Prof. Meyer, colleagues press on in study of Gospel of Judas

Marvin Meyer, Ph.D., Griset Professor of Religious Studies, Wilkinson College, just returned from Germany, where he worked with colleagues Dr. Hans-Gebhard Bethge, Dr. Uwe-Karsten Plisch, and Dr. Gregor Wurst  on the Coptic text of
Codex Tchacos
, the ancient book that includes the
Gospel of Judas
. The goal of the work of this scholarly team, begun over the last weeks at the University of Augsburg, is to take the study of the ancient codex to the next level. Dr. Meyer reports that considerable progress was made, particularly on the other texts in
Codex Tchacos
.

While in the region, Meyer also visited the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration and Extermination Camps and the city of Krakow, Poland, home of the Oskar Schindler factory. Meyer reports that in the window of the factory was displayed a photograph of Leon Leyson, the Holocaust survivor who recently was awarded the Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree at the commencement exercises of Chapman University.

Dr. Meyer was a member of the
National Geographic
team that translated the 2nd-century A.D. Gnostic manuscript “The Gospel of Judas” from Coptic, and is one of the world’s foremost experts on that text and on texts about Jesus outside the New Testament.  He is the author and editor of numerous books about ancient texts and religion, including
The Gospel of Judas
;
The Gospels of Mary: The Secret Tradition of Mary Magdalene
;
The Gnostic Bible
; and the recently released
The Gospel of Thomas, An Illustrated and Illuminated Manuscript
(with Carol W. Nichols).