The View From Kalamazoo

From PaleoJudaica, news on the Coptic Gospel of Judas :
Rodolphe Kasser (University of Geneva) announced that he is going to publish a Coptic papyrus codex of 31 folios (62 pages). The manuscript is written in Sahidic and can be dated, on paleographical grounds, to the 4th/5th century. It is rather damaged and in poor and fragmentary conditions. It comes from Muhazafat Al Minya, in Middle Egypt, and is presently hold by a Swiss Foundation.

The codex contains three “treatises”: (1) the Epistle of Peter to Philip, (2) the First Apocalypse of James (both of them are also present among the NHC [Nag Hammadi codices] but, according to Kasser, in a “different version”), and (3) ca. 31 pages of the previously unknown Gospel of Judas!

A “Gospel of Judas” is mentioned by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., i.31), Epiphanius (Haer., xxxviii.1), Theodoret, etc., as current in the Gnostic sect of the Cainites, to whom Judas was a hero. It must have been in existence in the 2nd century, but no quotation is given from it (see Baring-Gould, Lost and Hostile Gospels, III, chapter v).

Am I really a big enough geek to be excited by this?

Yup. Guilty as charged!