MORE ON THE COPTIC GOSPEL OF JUDAS: Beliefnet has published the same article that appeared last week in the Winston-Salem Journal, but a longer version with more information about the current state of the manuscript's authentication. The extra part at the end reads:

James Robinson, a retired professor of Coptic studies at Claremont Graduate University and general editor of the English edition of the Nag Hammadi Library, vouched for the document's authenticity based on his experience in trying to purchase the codex as early as 1983.

"I don't know of any scholar who thinks this is fake," said Robinson, who is not involved in the National Geographic project.

Although Robinson has never seen the manuscript firsthand, he arranged a meeting in 1983 between Stephen Emmel, a Coptic scholar at the University of Muenster in Germany, and John Pedrios, a Greek dealer who was negotiating the sale of the manuscript.

In a report filed after the meeting, Emmel said he was able to authenticate the codex as a genuine fourth- or fifth-century manuscript. But he said the 30-minute meeting ran too short for him to detect whether it contained the gospel.

Reached by phone in Cairo, Emmel confirmed his report but declined to say whether the manuscript he saw decades ago is the forthcoming gospel.

"I can say that the thought never crossed my mind that it was anything but a genuine Coptic papyrus codex from the fourth or fifth century," he said.

So it seems that the manuscript was in circulation as early as 1983 and that at least one specialist got to examine the actual codex and concluded it was genuine. But I'd like to see a thorough authentication that goes beyond a 30-minute examination and which confirms all its contents.