Rice University Professor Debunks National Geographic Translation Of Gospel Of Judas

Eureka Alert ^ | 11-1-2007 | David Ruth - Rice University

[blam]

Contact: David Ruth
druth@rice.edu
713-348-6327
Rice University

Rice University professor debunks National Geographic translation of Gospel of Judas

A new book by Rice University professor April DeConick debunks a stunning claim by National Geographic's translation of the Gospel of Judas. According to that translation, Judas was a hero, not a villain, who acted on Jesus' request to betray him. DeConick disagrees.

Before releasing her book "The Thirteenth Apostle: What the Gospel of Judas Really Says," DeConick was intrigued by the original release of the Coptic Gospel of Judas and as a scholar wanted to read it for herself. While researching and translating it, she discovered that National Geographic's translators had made some serious errors.

"Once I started translating the Gospel of Judas and began to see the types of translation choices that the National Geographic team had made I was startled and concerned," DeConick said. "The text very clearly called Judas a 'demon.'"

DeConick contends that the Gospel of Judas is not about a "good" Judas or even a "poor old" Judas. It is a gospel parody about a "demon" Judas written by a particular group of Gnostic Christians who lived in the second century.

"The finding of this gospel has been called one of the most important archaeological discoveries in the past 60 years," DeConick said. "It's important that we get this right."

DeConick said many scholars and writers have been inspired by the National Geographic version.

"It appears to have something to do with our collective guilt about anti-Semitism and our need to reform the relationship between Jews and Christians following World War II," she said. "Judas is a frightening character. For Christians, he is the one who had it all, and yet betrayed God to his death for a few dollars. For Jews, he is terrifying, the man whom Christians associated the Jewish people, whose story was used against them for centuries."

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DeConick is the Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner Professor of Biblical Studies at Rice University in Houston. To read more about her teachings, visit http://reli.rice.edu/rice_reli.cfm?a=cms,c,38,1

"The Thirteenth Apostle" (Continuum International Publishing Group) is available to purchase on www.amazon.com.

April DeConick is available nationwide for media interviews. To book an interview, contact David Ruth at 713-348-6327 or druth@rice.edu.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Someone told me that modern Greek is actually a reconstructed langauge like modern Hebrew.

I believe that the situations were very different. Hebrew had been a scholarly language only for a couple of thousand years before the modern Zionist movement.

Greek was spoken continuously by a major portion of the population of the former Byzantine Empire, living in what became modern Greece, and the coastal regions of what became Turkey, as well as some parts of the Balkan peninsula. If I am not mistaken, Constantinople was about half Greek speaking until modern times, so that only in the 1930's did it become required to call it Istanbul, rather than the old name. (In fact there was serious consideration given at the Versailles Peace Conference after WWI to establishing a remnant Byzantine state based in eastern Thrace centered on Constantinople).

In any case, since Greek developed from koine, through Byzantine and Church Greek, through medieval Greek to become modern Greek, being used by a widespread population, it could not be a scholarly construct. This is not to say that modern grammarians have not affected the idea of a 'correct' way to speak and write Greek.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

Most Greek inscriptions just run the words together (e.g., the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone), but occasionally you will find word dividers (often two or three dots written vertically).

I believe that the same thing is true of Classical Latin, with divisions sometimes being marked by a single dot at a point half the height of the letters. I have no idea when the dots became replaced by blank spaces, since you often see medieval Latin written with the dots. Perhaps it came about after the invention of printing, when it became easy to place a spacer piece of type between words.

[Verginius Rufus]

George Ostrogorsky's History of the Byzantine State has some illustrations which show medieval Greek manuscripts. Figure 50 is from an 11th century manuscript, and several illustrations show drawings in a 14th-century copy of the Chronicle of John Scylitzes (now in Madrid) which include surrounding portions of the Greek text. Generally they don't have spaces between the words, but the accents and breathings would probably have made it easy for a Greek-speaking reader to separate the words.

Dimitri Obolensky's book The Byzantine Commonwealth has an illustration of a page from an 11th-century Cyrillic manuscript which doesn't have spaces between words--presumably the person who penned the page was following Byzantine practices of his day.

[Grunthor]

“There are some FReepers who could easily translate it for us, I would bet my bottom dollar.”

Translate and preferably post in english so even us cultural illiterates may understand it.

:o)

[ZULU]

give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trepasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

How do you down load the Greek letters? Phi isn’t available?

[ZULU]

Well, an open mind about SOME things.

[ZULU]

Ever read about Egyptian hieroglyphs?
They were written with no defining spaces or marks between words and could be written from right to left or vice-versa or from up downwards and sometimes a combination of ways.

They were considered an art form as well as a way of communicating.

You had to read into the way the figures were facing.

[dsc]

“Well, an open mind about SOME things.”

The rule I try to apply is that I only reopen consideration of settled matters when I encounter *new* evidence or arguments that appear to pose a credible argument against my position.

I don’t think we are required to reconsider old arguments again and again, after we have once examined them to the limits of the possible.

The application of this rule has often provoked people to call me closed-minded and bigoted. I don’t really enjoy that, but (Sopranos mode ON) whaddaya gonnna do (Sopranos mode off)? Certainly, great men like Cardinal Merry del Val have it much, much worse than ordinary schmucks like me.

[Your Nightmare]

HTML entities

φ is available. In HTML it would be φ

[Your Nightmare]

Sorry, Here is a reference with the Greek. It has both upper and lowercase.

ψ and Ψ

[ZULU]

Thank you also.

[Verginius Rufus]

I checked Matt. 6.12 in an older (1960) edition which gives more detail about the manuscript traditions. It prints aphEkamen (aorist tense) in the text, which is supported by the Sinaiticus (4th cent.) and other manuscripts.

The alternatives aphiomen and aphiemen are found--the latter is apparently the form widely found in Byzantine manuscripts but is also found in the Didache, a 2nd-century Christian text, and in Clement of Alexandria (ca. 200).

The difference is between "we forgave" (aphEkamen) and "we forgive" (aphiemen). The Latin dimittimus is also present tense.

[naturalized]

Not to tell you what you already know, but you might find this an interesting read:

Understanding the Difficult Words of Jesus

[Busywhiskers]

Thanks for the recommendation. I will see if I can find it.