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June 21, 2005

A Translation of the Last Page of the Gospel of Judas

I'm a little embarrassed that I did not find this weeks, even months, ago but there is an English translation of the last leaf of the Gospel of Judas on the web. It is in handwriting and at the top of the page is the name Hedrick. That would be Charles Hedrick who I mentioned in an earlier post. In that post I quoted Charlie as saying,

I have seen photos of several pages from a Coptic text entitled "The Gospel of Judas" that recently surfaced on the antiquities market."

That quote is from a 2002 interview. Well, it appears that my old graduate school colleague did a little more than just see "several pages for a Coptic text." He translated at least one of them. In case there is doubt about the authenticity of the translation, Hedrick confirmed that it was his in correspondence with Wieland Willker.

It is quite a ballyhoo, but C. Hedrick confirmed that the image is authentic and that it is his translation. He also says that it "appears to be the same seen by Irenaeus in the second century."

You can look at the photo of the papyrus that is translated at Michel van Rijn's Art News website where the translation can also be found.

Before I present my transcription of Hedrick's translation let me make a few observations. First, the leaf is damaged and to the naked eye unreadable on the top and much of the left margin. In addition, the right side of the leaf is seriously damaged. There is also a break that extends several lines down the middle of the leaf starting at the top. You can see this in the picture. [ ] are used to mark the unreadable areas. Sometimes it is possible to fill in the missing parts from context. Sometimes it isn't. I have followed Hedrick in this convention. Second, it is conventional in translations of this type of text in which many Greek words appear along with the Coptic to reproduce the Greek words in parentheses after the translated word. If you look at Hedrick's handwritten translation, you will see that he has followed that convention. For the sake of readability, I have not followed that convention. Third, the numbers at the beginning of each line are line numbers.

Now for the, I believe, tentative translation of the last leaf of the Coptic Gospel of Judas:

  1. [
  2. [
  3. go [
  4. [
  5. [
  6. [                they ] watched closely so that they might
  7. seize him in the
  8. [                       ] because they feared
  9. the people. We said, "He is in
  10. all their hands as prophesied."
  11. And they advance
  12. toward Judas. They said to him
  13. "Although you are wicked in this place
  14. you are the disciple of Jesus."
  15. And he answered them
  16. according to their wish. And
  17. Judas took some money and he
  18. delivered [him] over to them.
               The Gospel
               of Judas


So there you have it. Not very much to go on. I believe that some of the missing material at the top may be recoverable using advanced imaging techniques. Having said that, Charles Hedrick is one of the leading scholars currently studying Coptic Gnostic texts and his translation of what he was able to read will no doubt stand up well against the official publication of the complete Gospel of Judas.

Again, I am indebted to PaleoJudaica for directing me to this translation.

Posted by Duane Smith at June 21, 2005 8:03 PM | Read more on Archaeology |

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