June 30, 2008
Judas Betrayed
Ah, yes, people always seem to forget the economics of academics:
The loudest and most frequent complaint has been about its secrecy. The members of the team weren’t allowed to reveal what they were working on, much less to share information with fellow scholars. In 1991 the Society of Biblical Literature passed a resolution that said all scholars should be allowed access to a newly found manuscript or, barring that, a facsimile. If that resolution had been followed, critics argue, then the more egregious errors would never have made it to press or been broadcast to millions.
But that simply wasn’t possible given the nature of the project, according to Terry D. Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs at National Geographic. Garcia greenlighted the Judas deal and made the announcement at the news conference when it was released to the world. He was involved at every step, even personally carrying fragments of the manuscript back from Switzerland to the United States to undergo radiocarbon dating. He says the organization was mostly concerned that the Gospel of Judas “is what it purports to be.” As for the much-criticized nondisclosure agreements, Garcia says they are a routine precaution. “The last thing we wanted were multiple voices talking about bits and pieces of this project,” he says. “All that would do was fan speculation and create unsubstantiated claims that might impede the research.”
He notes that National Geographic sunk a lot of money into the Gospel of Judas (he wouldn’t say how much, though he confirmed it was in the low seven figures). That money was used in part to pay for the transcription, translation, and preservation of the manuscript. It was a significant investment of resources and time. Most important, according to Garcia, it put National Geographic’s reputation on the line. He dismisses criticism of the project as inevitable and called the assertions in DeConick’s opinion piece “the height of irresponsibility.”
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3 Responses to “Judas Betrayed”
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Good post, Andrew. I’d not read this article. Thank you.
But please note that there are two sides to every story — the Chronicle article was extremely biased. And since when did National Geographic, of all things, become some big enemy? All NG has always been is a wonderful organization devoted to funding exploration and discovery. All they did in the case of the Judas gospel was to fund this priceless ancient manuscript’s conservation, restoration and translation — so it’s quite understandable that they would want to make a PR splash when they announced the results. I’ve worked for nonprofit art and science organizations for years, and that is always true — you fund something, you want a little PR for it when it’s announced.
Also worth noting — DeConick seems to base her criticisms of the NG translation on a couple of very small points, including her insistence that “daimon” MUST be translated as “evil demon.” Says who, exactly?? Throughout the ancient world, especially in the Hellenistic and Roman cultures that would have heavily influenced the Gnostics, “daimon” was understood to be a sort of benign “spirit” (sometimes even a spirit of a person — Alexander was thought to have been taken over by a sort of divine “daimon,” for instance. Not really buying the “evil daimon” argument. For her to say NG made a “mistake” or that their translation was an error goes way beyond what translation really is. All translations are INTERPRETATIONS. National Geographic assembled a team of the best Coptic translators and scholars in the world, and all of them came to a consensus translation of the Gospel of Judas. They interpret it one way; DeConick and a few others interpret a few small points in the translation differently. That does not make the NG translation a “mistake”!
Everyone should take a look at National Geographic’s rebuttal to the Chronicle article here — which really spells it out:
http://press.nationalgeographic.com/pressroom/index.jsp?pageID=pressReleases_detail&siteID=1&cid=1212171846974
(Copy/paste entire link into your browser.)
Also, note the response to the Chronicle article by the four translators involved in the National Geographic project. This was printed in the Chronice of Higher Education, but since you have to be a subscriber to link to it, I copy it for you here:
National Geographic Translators’ Response:
>>Anyone who thinks scholars don’t get bellicose should take a look at “The Betrayal of Judas.” To be sure, there are issues that need to be addressed regarding the Gospel of Judas, and they are being addressed — for example, in the new edition of the text. Yet it remains remarkable, in spite of a few protestations to the contrary, that most scholars agree about a great deal in the National Geographic translation of the Gospel of Judas. We produced what we called a consensus translation, with input from all the members of the National Geographic Society team.
The points of contention with April DeConick and others concerning the translation have involved little more than the interpretation of the single instance of the term “daimon” and the understanding of a Coptic idiom that is ambiguous and open to interpretation, as well as two passages with extraordinarily difficult Coptic transcriptional issues (the ink traces on the papyrus are hard to decipher). These issues were addressed well before the publication of DeConick’s book, in the critical edition of the translation and in updated materials we distributed to our colleagues.
Why DeConick insists on raising old issues that are long past remains a mystery. She received a revised Coptic text and English translation of the Gospel of Judas at a conference in Paris in the autumn of 2006. To put it in clear terms: She discusses in her book and her public interviews an understanding of the Coptic text of the Gospel of Judas that had been abandoned by the National Geographic team long before the time she entered public discussions of the text.
Scholars are in essential agreement about almost everything else in the translation of the Gospel of Judas, though we interpret the text differently. DeConick asked at a recent conference, where we circulated page proofs of the paperback edition and welcomed suggestions, if we would change only one minor reading (the reconstruction of “[Se]th,” which we consider almost certain) — and we accommodated her wishes, for the sake of collegiality. So much for a translation that she says we “messed up.”
Our hope is that we can move beyond this sort of rhetoric and work together as colleagues to study a text and a codex that represent a precious recovered literary witness to our cultural tradition.
Rodolphe Kasser
Emeritus Professor of Coptic Language
and Literature
University of Geneva
Geneva
Marvin Meyer
Professor of Bible and Christian Studies
Chapman University
Orange, Calif.
Gregor Wurst
Professor of Ecclesiastical History and Patristics
University of Augsburg
Augsburg, Germany
François Gaudard
Research Associate
Oriental Institute
University of Chicago
Chicago>>
[...] Pierce was nice enough to post the official response article to the Gospel of Judas article I linked yesterday.: The points of contention with April [...]