Text 6, 242 rader
Skriven 2006-04-13 10:00:22 av Cindy Haglund (1:3613/1275.13)
      Kommentar till text 1 av JOHNJWILSON (1:123/140)
Ärende: This IS a religious ech, no?
====================================
0n (12 Apr 06) JOHNJWILSON wrote to ALL...

 J > (or, rather an anti-religious echo :-)...

 J > I've just been reading about "The Judas Gospel"

 Sure beats finding what might be homo sapien missing link? :)
 (Other news)

 J > The great wheel of histury always turns, the final not is never
 J > completed...
 J > and now, the Great Betrayer has been redeemed.

 There's tons of what used to be dry land now covered with ocean
 to explore. (IE: the migration of Homo Sapiens from Asio over the
'land bridge' connecting Asia to Alaska, down the Pacific
 coast). Who knows what is down there too as well as what is
 found on land. Many mysteries might be solved but as you well know
 there will always be those who can't stand to have such solutions.

 At least thes tudy of our origins is real. To me anyway the Gospel
stuff is akin to the fun we who are hooked to the TV show "LOST' have
speculting about whatall re the show. Anyway:

 Here is a recent article on this Gospel issue:
 ........................

 J > Anyone else interested in this?
.................

How the Gospel of Judas Emerged

By BARRY MEIER and JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
When the National Geographic Society announced to great fanfare last
week that it had gained access to a 1,700-year-old document known as the
Gospel of Judas, it described how a deteriorating manuscript, unearthed in
Egypt three decades ago, had made its way through the shady alleys of the
antiquities market to a safe-deposit box on Long Island and eventually
to a Swiss art dealer who "rescued" it from obscurity.

But there is even more to the story.

The art dealer was detained several years ago in an unrelated Italian
antiquities smuggling investigation. And after she failed to profit
from the sale of the gospel in the private market, she struck a deal with a
foundation run by her lawyer that would let her make about as much as
she would have made on that sale, or more.

Later, the National Geographic Society paid the foundation to restore
the manuscript and bought the rights to the text and the story about the
discovery. As part of her arrangement with the foundation, the dealer,
Frieda Tchacos Nussberger, stands to gain $1 million to $2 million
from those National Geographic projects, her lawyer said. There may even be
more.

Details of how the manuscript was found are clouded. According to
National Geographic, it was found by farmers in an Egyptian cave in the 1970's,
sold to a dealer and passed through various hands in Europe and the United
States. Legal issues in its transit are equally vague.

No one questions the authenticity of the Judas gospel, which depicts
Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple.

But the emerging details are raising concerns among some
archaeologists and other scholars at a time of growing scrutiny of
the dealers who sell antiquities and of the museums and collectors
who buy them. The information also calls into question the completeness
of National Geographic's depiction of some individuals like Ms. Tchacos
Nussberger and its disclosure of all the financial relationships involved.

Terry Garcia, the vice president for mission programs at National
Geographic, which is based in Washington, said that the organization
had  "heard some rumors" about possible legal problems involving Ms.
Tchacos Nussberger but could not confirm them. He also noted that the
organization had disclosed its relationship with the foundation, the Maecenas
Foundation for Ancient Art.

Mr. Garcia emphasized that he believed that issues like Ms. Tchacos
Nussberger's financial relationship with the foundation or questions
about other antiquities she sold were not relevant to the story of the
Gospel of Judas. He added that National Geographic had taken on the project
because it saw an opportunity to help save a unique document.

"It is not every day that you find a lost gospel," Mr. Garcia said.

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."

Last week, National Geographic began a large campaign for the Gospel
of Judas, featuring it in two new books, a television documentary, an
exhibition and the May issue of National Geographic magazine.

The organization did not buy the document. Instead, it paid $1 million
to the Maecenas Foundation, effectively for the manuscript's contents.
Part of the revenues generated by the National Geographic projects go to the
foundation.

The foundation was set up some years ago by Ms. Tchacos Nussberger's
lawyer, Mario Roberty, well before it became involved with the Gospel of
Judas. Mr.Roberty is the only official of the foundation, which he said was
involved in projects like returning antiquities to their countries of origin.
He said that when Ms. Tchacos Nussberger turned over the document to the
foundation in 2001, he quickly contacted officials in Egypt and assured
them that the
manuscript would be returned there. He said the foundation had clear
legal title to the document.

In National Geographic's narratives, the manuscript takes a long
journey through the antiquities trade. Those stories describe Ms. Tchacos
Nussberger efforts to sell the Gospel of Judas privately soon after buying
it and her subsequent role in its restoration. She is portrayed as driven by
religious conviction to save the document.

"I think I was chosen by Judas to rehabilitate him," Ms. Tchacos
Nussberger, 65, is quoted as saying in one of the society's books, "The Lost
Gospel," by Herbert Krosney. Mr. Krosney is also an independent television
producer who brought the gospel project to National Geographic.

Missing from the book is any mention of an incident in 2001 when Ms.
Tchacos Nussberger was detained in Cyprus at the request of Italian officials,
who wanted to question her as part of a broader investigation into
antiquities that had been illegally taken out of Italy and sold elsewhere.
Paolo Ferri, the Rome-based prosecutor in the case, said she was charged with
several violations involving antiquities but was given a reduced sentence that
was suspended because she had, among other things, previously agreed to
return an artifact claimed by Italy.

Both the dealer and her lawyer said the issues involved were far less
serious than those described by Mr. Ferri, the prosecutor. They also
said that all of Ms. Tchacos Nussberger's dealings in antiquities in Italy
and elsewhere had been lawful. Her record will be erased in 2007 if she is
not charged by Italian authorities with another antiquities violation.

Ms. Tchacos Nussberger said that she, like other dealers, had run into
problems because laws governing the antiquities trade had sharply
changed in
recent years.

According to National Geographic, she bought the Judas document for
about
$300,000 in 2000 from another dealer who had placed it in a
safe-deposit box
in Hicksville, N.Y., on Long Island. She tried to sell it to the
Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Yale officials have not specified why they did not buy the document.
But
Robert Babcock, curator of early books at the library, said through a
spokeswoman that "there were unresolved questions about the
provenance."

Then in 2001, Ms. Tchacos Nussberger sold it to an antiquities dealer
in
Ohio for $2.5 million, but the deal fell apart when the dealer did not
make
good on the payments.

Aided by her lawyer, Mr. Roberty, she regained ownership of the
document and
at his suggestion turned it over to the Maecenas Foundation. Under the
deal,
she is entitled to receive a sum from revenues generated by the Gospel
of
Judas essentially equivalent to what she would have received from the
Ohio
dealer, minus the value of several pages of the manuscript that dealer
bought. In addition, she is entitled to get back about $800,000 she
lent to
the foundation for expenses like legal costs and early restoration
efforts,
Mr. Roberty said.

Mr. Roberty said the foundation had already started paying money to
the
dealer, but he declined to say how much she had received to date.

Mr. Garcia, the National Geographic executive, said that a critical
aspect
of the society's contract with the Maecenas Foundation was the group's
pledge to return the document to Egypt. Mr. Krosney, the writer, said
he was
convinced from his discussions with Ms. Tchacos Nussberger that she
had
acted out of the best of motives.

He said he had raised with Mr. Roberty the rumors he had heard about
Ms.
Tchacho Nussberger and Italy, and added that the lawyer was
"dismissive"of
them. He said he never asked the dealer about it.

Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, said there
was
inherent tension between the need to conserve ancient objects and
deter
trade in looted artifacts.

"If you want to learn from the material, you have got to deal," Mr.
Shanks
said. "I am in favor of rescuing these unprovenanced things because
they
have important information to impart."

But other scholars remain disturbed. "The owners are trying to take
monetary
value out of something they don't really own," said Patty
Gerstenblith, a
law professor at DePaul University in Chicago who specializes in the
antiquities trade. "The people with control over the manuscript don't
appear
to be the rightful owners."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/science/
13judas.html?hp&ex=1144987200&en=2626e654e9f3328c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

.........

Think about this for a minute. If people can't get straight what
someone told them five minutes ago in the SAME lanugage, how the hell
do we know anything translated THOUSANDS of years ago isn't simply a
story rather than fact?

Cindy

... That light at the end of the tunnel is a train...

--- PPoint 3.01
 * Origin: Up a palm tree (1:3613/1275.13)