More on the Gospel of Judas Translation

From Jim Davila's PaleoJudaica

[All text below is from Jim Davila's blog]

[Professor André] Gagné, both an expert on ancient Christian writings and the Coptic language, offered his interpretation of the controversial Gnostic text written in ancient Coptic.

Armed with a laser pointer, he highlighted the Coptic text projected on the screen, “This line says ‘…for you (Judas) will sacrifice the man that bears me.’ It’s saying Judas already had in his mind to sacrifice Jesus, and Jesus is aware of this. He (Jesus) is just prophesizing what Judas is going to do and had already stated. This reflects the Gnostic view of Christianity.”

National Geographic, which has rights to publish the gospel, has reported the Judas gospel says Jesus asked Judas to betray him.

Gagné disputes this and maintains this is not a matter of semantics but one of grammar.

“They’ve mistranslated the tense. It was done too quickly. It lacks the accuracy necessary for interpretation in my opinion.”

APRIL DECONICK responds to my bleg for Coptologists's comments on the supposed mistranslation of the Gospel of Judas. She writes that someone

showed me your posting this morning, about a Canadian professor who was quoted saying that the line from the Gospel of Judas "you will sacrifice the man that clothes me" is wrong because of an incorrect future tense. I checked the Coptic transcription and I'm not sure what the professor was referring to, or maybe the reporter got it wrong. The line in Coptic is very straightforward with a simple future. The word that Kasser-Meyer translate "clothes" is a Greek idiom (phoreo), which means "to bear" or "carry" or "wear." So as it is transliterated, it can be read very woodenly: "For the man who carries (or: clothes) me, you will sacrifice him."

Now I haven't been able to check the photographs (none of us have), so the transliteration has not been confirmed. It should be noted that we do not have a critical edition yet, nor has the critical edition been reviewed. Just from my cursory reading of the translation compared to the transcription, there are interpretative problems. Does Judas really have a "spirit" (as Kasser-Meyer translate it) or a "demon" (as I would translate line 44:21, "daimon")?

I guess what I'm saying is that until the photographs are released, none of us can confirm the transliteration and offer alternative translations and solutions to the problems. It is a frustrating position to be in because the popular book is being treated by the media as academically definitive, when in fact this couldn't be further from the truth.

The media's lack of perspective in such matters is a challenge we frequently face.

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NO MISTRANSLATION AFTER ALL and, in fact, nobody said there was:

I am the Canadian professor who supposedly said that the Gospel of Judas was mistranslated!!! This reporter got it all wrong! All I said was that I disagreed with the idea that Jesus asked Judas to betray him, or to help him get rid of his mortal body. The phrase: "But you will exceed them all, for you will sacrifice the man that bears me" is a Future I (one) and should not be understood or interpreted as an imperative. Jesus is in fact prophesying and knows that Judas will do this. I think that the phrase was interpreted in a sensationalistic way. But I would never dare say that it was mistranslated. I want to thank Dr. DeConick for her careful comments. It is true that the media sometimes get things wrong.

Cordially,

André Gagné