The Codex Judas Papers

What to my wondering eyes should appear but The Codex Judas Papers! It arrived this morning in my mailbox, all 650 pages of it, and remarkably published in the year after the Codex Judas Congress had convened here at Rice University (March 13-16, 2008).

April DeConick (ed.). 2009. The Codex Judas Papers: Proceedings of the International Congress on the Tchacos Codex held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13-16, 2008. Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies 71. Leiden: Brill.

It is an expensive volume so you might need to check it out of your library. See my earlier post about the book for ordering information.

The papers in it are of the highest quality, and the volume represents a landmark in Gnostic studies and our understanding of the Gospel of Judas. Scholars address issues of identity and community, portraits of Judas, astrological lore, salvation and praxis, text and intertext, and manuscript matters. Although the contributions show a variety of interpretations of the Tchacos texts, several points of agreement emerge, including the assessment that the Codex belonged to early Christians affiliated with classic Gnostic or Sethian traditions who were in conflict with other Christians belonging to the apostolic or conventional church.

Contributors include (in order of their appearance): Alastair Logan, Karen King, Johannes van Oort, Marvin Meyer, Gesine Schenke Robinson, John Turner, Birger Pearson, Fernando Bermejo Rubio, Kevin Sullivan, Ismo Dunderberg, Pierluigi Piovanelli, April DeConick, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Grant Adamson, Niclas Förster, Franklin Trammell, Elaine Pagels, Bas van Os, Johanna Brankaer, Tage Petersen, Louis Painchaud, Serge Cazelais, Matteo Grosso, Lance Jenott, Simon Gathercole, Gregor Wurst, Wolf-Peter Funk, Antti Marjanen, James Robinson.

I haven't forgotten my blog

Really! The Codex Judas Papers has just arrived, and so I am buried in proofs and indexing...but the book (over 600 pages) will be out by year's end in Brill's Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies series.

First day of classes

Today is the first day of classes for me this semester. I am teaching two courses. The first is an undergraduate lecture course called The Gnostics and their Gospels. This is actually my title for the general audience book I've been wanting to write for years - The Gnostics and their Gospels: An Introduction to Ancient Gnostic Spirituality. So one of my goals this semester is to record in writing as much of my lecture material as I am able, so that by the end of the semester I will have a fairly comprehensive draft of my book complete. It won't be ready to go to press, but much of the hard and detailed thinking and drafting will be done.

In conjunction with this course, I am running the Gnostic Gospels Seminar for my graduate students. We will be retranscribing and retranslating the Gospel of Judas, and we will be immersing ourselves in as much of the primary gnostic literature as we can possibly read in a semester. I have found that when I totally immerse myself in a corpus of literature - whatever the subject is - all kinds of wonderful insights happen. So I am looking forward to this opportunity to reread all the literature over the next fifteen weeks with my terrific students.

My second goal this semester is to complete the editing process of the Codex Judas Congress papers. I hope to do this by the end of February. The title will be: The Judas Codex: Proceedings of the International Congress on Codex Tchacos held at Rice University, Houston, Texas, March 13-16, 2008.

I am also writing my own academic volume on the Gospel of Judas. I have almost all the chapters complete, but I need to do some additional research and some rewriting. I believe that this will have to wait until summer, but it won't be too long before I have a draft ready to send to an academic press on Judas the Apostate. I don't have a subtitle yet.

Chronicle for Higher Education on the Gospel of Judas

Tom Bartlett of the Chronicle for Higher Education attended the Codex Judas Congress back in March. He did extensive interviews with the scholars involved on the National Geographic team as well as others, myself included, who have criticized the initial work. I think that the piece will be coming out May 30th. I'll keep you posted.

UPDATE 5-26-08: The link has been located. HERE IT IS<<< Have fun reading this one!

P.S. Sorry that I haven't been on the blog in a couple of days, but I've been dealing with a few minor emergencies including a dying air conditioner (which is a living essential in Houston), cutting the bottom of my foot open by accident, and ending up with strep throat. Hope things settle down here!

Codex Judas Congress feature news story

Bryan Ellis has written a very poignant piece covering the Codex Judas Congress at Rice University. His piece appeared in the Rice Thresher NEWS on Friday, March 21, 2008.

Though Rice may have been taken over by the excitement of Willy Week and Beer-Bike, the academic community was focused on another big event on campus last week. The Codex Judas Congress, which was put together by Religious Studies Professor April DeConick, took place Mar. 13-16 in Farnsworth Pavilion, and various buildings across campus.

Thirty scholars from around the world came to discuss the recently rediscovered Tchacos Codex, a fourth century collection of Gnostic documents from the Judeo-Christian tradition. In addition to the scholars invited to participate, there were also five papers presented by graduate students, including religious studies graduate students Chad Day, Franklin Trammel and Claire Villarrael. Other graduate students attended as auditors, as did several members of the Houston community.

DeConick said she was pleased with the attendance. The 45 seats set up in Farnsworth for the congress were filled to capacity on Thursday. Likewise, the two evening lectures given to the general public nearly filled McMurtry Hall. DeConick said she estimates the event drew about 200 attendees each night.

The Tchacos Codex, particularly the Gospel of Judas it contains, is very important in the scholarly community at the moment. These texts reveal the self-perception of a "heretical" religious community that had previously been known only through the condemnation of early church fathers like Irenaeus.

One of the few unanimous conclusions of the congress was that the Gospel of Judas condemned the church fathers.

"This text is a polemical text of the mainstream or apostolic church, especially in terms of its sacraments," DeConick said.

MORE HERE...

Codex Judas Congress Group Photo

Here is our esteemed group, unfortunately missing John Turner, Louis Painchaud, and Wolf-Peter Funk!

Codex Judas Congress Report 2

The CJC did result in at least one consensus. It was agreed that the Gospel of Judas was written as a critique of mainstream or Apostolic Christianity. The twelve disciples were understood to be negative figures, giving homage to Ialdabaoth-Nebro-Saklas. What was the critique about? All agreed that the eucharist was being critiqued in the text. Some thought also baptism.

Highlights
Jim Robinson raised a series of questions in his paper about the state of affairs with the Tchacos Codex. Gregor Wurst provided some of the answers. He said that he continues to work on placing the fragments which are found in the back of The Critical Edition. He encouraged everyone to work on trying to place them. He said that he doesn't know when the Codex will be returned to Egypt. He has heard 2010. At the moment, it is in the possession of the Maecenas Foundation and Mario Roberty. It is housed at the Bodmer Library and access is regulated by a written protocol which scholars must follow.

Gregor Wurst told us that he first saw the papyri in August 2004. He said that his initial interpretation of the Gospel of Judas was influenced by Irenaeus' testimony. When the team wrote their book, The Gospel of Judas, they didn't have any idea what pp. 55-56 said because the big island fragment had not been placed yet. Gregor placed it in Fall 2005-Spring 2006 when the book was already in print. He was able to stop the press and insert the translation, but could not use the information to rewrite the interpretation. This is the page that links Judas' sacrifice with the sacrifices mentioned earlier, and that Judas wouldn't ascend beyond the thirteenth realm. My own memory of my initial reaction to the Gospel of Judas when I read it for the first time was a feeling of dread when I came across this very passage. This is the passage that signaled for me that Judas was serving the demiurge, and that the NGS interpretation was off.

More later...

Codex Judas Congress Report 1

Sorry that I haven't been on the blog for several days, but the CJC was very intense and I didn't even have time to check e-mail let alone blog.

I am happy to report that the CJC was immensely successful. Thirty scholars attended and about ten graduate students, as well as many public auditors. The two public lectures filled our auditorium. The atmosphere was one of cooperation and work. There was no chair-throwing which many attendees expected. Instead it turned out to be a model conference for scholarly exchange and understanding. I wish in fact that we could have started out our study of the Gospel of Judas with just such a conference, and then moved to the work on the critical edition and public translation together. There are many things that we learned from each other. Very good questions were raised. And scholars were very open and generous with their knowledge.

What did we accomplish? As for the figure Judas, there were four positions that were maintained by various scholars. The hero Judas is being seriously challenged now by a large number of scholars, in fact most who attended. The room was mainly split between those who think that he is ambiguous in the text and those who think that he is a negative character, a demon. There were a few who were advocates for the agnostic stance - "I don't know."

Gregor Wurst showed us a new fragment that he has put together. It says "servant of Saklas" but he doesn't know where in the text it should be placed yet. Should it be placed on p. 56? We don't know. But this fragment in such a context would support the idea that the apostles (or Judas) are making sacrifices to Saklas as his servants!

The room was evenly split on who enters the cloud, and seriously good arguments were made for both Jesus and Judas. We all agreed that this missing page is the page that we really want to find. If any of you have purchased a fragment of this text on e-bay or anywhere else (or know someone who has) PLEASE I beg you to contact me or Gregor Wurst. We need every fragment of this text that we can find to make the proper reconstructions.

More later...

Codex Judas Congress is almost here!

Just a reminder that this very special event is on the horizon. In two days, we will be convening the Codex Judas Congress. This is the first international conference to study the Tchacos Codex, the fourth century book that contains the Gospel of Judas and other important Gnostic documents.

Thirty scholars will be participating in round table presentations and discussions. Each scholar is contributing a paper. The forum is a working conference, with the intention to think tank together about this new material. What does it tell us about early Christianity that we didn't know before? That we knew before? What can we learn about Gnostic-Christian-Jewish relations?

HERE is the link to information about the CJC, including the daily schedule and scholars' abstracts.

There will be two public lectures in the evenings. If you are in the Houston area, you may wish to join us for these.

Professor Marvin Meyer and Professor Gregor Wurst
Reconstructing an Ancient Papyri Book:
How the Gospel of Judas was Restored and the Questions It Raises
Thursday, March 13, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Rice University, Duncan Hall, 1055, the McMurtry Auditorium

Professor Elaine Pagels and Professor Karen King
What Else Didn’t We Know about the Early Christians?
Friday, March 14, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Rice University, Duncan Hall, 1055, the McMurtry Auditorium

Setting up the Codex Judas Congress

I've been too busy to contribute much to the blogsphere lately. Since returning from Jerusalem, I've been working on some of the final details for the Codex Judas Congress, which is turning out to have a fabulous agenda thanks to the now thirty-five (!) scholars and graduate students who will be coming to Rice University the week of March 13-16. I keep adding abstracts to the website as the authors send them to me. So check it out every now and then. I moved the scholars and abstracts to a separate subpage on the Codex Judas site. You will find a draft of the schedule too.

Abstracts and Schedule for Codex Judas Congress

The Codex Judas Congress is right around the corner. I have begun uploading abstracts of the papers and have compiled a tentative schedule of events. Check back to these pages occasionally because I am going to updating them as we get closer to the Congress. Please circulate this information, and if you are in town, please join us.

Also NOTE that I have put this logo on my left sidebar with direct links to the pages for the abstracts and the schedule of events. This should make it simple to find this information in the future.

Registration for Lodging for Codex Judas Congress

I was able to secure a block of rooms at a reduced rate ($159 per night) for out-of-town attendees of the Codex Judas Congress. The hotel is the Marriott near the university campus. It is a short walk, one-stop train ride, or free shuttle ride from the hotel to campus. Here is a link to their website if you want to check it out.

If you plan to attend, you will need to register at the hotel for your stay. In order for the hotel to give you the reduced rate in this block of rooms, you need to go to its website link and register by Friday, February 15. In GROUP CODE BOX put: CJDO. And fill out the rest of your registration request. Or call 1-800-228-9290, and use the same code for registering (CJDO).

By the way, there is no charge to attend the Congress sessions themselves, when the slated scholars will be discussing their papers.

The rodeo is in town that weekend, so other hotels, especially in this vicinity and rate, may not be easy to secure.