Not so long ago, a lot of noise was made by the message that the "Gospel of Judas", which was considered lost for a long time, from which only isolated fragments have survived, describes Judas not as a traitor, but as a beloved disciple of Christ. Now scientists are ready to confirm the authenticity of this document, which was created in the II-III centuries AD. Previously, scientists could not do this.
To be sure of the authenticity of the gospel, it was necessary to study the ancient Egyptian acts of marriage and property contracts. To find out that we have before us the original, and not a fake - ink helped.
The founders of the early Christian church, for example, Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons, made mention of the existence of the Gospel of Judas in their work Against Heresies (180 AD). But for a long time the manuscript was considered lost, until in 1970 in the Egyptian city of El-Minya the ancient Egyptian papyrus was discovered, which was named Codex Tchacos after its owner. It contains from 33 to 58 pages the text of the Gospel of Judas, which is a translation from the non-extant Greek original into the Said dialect of the Coptic language. Let us recall that this Gospel was written not by Judas himself, but by an unknown author. In it, Judas, like Jesus, is only one of the active characters, which is referred to in the third person.
In the early 2000s, the owner of the Codex, Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, sent the artifact to the Maecenas Stiftung in Basel, which in turn donated it to the American National Geographic Society for restoration and translation. Over the years of careless storage, the document has suffered greatly.
In 2006, Joseph Barabe, a microscopist at McCrone Associates, Illinois, and his colleagues who conducted a study of the Gospel of Judas commissioned by the US National Geographic Society, concluded that the ink used to write the text was genuine. Thanks to the study of the chemical composition of ink, scientists very often distinguish an original from a fake. So, in 2009, they managed to expose a fake - a version of the Gospel of Mark, which was allegedly written in the 14th century, but turned out to be a modern forgery. From time to time, Bareib and his colleagues collaborate with the FBI to help expose fraudulent canvases.
Investigation revealed that the ink used to write the Gospel of Judas was an early variety of gallic iron ink. Typically, such ink is made by mixing iron sulfate and tannic acids, traditionally obtained from ink nuts, which are parasitic growths on oak leaves. However, another curious circumstance emerged. The ink used to write the entire Chacos Codex corpus also included soot and gum arabic resin, but there was no sulfur, which was widely used until the early 17th century in the manufacture of iron gallic ink.
Initially, this fact made scientists think about whether it was a fake in front of them. But a little later, a French study of ancient Egyptian marriage documents and documents on real estate transactions dating back to the 3rd-4th centuries was discovered. e. At one time, the scientific community looked askance at this research and almost forgot about it.
In that long-standing study, the ink used to write similar documents contained either little or no sulfur. Quite often sulfur was replaced with copper. In a laboratory at the Louvre Museum, experts from the Bareiba team took ink samples. After examining their chemical composition and comparing them with samples taken from the Gospel of Jude, they came to the conclusion that the ink is exactly the same in chemical composition. The data obtained allows us to speak about the complete authenticity of the entire Chakos Codex.
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The ink used in writing the Codex Chakos is a transitional version between antique coal and medieval iron-gallic. During their manufacture, the components were mixed, which were intended to create various types of ink.
In all foreign publications designed to investigate the authenticity of the "Gospel of Judas", it is noted that this is only a confirmation of the fact that the document was really drawn up in the II-III centuries AD. This is not a fake, but a genuine historical document - and nothing more. As for the content of the texts and the attitude to the image of Judas, historians prefer to remain silent: fragmentary passages do not allow making clear conclusions about the role of this fallen apostle. So it's too early to revise the formula "Judas is a traitor".
Igor Bukker