Would you pay 30 pieces of silver for an illegally exported gospel?

Mount Fuji, a holy mountain and thus moral high ground. Photo by Starfire7.

One of the big stories this week has been the publication of the Gnostic gospel of Judas and its implications or lack of them for Christianity. You can read more about what’s been found at National Geographic’s website on the text, but I’m not linking to it because I’m not at ease with how National Geographic got their hands on it. If you read Carnivalesque XIII then you may be aware of the problems. If not then you may want to take a trip to Steve Muhlberger’s Early History which covers the story around the gospel in depth. The problem is people trying to sell the text are not the rightful owners. This is emphatically the case. There’s no imaginary grey area about whether or not it was spoils of war or excavated from a country which has since gained independence. There are no permits of dubious authenticity. It was illegally smuggled out of Egypt and into the hands of the European antiquities market. The may have conspired with criminals to seize the text. The alternative is that it was bought as an unprovenanced artefact which means the sale of the text may have been used to fund other illegal activities. Smugglers are quite happy to smuggle artefacts or drugs because few criminals are of high moral character. Attempts to sell the text have failed about it is so clearly illicit.

So what do you do with a manuscript you can’t sell? A common practice is to wait until the stigma fades, but this wasn’t an option because the papyrus was falling apart. What you need are conservators to maintain it for you and if you can’t sell the manuscript you can at least sell access to it. Enter National Geographic.

National Geographic are publicising this text which certainly isn’t from the time of Judas and paying an undisclosed figure to help conserve the manuscript. The document will be saved, the text will become public knowledge and the antiquities dealers will get their money from possessing the artefact illegally so everyone’s happy. At least until another dealer realises there’s an easy way to make money and purchases their own smuggled codex.

Should National Geographic be helping create a market for stolen materials? When you phrase it like that the answer’s easy, but it seems that they haven’t given their support without a great deal of thought. One of the conditions of their assistance was presumably that the manuscript will be returned to Egypt.

Everyone involved believes the materials should be given to Egypt after scholars finish translating them. National Geographic has done its due diligence, and is working with an international team of experts on this artifact to save the manuscript before it turns to dust and is lost forever.

Mary Jeanne Jacobsen – National Geographic

The situation appears to be a classic hostage scenario and it’s easy to take the moral high ground until something precious to you is taken hostage. Obviously as a general rule it’s a bad idea to give in, but when there is something unique is it time to be more flexible?

The problem is that all historians realise that the period they’re working on really is the key point in human history and the texts they’re searching for really are irreplaceable. I think in this case National Geographic have made a mistake, but I can at least understand why they’ve done what they’ve done. If they’d found something genuinely exciting like the lost works of Anaximander (which really would be unique irreplaceable and earth-shatteringly exciting) then I’m not sure I’d have the integrity to say that there should be no co-operation. The bigger mistake is perhaps not acknowledging that there is a problem in handling these texts. Take this quote from the website’s FAQ.

Where was the Codex Tchacos discovered? The codex, containing the Gospel of Judas, was discovered in the 1970s near El Minya, Egypt, and moved from Egypt to Europe to the United States. Once in the United States, it was kept in a safe-deposit box for 16 years on Long Island, New York, until antiquities dealer Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos bought it in April 2000. After two unsuccessful resale attempts, Nussberger-Tchacos—alarmed by the codex’s rapidly deteriorating state—transferred it to the Maecenas Foundation for Ancient Art in Basel, Switzerland, in February 2001, for restoration and translation. The manuscript will be delivered to Egypt and housed in Cairo’s Coptic Museum.

From an organisation with such a reputation National Geographic’s failure to debate this ethics of the case is disappointing.

For much more on the Gospel of Judas including links to other sites then Muhlberger’s Early History is an excellent place to visit. —–