is an individually secured container, usually held within a larger safe or bank vault. Safe deposit boxes are generally located in banks, post offices or other institutions. S ...

and another actually froze the documents, causing a unique and difficult kind of decay that makes the papyrus appear sandblasted. (Archivists can do nothing to remedy this damage since it is caused by the outer layers of the papyrus flaking off—taking ink with them.) Scholars heard rumors of the text from the 1980s onward as dealers periodically offered it for sale (displaying portions of the text or photographs of portions of the text in the process.) It was not examined and translated until 2001 after its current owner, Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, concerned with its deteriorating condition, transferred it to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in

Basel, Switzerland Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's third-most-populous city (after Zurich and Geneva), with ...

. She named it in honor of her father, Dimaratos Tchacos. Roughly a dozen pages of the original manuscript, seen briefly by scholars in the 1970s, are missing from the Codex today; it is believed that they were sold secretly to dealers, but none have come forward. According to National Geographic's website, fragments purported to be from the codex may also be part of an Ohio antiquities dealer's estate. In April 2006, a complete translation of the text, with extensive footnotes, was released by the

National Geographic Society The National Geographic Society, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States, is one of the largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations in the world. Founded in 1888, its interests include geography, archaeology, natural sc ...

: ''The Gospel Of Judas'' (, April 2006). The Society also created a two-hour television documentary, ''The Gospel of Judas'', which aired worldwide on the

National Geographic Channel National Geographic (formerly National Geographic Channel; abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo or Nat Geo TV) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by the National Geographic Global Networks unit of Disney Enter ...

on April 9, 2006. A special issue of ''

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

'' magazine was also devoted to the Gospel of Judas. A critical edition of the Codex Tchacos, including complete, near life-sized color photographs of 26 pages, a revised transcription of the Coptic, and complete translation of the codex was published by National Geographic Society in 2007. The team also hopes to look at the

cartonnage Cartonnage or cartonage is a type of material used in ancient Egyptian funerary masks from the First Intermediate Period to the Roman Empire, Roman era. It was made of layers of linen or papyrus covered with plaster. Some of the Fayum mummy portr ...

(a sort of paper-mâché used to stiffen the codex's cover) in order to find clues about who made the codex and when/where. (As a book, the Tchacos Codex may be older than the twelve surviving codices of the Nag Hammadi Library.) The importance of Codex Tchacos is not in doubt, but work has only begun in understanding its true influence and origin.

Notes

References

* J. Brankaer and H.-G. Bethge (eds), ''Codex Tchacos: Texte und Analysen'' (Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2007) (TU, 161).

External links

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from National Geographic.

''The New York Times,'' December 1, 2007. 4th-century books 4th-century manuscripts Gnostic apocrypha Manuscripts in Coptic Coptic literature