Codex Tchacos

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Page 33 of the Codex Tchacos with the beginning of the Gospel of Judas (CT 3)

The Codex Tchacos (CT) is a collective manuscript. The codex contains several Gnostic texts from the 4th century in the Coptic language with apocalyptic themes. The texts written in the Sahid dialect were originally written in Greek, most likely, and should go back to the end of the 2nd century at the earliest. They were probably not made until the 3rd century. Which was named Papyrus - Codex after Dimaratos Tchacos, the father of the last owner, Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos. The Gospel of Judas, which is contained in the manuscript, met with particular interest.

Ownership history

The Codex Tchacos was discovered in Middle Egypt near the city of al-Minya in the 1970s. It is a papyrus codex from the 4th century. Shortly after it was found, the document was offered for sale by an Egyptian dealer at an overpriced price, at a price of $ 3 million. After it was briefly stolen, the code was briefly viewed in 1983 by a team of scientists including Ludwig Koenen, David Noel Freedmann, James M. Robinson , Astrid Beck and Stephen Emmel. Emmel was able to identify the first two of the works contained, they were known from Nag Hammadi. A sale did not take place because no buyer or institute could raise this sum and no one could assess the importance of the as yet unidentified parts, and high costs for preservation and reconstruction were to be feared. The Codex came from Cairo via Switzerland to New York , where it disappeared for a good 16 years in a retailer's bank safe and was acquired in February 2002 by the Maecenas Foundation based in Basel .

Together with Frieda Nussberger-Tchacos, the Maecenas Foundation commissioned the Geneva-based coptologist Rodolphe Kasser to publish the text. Kasser brought Florence Darbre, who worked as a conservator for the Martin Bodmer Foundation , into the team . Improper storage in humid air and storage in an ice compartment had disintegrated the codex into hundreds of small fragments. For the reconstruction, each fragment was photographed on both sides and put together on the computer by the religious historian Gregor Wurst from the University of Augsburg and his colleagues. In the course of three years, almost 90 percent of the text could be reconstructed. The manuscript, translated under the direction of Rodolphe Kasser, was published in 2006. In 2007 a critical edition of the four texts of the Codex was published.

On April 9, 2006, National Geographic published the results of the research on its television channels worldwide as part of a two-hour documentary special . After the translation and restoration of the script, the foundation wants the code to be handed over to the Egyptian state for the Coptic Museum in Cairo . In 2009, a majority of the missing fragments, which were hiding in the USA, were released by a court order. They are now to be reunited and evaluated in Europe with the already known parts of the Codex.

description

The badly damaged codex has broken up into several hundred fragments, it comprises 31 partly very crumbled leaves, thus 62 more or less preserved and numbered pages in the format of approx. 16 × 29 cm, four pages are preserved in small remnants, as well as some additional fragments that cannot be assigned to any side. The text was painstakingly reconstructed - as far as possible - and published in 2006. A leather binding is partially preserved. The manuscript was made by a professional Coptic scribe. The language, the letter form of the manuscript and all circumstances show a proximity, but no identity, to the manuscripts of Nag Hammadi. The paleographic age determination carefully dated the manuscript to the fourth to fifth centuries, the radiocarbon method came to a probable date of origin of 280 ± 60 years.

content

The codex has four preserved parts (CT 1-4):

EpPt and (1Apc) Jac were already known from the Nag Hammadi finds. For the Gospel of Judas and (Allogenes) the code is the only known textual witness. The first three scripts are pseudepigraphic ; That is, they pretend to come from the respective disciple of Jesus. The bracket at "(Allogenes)" indicates that the original title of the fourth work is unknown. The designation Allogenes (Greek: Αλλογενής, "foreign origin") is used as an alternative, because the beginning and end of this papyrus and thus the title of the author is missing.

"The four surviving writings of the CT have an unmistakably Christian character." The first three are doctrinal dialogues with the disciples, in which Jesus gives them important revelations about his destiny, the creation of the world and the possibilities of salvation for the disciples; and they are placed in the time around Jesus' passion and resurrection. Suffering and persecution are an important issue. In addition, the polemics against theology and practice of the majority of Christianity at that time played a role, most of all in the Gospel of Judas. The fragments of a fifth script show that it is about topics that also appear in (Allogenes) and (1Apc) Jac: being a stranger in the world, the request for a special revelation about rebirth , overcoming physicality.

See also

Web links

Commons : Codex Tchacos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johanna Brankaer, Hans-Gebhard Bethge (ed.): Codex Tchacos, Berlin / New York 2007, pp. 7, 83, 257, 375.
  2. ^ Report on the presentation of the "Evangelium des Judas" , NZZ Online, April 13, 2006
  3. ↑ A radiocarbon dating (Timothy Jull, University of Arizona) provided a period between 3rd and 4th century for the development of the manuscript.
  4. ^ Mathias Schreiber, Matthias Schulz: Das Testament der Sektierer , in: Der Spiegel 16 of April 11, 2009, pp. 110–121.
  5. ^ NHC VIII, 2 p. 132.10-140.27 and NHC V, 3, p. 24.10-44.9.
  6. ↑ Johanna Brankaer, Hans-Gebhard Bethge (Ed.): Codex Tchacos, Berlin / New York 2007, p. 422.
  7. ↑ Johanna Brankaer, Hans-Gebhard Bethge (Ed.): Codex Tchacos, Berlin / New York 2007, p. 442.

literature

  • Rodolphe Kasser , Gregor Wurst, Marvin W. Meyer, François Gaudard: The Gospel of Judas together with the Letter of Peter to Phillip, James and A Book of Allogenes from Codex Tchacos. Critical Edition, Washington DC 2007
  • Johanna Brankaer, Hans-Gebhard Bethge (Ed.): Codex Tchacos. Texts and analyzes, Walter de Gruyter: Berlin / New York 2007 ( texts and studies on the history of early Christian literature, volume 161) ISBN 978-3-11-019570-5
  • Herbert Krosney: The Lost Gospel; The adventurous discovery and deciphering of the Gospel of Jude Iscariot, National Geographic, Washington DC 2006. Translation from the original English title The lost Gospel. The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot 2006.