It is to laugh. A spokesman of the Archaeological Institute of America is complaining about the recent publication by the National Geographic Society of the Gospel of Judas:
But scholars who have campaigned against the trade in artifacts of questionable provenance said they were troubled by the whole episode.
“We are dealing with a looted object,” said Jane C. Waldbaum, president of the Archaeological Institute of America, a professional society. “The artifact was poorly handled for years because the people holding it were more concerned with making money than protecting it.”
For her part, Ms. Tchacos Nussberger rejected any suggestion that she was trying to profit from the Gospel of Judas. She described her run-in with Italian officials as inconsequential.
“I went through hell and back, and I saved something for humanity,” Ms. Tchacos Nussberger said in a telephone interview. “I would have given it for nothing to someone who would have saved it.”
Hat tip: James Joyner
We’ve been through this same razzmatazz before. Consider the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls were discovered back in 1947 and their significance was recognized almost immediately. Since the 1940’s they’ve been studied exclusively by a group of French Dominicans (IIRC) who’ve guarded them jealously. They published the first volume in 1968 after more than 20 years of study.
In 1982 a high-quality copy of the scrolls was entrusted to the Huntington Library to preserve them (things in the Middle East being what they were and are).
In 1991 the Huntington decided that 44 years was long enough for the scrolls to be the exclusive property of any small group of scholars and produced high-quality photographic copies of their own which they published. There was an outcry.
In my view this complaint is just a turf battle: the complainants aren’t upset that somebody is making money from the Gospel of Judas. They’re upset because they’re not making money from the work.
You betcha. The market for antiquities is nearly as murky as that for fine art.
And nice Daffy Duck reference.
I’m hard pressed to believe that the vatican doesn’t have a copy of all the coptic gospels. The Gospel of Judas has been mentioned several times, throughout history, most recently with the odd collection gathered together in the. . . .30’s I think.
It might also be an arrogance that those who are not acknowledged theologean apparatchiks of the various religious sects don’t get first shot at discrediting the document.
I mean really, the only “document” that can’t be argued are the histories of josefus, josephus? and other contemporary roman(though joey was a jew) historians.