Learning from our past is an essential part of the Waitt Institute for Discovery’s approach to making tomorrow’s world a more informed and better place. Supporting important research and discovery that will add valuable new information to our understanding of the world’s culture and history exemplifies the mission of our organization. To this end the discovery and translation of the Gospel of Judas and Codex documents represents exactly that – a rare opportunity to shed new light on the historical, political, linguistic and cultural context surrounding this ancient Coptic manuscript from the third or fourth century.

A codex is an ancient bound book of folded papyrus pages. Codices were usually scriptural or classical texts because they were easier to manage and could contain more information than scrolls.

This codex contains the Gospel of Judas and other texts which were discovered in Al Minya, Egypt in the early 1970s. Having survived in the desert for more than 1.600 years, the papyrus deteriorated greatly when it was transferred to a safe deposit box in Long Island, N.Y. This damage has made the restoration process an enormous undertaking for Professor Rodolphe Kasser, world-renowned Coptic scholar and his team of researchers.

Rodolphe Kasser, with Ted Waitt examining the ancient manuscripts.

Decoding these texts is a dramatic discovery of cultural interest, the text itself offers an alternative interpertation of the relationship between Jesus and Judas. Although the author of the Gospel of Judas remains anonymous, the original text is believed to have been written in Greek around A.D. 150 by a group of early gnostic Christians. This Coptic version is believed to have been a copy of that version which was written around A.D. 300. Scholars knew of the existence of the Gospel of Judas because of references in other ancient texts, the first known being in A.D. 180.

The Waitt Institute for Discovery’s interest is in helping researchers determine the historical significance of the documents, and ensuring that these documents and their content are available for scholars and people of faith to review and study for generations to come.

Along with the staff of the National Geographic and the team of world-class scientists and historians who have and will continue to study the documents, the inquiry into these documents has been conducted with the utmost standards of professional scholarship. These documents, after their translation and preservation, will be given to Egypt, the country of origin.